Yup I basically did this upgrade. 980Ti to Titan Xp (paid around what 1080Tis were going for)…and I’m still on it due to probably needing an entire new pc to get anything out of a further gpu upgrade (pc is from 2015). Maybe I’ll do a 5080/9700x3d build but I say that every gen lol
I think I'd have to go for the Voodoo 2 instead... More mature and the jump is massive for the couple of years between them. Voodoo was definitely more revolutionary. But Voodoo 2 had all of the compatibility with a lot more stability when it comes to drivers and software.
@@ahmed-0775 he's just repeating what other TH-camrs said. It's easy for them to call the 1080ti a mistake since they don't have to pay for their cards. Bryan from TYC is about the only tech-tuber that has a grasp on marktes. The 1080ti made perfect sense back when it launched. Back in early 2017 inflation was low, tech companies had not quite gone on hiring binges, investors were still mostly rooted in metals and bonds, Nvidia was only paying $13k/usd for a 16nm wafer, and GPU Crypto mining was a mere blip on the radar.
How about this... RX 6800 XT > GTX 1080 Ti The RX 6800 XT was released FOUR YEARS ago and its performance twin, the RX 7800 XT is still lauded as a high-end card despite being on par or only slightly faster than the RX 6800 XT. The RX 6900 XT tied the GTX 1080 Ti but the RX 6800 XT beats both of them because the RX 6900 XT is only 8% faster but was 54% more expensive. The RX 6800 XT would've scored higher than the RX 6900 XT which means that it would've also scored higher than the GTX 1080 Ti. Iceberg really dropped the ball on this one.
@@ahmed-0775 You're new to this aren't you? There has never been a time when nVidia was NOT stupidly greedy. Let's go back 16 years to 2008. The GeForce GTX 260 was $450 and the Radeon HD 4870 was $300. Look up ANY review of the Radeon HD 4870 and you'll see that the performance numbers of the HD 4870 and GTX 260 were IDENTICAL. Meanwhile the GTX 260 was exactly 50% more expensive. That was probably the height of their greed. I wanted to upgrade to a GTX 260 from my 8500 GT when I started working at Tiger Direct and saw all of this from the other side of the counter. Instead of a GTX 260, I bought an HD 4870 and was so pleased with it that the only GeForce card that I've purchased since was an RTX 2060 Super that I got for $150CAD just to screw around with it a bit. As expected, you still can't tell one from the other when gaming. The greed and hubris of nVidia turned me off of them sixteen years ago. To be honest, Intel did the same thing and I haven't owned anything of theirs either (except the network circuitry on my ASRock motherboards). There's a long and terrible history of things that nVidia did to screw over gamers but gamers are generally spineless and are williing to just take the abuse and keep buying cards in green boxes.
Actually, neither of those cards is the G.O.A.T. and I'll prove it: - The RX 6900 XT and GTX 1080 Ti are tied for GOAT - The RX 6900 XT is 8% faster than the RX 6800 XT (TechPowerUp) - The RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT have the same GPU (Navi 21) - The RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT have the same frame buffer (16GB) - The RX 6900 XT was 54% more expensive than the RX 6800 XT ($999 vs $649) Doesn't that prove the RX 6800 XT as the G.O.A.T. by these same metrics? I mean, the performance difference between it and the RX 6900 XT is single-digit but the cost difference is HUGE. A 54% increase in price is like going from an RX 7800 XT to an RX 7900 XT in price. If someone offered you the choice between the $500 RX 7800 XT or a card costing $700 that only had the performance level of the RX 7900 GRE, which would you choose? Exactly, I would choose the RX 7800 XT as well. Since the RX 6800 XT easily defeats the RX 6900 XT, it must also be overall superior to the card that is tied with the RX 6900 XT, the GTX 1080 Ti. Therefore, the RX 6800 XT is the G.O.A.T.
