Nvidia 3080 vs. 3090

Hardware
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Hey Guys,

First post here, been teaching myself Touchdesigner and am hoping to one day contribute a lot more here. I was hoping you guys could help me with a decision on my upcoming video card purchase.

My current system is a Threadripper 2950x, 1080TI SC2.

I am looking to upgrade to one of the new nvidia cards, either the 3080 or the 3090. I use my PC for about 50% learning content creation through touchdesigner and also use it for gaming.

My question really comes down to if the increased cost of the 3090 is worth it as a long term investment (as my skills in TD increase). The price difference is substantial (nearly double). On current benchmarks, the 3090 only performs about 10-15% better on pure graphic performance using gaming benchmarks, so from that perspective, the cost difference is not worth it. However, the 3080 only has 10GB GDDR6X memory, where as the 3090 has 24GB GDDR6X memory. I believe this may be where the card would shine for touchdesigner.

So how big of an impact would the increased memory have for working within touchdesigner. Is it worth the additional investment to ‘future proof’ myself as my skills increase?

I know many of you utilize Quadro and pro-spec cards, but unfortunately, my budget and use case (with gaming as well) has me better suited for these consumer/prosumer grade cards.

Thank for your help!

Also, special thanks to those of you who give support on this forum and share tutorials anywhere, it has been a big help as I try to learn as much as possible.

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I think you answered the question for yourself right there.

On the ram, IF you have a project that needs over 10GB of graphics ram, you’ll know it. But you have to be doing a lot at high resolutions or high bit depths to gobble up 10GB. Since you say you are starting out I certainly wouldn’t worry about it yet until you have the project that demands it. You can quickly sell a 3080 (if you can find one LOL) for close to what you paid for it if you really need the 3090 later, which is doubtful unless you have a specific job that requires mad amounts of graphics memory.

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Really appreciate you taking the time Ben. That makes total sense. Thanks!

…and yeah, time to watch the sell outs happen before I can even hit refresh lol

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I would suggest waiting a little bit as NVIDIA confirmed there would be 3080 with 20gb also…by the end of October or so. Also, AMD is releasing new processors this month.

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