1080 fallacy...

[Solsland]

Have to say, coming from a 970 to a 1080.... save your money.  The difference is s minimal, it really isn't worth the cost.  Real world, the upgrade is so minimalI would save our money.

If you are on a 980 or a 980ti forget about it for now, just not an appreciable difference..  Even playing Doom on Ultra settings at 4k... meh 

[Solsland]

... and as I already said, if you have money to burn, knock yourself out...

[Anonymous]

Yea, I somewhat agree with this. Right now there is not enough content to justify the power increase from a 970 to 1080 when looking at the price/performance ratio. I went from a 970-1070, and even though it's not a 1080, I have not been blown away from the upgrade (I doubt 1080 will do any different). However, I did the upgrade because I am just that type of person that gets somewhat irritated with minor frame drops, or not being able to get that extra graphic fidelity setting boost (med-high settings) and I can live without the 1080, that is my cost cutoff point. And also, I want to be at the forefront of VR, and when that killer app comes out with high settings, making it look gorgeous, I want to play it first day, and experience those glorious VR graphics. 

Also in the end, it really is just about your budget. If you budget is at a fine line with purchasing a VR ready machine using a 970, and your contemplating on getting a 1070-1080, but know it's a financial stretch, you won't be that much happier than getting the 970 at this point. But if you have money to burn, grab it, it will just give you confidence, knowing you will be ready for all the great high graphic games coming soon. 

Once we have content taking full advantage of 1070-1080 cards, pushing their limits, we will start to see that big difference between 970-10xx cards, and that is when you will want to upgrade. 

I will say though, that supersampling does make a pretty big difference. Just did it to the Vive at 1.5, and bam all the stars in my home screen were much clearer, it was like setting a focus setting, and it reducing all the blur. 

[Fazz]

I had a Geforce 970 and I Updated to a Geforce 1080. I see massive increase in performance in VR and that's the reason I got this Graphics Card. I can use the Oculus Debug tool and set most things to 1.5 and I can set most  game settings to high. With my Geforce 970 I couldn't do any of those things and it made games Like The Solus Project look crap. I can't understand you saying it makes no difference when it's clear to see it does. 

[Zenbane]

Solsland said:
AllI I am saying, is that in my opinion (which I believe I am entitled to)

Anyone telling you differently is blowing smoke up your arse 

So you believe you're entitled to an opinion, but anyone else sharing an opinion opposite of yours is blowing smoke up peoples rear end. I dunno, something tells me that you're really the one doing the blowing. Also, you calling strangers liars simply because they disagree with you is in fact a level of aggression; albeit a childish one. You come across as someone who spent more time staring at their bank account than you did staring at the graphic improvements.

tranceology3 said:

Yea, I somewhat agree with this. Right now there is not enough content to justify the power increase from a 970 to 1080 when looking at the price/performance ratio. I went from a 970-1070, and even though it's not a 1080, I have not been blown away from the upgrade (I doubt 1080 will do any different).

A few things wrong with that. First, it's not a question of how many games can take advantage of the 1080's power, it's about the visible difference with those that can. Second, it doesn't really make sense to speculate that the "1080 will do any different." When I set Chronos to Epic settings, I certainly notice a graphic detail increase with my GTX 980; only it can't handle it very well. I can see the difference, I just can't enjoy it.

Lastly, there are plenty of reviews that move between over-glorifying the 1080 to making a fair assessment of who should truly wait.

For example, this article says that those coming from a 980 (like me) will definitely experience a difference, while anyone above that should wait:
http://www.polygon.com/2016/5/17/11689352/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-hands-on-review

The OP is coming from a 970 and claiming he can't see anything different. Which indicates that he is either a liar, doesn't have any real games, or ended up missing few important bills and now regrets the purchase.

This article also confirms that GTX 980 upgrades to 1080 are worthwhile:
http://www.roadtovr.com/nvidia-gtx-1080-benchmark-review-performance-head-to-head-against-the-980ti/

And another:
https://www.engadget.com/2016/05/17/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-review/

If you have the cash and need the most powerful video card on the
market, you can't go wrong with the GTX 1080. It's built precisely for
the things gamers are focused on today: 4K and VR. It's not just an
incremental upgrade for NVIDIA: It's a dramatic leap forward.

Tom's Guide boasts of its notable visual improvements with 4k monitors and VR immersion:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080,review-3657.html

But here comes the OP with a handful of buttocks analogies, zero screenshots to compare, and zero benchmark specifications. The majority of all reviews make it clear who should consider an upgrade, who should wait, and just how much of an improvement the upgrade will provide. The OP is clearly not a videophile but thought it would be a good idea to spend money like one.

[Zoomie]

Solsland said:

Anyone telling you differently is blowing smoke up your arse.  I am not talking about figures, just what it looks like moving from 970 to 1080.  

This here is the rub.  You're saying objective measured data can't be used to argue against your subjective experience.  That's fine for things like art or music, but in the case of a GPU it's all about the figures.  We'll see higher framerates at higher resolutions by going from a 970 to a 1080.  Zenbane provided several examples.  