@@BobBob-zu2dt Girl math? WTF is "girl math"? You know what, I don't care. Like you said, "with a lot of exceptions" which means that there is no hard and fast rule. You managed to make an argument and destroy it in the same sentence, bravo! He just chose the RX 6900 XT because he happens to own one. The RX 6800 XT is objectively the better card and it wouldn't have tied the GTX 1080 Ti, it would have beaten it.
Combining the performance and value proposition placements at the end was exactly what I was hoping for while watching, you stand alone in having the nuance to identify all different perspectives of what defines a product. I'm still running a 1080 ti, and even though it's finally showing its age, this card blew my mind when I got it. My brother's 1060 6GB also surprised me with how long it held up - in my mind that card is also one of the greatest of all time for more budget-oriented considerations.
@@MrJonas7 Not bad. I actually got my 3080 for the MSRP at Best Buy for the FE. It was $699. I was following one of those GPU stock bots and happened to be free exactly during a restock. The crazy part is I sold my 5700XT in the same week as the drop so I pretty much got a free upgrade to my 3080. The way pricing is going for the latest GPUs, I may have my 3080 a while longer. I upgraded my CPU to a 5700X3D this year and honestly I can still play practically all my games at 1440P high settings with 60-120fps.
Iceberg this was a cool series. I looked forward to enjoying these on my Friday morning commute - thanks a lot! I’m sure this was a ton of work. Idea, how about a midrange / budget GOAT? I really wanna see how the RX580 and 1060 would fare in your testing. Bonus for you - cheap products!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but here's my take: - Best bang for the buck, with an emphasis on saving dollars: 5700xt - Best longevity, becoming "affordable" just because it has lasted for so g****mn long: 1080 Ti - You want 4k AND Ray Tracing without mortgaging your house for a GPU? The 3080/2080 Ti is for you.
Had an XFX 8800GTS (but 320Mb version). It played Crysis! :D Friend got the 8800GTX Ultra and had to cut his Case because of that size lol. He got the Card from his Parents after he said "yes, i am going to stop smoking". He stopped for 2 Weeks. Did the same to get a huge Steel Zweihänder Sword :D He only played WoW with that Card lol.
I'd switch the 5970 with the 5850 or the 5870. The 5970 was too hot, too power hungry, and too expensive to make sense. The 5850 and 5870 were just perfect in every way. Especially the 5850 which was almost as fast as the 5870 but a full $100 cheaper.
1- Geforce 8800GT- Truly unbelievable value. This card offered 85-90% of the performance of the 8800GTX, while costing less than half as much. Good longevity. 2- Geforce GTX 1080 Ti- No explanation required 3- Radeon 9600 XT- This was an incredible bang for buck GPU back in the early 2000s, and it ended up having good longevity as well. I would include a 3dfx card, but they weren't technically GPUs. That term started being used for PC consumer graphics cards when the Geforce 256 came out.
What a great series of videos, with a satisfying finale. Thank you and kudos for your hard work. I've been saying for a while that the 6800 XT is the new 1080 Ti, and with how well the marginally-better-yet-insanely-more-expensive 6900 XT scored, I think I might have been on to something... 👀
The greatest single GPU for me would have to be the ATI 9800 Pro, Sapphire X800 GTO2 or Geforce 8800 GT 512Mb, while modern cards like the 1080 Ti were amazing, these cards were game changers back in the day.
5700XT was definitely my vote for GOAT. Bought it for MSRP at launch. Carried me through the pandemic, then sold it for 150 to upgrade in 2023. What Trooper
It was a good gaming GPU but an even better mining GPU. Best bang for your buck and best efficiency. Sold the last of mine late last year for $130. But it was an XFX Thicc II so it was a fair price. That was the ugliest GPU I ever owned; had a friggin' chrome grille on it that made it look like a '58 Impala. Needlessly chunky shroud too.
I've been running it since launch. With the driver updates this year that brought upscaling to it, it doubled the effective fps for the card in 4k and now it's running all modern games again smoothly.
