You seem to be saying this a lot as of recent
No more than previously, when RTX 2070 Supers were going to be bought for 1080p 60. And so on. RTX 3080 is just the latest incarnation.
What are your thoughts on spec'ing over your monitor specs with regards to streaming? Is the extra GPU power worth it still? Or is that budget better put towards things like a better CPU and/or capture card?
Or 4th option, kept in the wallet. Or 5th option, economies in the build to allow both a GPU and a monitor upgrade. Or 6th option, just buy a better monitor too.
It depends how you're doing the streaming ofc. If you're using the GPU, the performance hit is generally fairly small. So overspeccing from (say) a 1660 Super for your 1080p 60hz gaming to an RTX 3080 isn't justified at all on that basis. Even going from 1660 Super to RTX 2060 (non-super) would probably more than offset the performance cost of Nvidia's video encoding.
If the OP is doing streaming on the CPU, they're buying an i9 10900k (or possible Zen 3 rival) which is not going to struggle with streaming, so investing more in the CPU isn't necessary here.
As for capture cards, you wouldn't normally use one if you are using a single PC setup; you'd just run the encoding on the CPU or GPU. Which is why when PCG ran the $1000 streaming build contest and recommended a capture card,
almost everyone ignored the brief.
Think of it this way.... you'll be able to do what you want to do with the 3080 and a 1080p monitor... but probably nothing with that GTX 900 series even if you had the biggest baddest 4k monitor. You could buy a 3070 (or lower if announced), but then when you do finally find a sweet deal on a 4k, you're gonna regret it. I
This is the number 1 false logic you always see with "Imma buy a $XXX/X GPU and upgrade the monitor in a year".
What happens is that by the time you buy a monitor worthy of the graphics card, newer, faster, better GPUs will have come out in the interval and you may already be regretting your 3080 purchase.
Let's say your 900 series GPU died 6 months ago and you needed a new one for your 1080p 60hz. What if you bought a 2080 ti, with the plan to upgrade your monitor to 4k on a black friday deal? Or you decided to wait a few months for X new model. Or whatever - you bought the GPU before you needed anything close to its horsepower
That's 8 (or less) months of getting little benefit from it over a 1660 Super at 1080p 60hz (oh wow, you were able to turn up a couple of placebo settings you won't even notice in gameplay). And 6 months in, a new GPU releases that that 1) trounces your 2080 ti and 2) costs less even with the purchase of that 1660 Super to tide you over than an RTX 2080 ti does.
Time to panic sell on ebay.
Alternatively, you buy a 3080 now, and by the time you get a swanky 4k 144hz monitor or whatever your heart's desire is, the 3080 ti comes out, as have next gen titles which are beautiful but brutal, and you find that your 3080 just doesn't quite have the horsepower. And you wish you had that 3080 ti even if it was another £300.
Don't buy a GPU to "futureproof". Not for games, not for monitors.
Buy what you need, with a little headroom perhaps, but massively overspending on the GPU tends to be an own goal.
Same story for the CPU and RAM.
At least with storage you're probably(?) going to fill it up eventually, and storage is storage. If it doesn't die just outside of warranty before you ever needed the capacity you paid for and so lost cash that way...
You seem to be saying this a lot as of recent
What are your thoughts on spec'ing over your monitor specs with regards to streaming? Is the extra GPU power worth it still? Or is that budget better put towards things like a better CPU and/or capture card?
From what I know, most 4K capture cards won't go over 60fps. I'm sure that will change soon. But then, as a content creator, do you want to push those ultra settings at whatever resolution you can? I feel like there are a whole bunch of other factors to consider with streaming/capture workstation.
We're going to run in to this a lot, since so many people are now ready to upgrade from over two generations ago. Mostly I feel they should just go for it, get the 3080 or 3070 and make your monitor sweat tears of joy! Just start planning that monitor upgrade some time next spring, when I predict 4k monitor prices may finally take a deep nosedive. A 4k IPS LED panel still costs something like twice what I spent for my 1080p TN panel last year... so to me that upgrade is not quite the value I want yet.
Think of it this way.... you'll be able to do what you want to do with the 3080 and a 1080p monitor... but probably nothing with that GTX 900 series even if you had the biggest baddest 4k monitor. You could buy a 3070 (or lower if announced), but then when you do finally find a sweet deal on a 4k, you're gonna regret it. It will likely be very difficult but the longer you wait, the better of a build you'll be able to put together.
Ultimately, though, all of this is abstract. And interesting as it is to literally rehash the same points every time a GPU with a new number appears as if the basic principles about the myth of futureproofing have changed, it's not relevant to
@SurrealScotsman
My recommendations here were:
1) Wait for Oct 8th before dropping £3000 on a system to see what your options are CPU/platform-wise
2) Economies within the build e.g. mobo and some tweaks.
3) Potential economies by shopping around with a different vendor (or - just to add - getting the current vendor to price match if they do that)
4) Buy an RTX 3080
and a monitor to let you appreciate what it can do for you. Either through various economies as above, and/or through just spending a bit more. The economies alone would pay for a gorgeous monitor.
(just because it's not possible to say whether it's suitable or not)
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