If you had said "I didn't see much benefit going from a 970 to a 1080", you'd have seen several people who disagreed with you.  But the minute you started trying to tell people not to upgrade because of your personal subjective opinion, you opened your ideas to discussion and many of us disagree with your conclusion.

Solsland said:

If you want to future proof and have money to burn, go for it. If you want to see better VR...... don't

This sounds like bad advice.  A 1080 is exactly what you need to see better VR.  Pascal brings a host of innovations specific to VR, even before you consider the improvements from hardware alone.
Look up Simultaneous Multi Projection.  Look up Lens Matched Shading.
I'll save you the time, just click here.

Just keep in mind that although you probably feel attacked here, most of us have no problems with YOU.  It's your recommendation we disagree with which is why we're replying.  With any luck, we've helped you understand why your 1080 is a bigger step-up than you thought it was.

[inovator]

For most people upgrading let's say A 970 or 980 card isn't worth it but if your upgrading your rig or buying a new one for vr its good to buy the best card u can afford so u won't have to upgrade in the future as soon.

[lukwtwz]

For non-VR gaming, the ~$700 GTX 1080's 8GB of VRAM is certainly too skimpy this late in 2016 for it be considered a future-proofed card by the very-soon-to-be-standards of that price point. Indeed, as many have pointed out, if you can afford a $700 card (or two of them in SLI as "Cybereality" and others have announced that they'll be running), then you might as well hold out for a GPU with more VRAM for a few hundred more. One recent non-VR example of 8GB VRAM cutting it awfully close is in Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, which one review site reported as consuming 7.5GB of VRAM at 1080p in 'Hyper' mode. That and other review sites cosy with Nvidia didn't even bother reporting that game's Hyper mode VRAM consumption at resolutions of 1440p or 4K (neither did most of them bother to include Titan X's best-on-air overclocking max-settings game benchmarks in charts featuring GTX 1080 and/or 1070 overclocking results). 

For VR gaming, Nvidia GTX 1080 sounds more compelling due to the announcement of SMP (simultaneous multi-projection) but, given the trend over the past few years of newly-announced VR technologies not being widely or retro-actively implemented until well after the next generation of GPU's is released (remember how Nvidia's much-hyped 'Maxwell VR Sli' never came to fruition), no one can justify endorsing Pascal for VR alone based on existence of SMP until there's ample evidence that it will actually make a difference in this GPU generation of VR games or applications. Nvidia GPU's will likely have newer if not necessarily more compelling VR technologies in upcoming GPU's by the time more than a handful of titles utilizing Pascal SMP are available, and by then upper-mid tier Nvidia GPU's will have more VRAM and thus even higher ability to 'max-out' games.

Though I wouldn't take the benchmarks from Road To VR as definitive of Pascal's potential, they shore up the argument that upgrading to GTX 1080 from a 980ti isn't as much the no-brainer decision it's made out to be. Of course, if folks playing with high disposable income plan to stay caught up in the GPU upgrades spiral anyway (as folks in this thread citing their 'upper-middle class incomes' likely will), then such considerations are moot. 

http://www.roadtovr.com/nvidia-gtx-1080-benchmark-review-performance-head-to-head-against-the-980ti/...

Regarding the OP's claim of not seeing much of a visual difference between GTX 970 and GTX 1080, I think that's hogwash given the dramatic difference that even my lowly Titan X made over my old GTX 980 in standard games at both 1080p (fewer frame-rate dips when trying to maintain constant 60fps at high+ detail) and 1440p. Upgrading beyond a GTX 980 even made a significant visual difference on a very old 1080p Sony TV when DSR (dynamic super resolution) was enabled, so the question is not whether upgrading from a 970 or 980 yields striking results, but whether upgrading right now is advisable to those willing to spend 700-900 on a new GPU who don't mind waiting a few more months to see what Nvidia has in store. After all, when Nvidia's Jen Hsun-Huang said Nvidia had spent 2 billion researching and developing GTX 1080 - enough to go to mars, as he put it - he really meant that 2 billion was put into the Pascal line of which GTX 1080 was, even by that point, likely not the best gaming GPU Nvidia had ever made; it was just the best they wanted to start selling to consumers in that timeframe. 

[Zoomie]

I guess the issue here is whether companies will be willing to use the nVidia SDK to give players up to 100% better framerates by using Pascal.  Maxwell SLI was always a bit hand-wavy but these recent developments have already been created - they just need to be implemented. 

I don't think we'll see them in the current generation of releases for either HMD.  Those companies have already done most of their coding but they're also targeting the 970 as a min-spec.  Once the next generation of games comes out, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see these features used.  The plus side is that I won't have to buy another 1080 to take advantage of them, it's built in.  Not so for the 970/980.

But yes, the 10xx series are a significant jump from the 9xx regardless.  Pascal-specific features will be icing on the cake.

[Anonymous]

Jumped from a GTX 970 to a 1070, cranked setting to the max in VR so much detail and plays smooth and besides just knowing that I have a 1070 makes me feel better and more prepared for the future of VR! 

[blanes]

Horses for courses,  I see improves in VR & 4K gaming coming from my 980Ti to my 1080 which is a beast overclocker by compare.