The difference between voodoo 2 and voodoo 3 wasn't that great. But it did have the thing going for it that it didn't need another card for the 2D capabilities.
I can remember how astonishing the Voodoo 1 was with that VGA loop-cable. From 0% 3D acceleration (I think my S3Virge had some DX3 support, wich crashed windows directly) to WOW. The Voodoo1 will always hold a special place in my heart.
I had the Matrox Millennium II which was considered the best 2D GPU at the time but NFS2SE on Voodoo 1 was on another level compared to NFS2 on Matrox. There can never again be that big of an upgrade....
Poorly supported card that was an expensive waste of money. I waited for the RIVA TNT. You sound like the people who say you gotta get a 4090 because of path tracing, when it is supported by all of 5 titles. The Voodoo still needed a separate 2 card to work. 3dFX has been defunct for over 2 decades and this is because they were too busy patting themselves on the back and greedily wanting to make royalties on their own API, which most devs didn't want to pay royalties for. They were late to the DX party. Meanwhile, the RIVA TNT had a built in 2d accelerator and was very affordable. It put Nvidia on the map. Without it, they likely would have faded into obscurity. If that had happened, maybe 3dFX would have had a chance. I have Voodoo 2, 3 and 5 cards in my collection and I really don't do anything with them because it is too much work for what you get out of it.
@@oddball_the_blue You're thinking about the Vision 968, used on the best ever 2D GPU, the Diamond Stealth 64 VRAM 4MB. I had one. The Virge was a 2d/3d chip. And the only embarrassment was the fact only a handful of games supported Glide. Didn't help you coudl run glide without a Voodoo if you had a premium CPU capable of rendering the game in software mode. You can't really compare a 2d card to a 3 d card and, when the RIVA TNT launched, it spelled the beginning of the end for 3dfx.
@@Lurch-Bot Yeah, TNT was basically the end of 3Dfx although they pumped out some more cards. I had a TNT1 and it was awesome as well. You are right there were only a couple of games when voodoo1 came out, I remember crushing Turok and Starwars ;) but it was great going from basically zero 3D to max and that is why I still remember the Voodoo1. BTW: I am not into the 4090 hype, still running my Rx5700XT to play my bf 4/1/5/2042 although 2042 is completely filled with cheaters. I just upgrade when I need it. My next graphics card will be a good value card when I want to play a game that needs it. I don't believe in Upscalers, Framegeneration and Ray-Tracing in its' current state.
Other than the 1080Ti the ones that come to mind are the GTX 970, GTX 1060 and the HD 7970. I think the goat should take into account both the MSRP and how well it held up over time. In that sense I think it will come down to these 3 Methodology suggestion: Give 1 point for each game each card held up still playable in the 5 most demanding games of each year since the card realease than divide the MSRP by the total of points, the lowest price for each point wins. (Playable being low at 1080p 30 because all these cards were 1080p cards and as soon as you have to downgrade your resolution is in my opinion the last straw to warrant an upgrade.) Feel free to include any other card you like, just stick to 1080p cards and pre-RTX since other resolutions and cards that didn't end it's life cicle are incomparable. That's a video for 5 years from now.
The 970 with its 3.5+.5 vram was part of ngreedia's scum tactic series... And I doubt anyone who got a GTX 970 was entitled to a $50 partial refund due NVIDIA getting busted and it being part of their legal obligations towards customer protection.
The problem is that not enough people support AMD when it does have better value. Reviewers always find a way to undersell AMD during benchmarks even when it clearly has better value. The RX 580 was only praised because it outlasted its lower VRAM competitors when people started to see the importance of having more VRAM.
Nividia must have hit on a winning strategy with paying developers to include their latest gimmick technologies, like Physx. Don't miss out on the latest and greatest gaming features, even if they prove to be impractical and underwhelming.
@@Herrikias definitely. In Black Myth Wukong a RX6500XT 4GB performs the same as a RTX 2050(yes it exists) which is 23% slower. I compared hardware unboxed's benchmark result with my laptop which has the 2050 and this dissapointed me a lot. Battlefield 1 at ultra looks far better than medium settings at BM:W. Yet it runs well and dont have GPU optimization biases Nvidia has more capital, such questionable actions are a given to prevent what could have been a loss of market share
only the greatest generational leap ever seen. Actually Fermi to Kepler was a large leap that matched Curie to Tesla, but Nvidia did not go straight to their flagship GPU. An accurate comparison of Fermi to Kepler would be comparing the GTX 580 to the GTX 780ti.
I really love that Iceberg tech is genuinely entertaining informative and different from the endless skew of bench markers and "tech" youtubers,, awesome stuff really.
I've been watching your stuff for a while now and been keeping up with the GOAT project. I've got to say this is a phenomenal video. I think all your vids are top notch but this is by far your best work yet! You've tackled a very subjective topic in such a precise yet entertaining way. I also I appreciate how many angles and considerations you took, which allows for people who have different criteria for what they consider the GOAT to still come out of the video with a conclusion applicable to them. Awesome stuff!
No 3dfx? No ATI Radeon 9700 Pro? No Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX? Before the original 3dfx Voodoo, there wasn't a 3D accelerator card that could render 3D at high frame rates.
I've absolutely loved the G.O.A.T. series. To see all of these differing GPU's be tested against eachother with solid video footage, and graphs to boot, has just been great. Thanks for all the work you've put into making this series, and your content in general.
To be honest I feel like the RX 6800XT should be on the list, not the 6900XT. The price difference is pretty big (even back in the days) considering how small the performance increase is. I would go as far as to say that the RX 6800XT is probably the single standing GOAT.
Well by that logic the 3080 non-Ti should also have been here as it was pretty much the same story there. Same with the Vega56, You can always pick and choose so i can understand his approach.
@@CarbonPanther Fair, but still putting the 3080 into the pool wouldn‘t change much since the 6800XT is faster if you‘re not taking Ray Tracing performance into consideration. Even 4 years later people constantly build PCs with RX 6800s and 6800XTs because they are a terrific deal even on the new market if you can find one. If that doesn‘t scream GOAT i don‘t know what does.
It can't be the goat when the product was never available at launch (or for the next year) for the masses nor was it sold at MSRP. It's the same problem with the RTX 3080. The 1080 Ti is the real goat for availability, longevity, and performance (It could OC to the moon if you had any of the 3rd party cards). It performed the same as the RTX 2080 and was only really superseded by the RTX 3080 that even Jensen said the Pascal owners can now upgrade during the launch of Ampere. You have to remember the 1080 Ti was 87% faster at 4k and 72% faster at 1440p compared to the 980 ti. Ampere (RTX 3xxx)never had that big of a jump compared to Turing (RTX 2xxx). It only had 30% in 4k and 21% in 1440p. Turing had like a 5-10% jump from Pascal. Nvidia learned their lesson and will never launch a 1080 Ti type ever again because no one bought cards that succeded it.
@@pkpnyt4711 Yeah thats a good point, availabilty really did suck for years after the launch. But to be honest it doesnt change the fact that the product itself was extremely good, almost flawless i would say. Absoluteley. Nvidia and the 1080 Ti is basically like apple with their M1 Mac, nobody upgraded even years after it‘s release because the product was just too good. Both learned a lot from releasing such products I guess.
But in the era of dlss, dldsr and RT, no matter how good it was for regular performance still leaves owners with a bitter taste so i wouldn't consider it in the same category. PS: i think 1080ti is the goat uncontested, and nowadays, 3080Ti and 4070Ti Super have similar flavour. With AMD is that annoying bitter taste of sucking in modern features.
well done conclusion to this series. Much more in depth than i expected. I like how you broke it down. depending on someone's focus you could yield a different result. but the overall is not all that surprising. Glad to see the value prop for the 5700XT getting it stacked as high as it is. It really is a diamond in the rough for budget gamers. also really like how you adjusted the value prop to inflation to level the playing field. would like to see the sweet spots for these, the "most popular" cards for each generation ranked like this some time. although some of us bought 6800XT during the scalpocalypse and paid well more than we should have, cough cough.
8800GT will still always be my GOAT 8800GTS 320 price for almost 8800GTX performance even the 4090 doesn't feel like as big of an upgrade over the 3090 compared to when I got that 8800GT (and then went out later the same day and got a second one for SLi)
excellent video mr frozenwater! I've been a loyal subscriber for about 10 months now and I must compliment you on achieving high quality, informative and entertaining videos consistently over that period whilst managing to give very much your own unique spin on things, which is dead impressive considering the VERY saturated bit of youtube you reside in! Excited what the future will bring! Thanks! p.s. obviously the GOAT is the R9 295x2, but I suppose mere mortals such as yourself cannot comprehend that level of basedness...
Bravo. Excellent work. I bought a 5700XT for my sons 5600x build because I saw your video about it being underrated and he still plays 1440p with slight adjustments at 60FPS. He is very happy with his card to this day.
Great video and a really sane way to look at this. Thanx for all your hard work! Keep it up and please make follow up videos to this list in the future!
I remember that, in one of your videos, you mentioned that the 900 series had the advantage of being compatible (albeit with modded drivers for the most powerful cards) with Windows XP, and being the last Nvidia gen to feature analog-over-DVI out for CRT monitors. I would like to point out that the 2080 TI deserves a shoutout for similar reasons, it is the last/best card for full compatibility with the later discontinued 3D Vision. While fans are working hard to port the DirectX11 titles to newer GPUs via a DX9 wrapper, the only way to have full compatibility for 3D Vision is to use Windows 10, a pre-Ampere card and a driver from early 2020. Not to mention, it stayed at the top of the performance chart for a whopping 728 days, which is impressive. That said, the 1080 TI was incredible value upon release and the 4090, although expensive, had the longest undisputed reign at the top (760+ days and counting since its launch), not to mention the Lovelace cards were the first to feature proprietary frame-generation, which previous gens sadly cannot use to extend their lifespan - I know, Lossless Scaling is a thing. In any case, as a tinkerer, I'm glad I went with the 980 TI and the 2080 TI and skipped the 1000 series altogether because to me, special features come into the equation when decided which GPU is the greatest. The Voodoo 5500 will always be the best Windows 9x/DOS GPU because of GLide, I don't care that the Geforce 6800 Ultra beats it to a pulp. 2025 sounds like a good time to build a new high end PC, with the 9800X3D being a banger and the Blackwell cards incoming. I sure hope the 5090 will stay at the top as long as the 4090 did, at those prices it would be a shame if it didn't... Edit: I should point out that, according to my research, TI variants tend to stay "on top of the heap" for longer than non-TI cards with the 3090 TI being the sole exception that I'm aware of, lasting only 197 days before being dethroned by the 4090. I didn't buy a 4090 because I expected a 4090 TI to resume the previous pattern, but it never happened, therefore my next upgrade will be high-end Blackwell and, in the absence of potential discontinued tech or OS support, I'll try not to worry about what's next anyway.
Feeling very happy with my 5700XT. Been chugging along for almost 5 years now, still does well in everything I throw at it, I'm very stoked that it made it on the podium!
As a lot of people said, the GOAT is the 8800GT (G92) 512MB. Bought an EVGA used in 2010 and used it until 2018 with the same 1080p monitor, changing everything else but these two. Core 2 Duo E7500 Phenom II 965 i5-2500K And then i upgraded to an RX480.
My Vega 64 lasted me from 2017 to 2024. That makes it the value king to me. Its ever-increasing performance through driver optimizations made it last very well in a LOT of games at 1440p even up to now and I only scored a 7900XT Nitro+ this last week for a very nice price to replace it.
in Australia street prices basically made it Vega 64 (they didnt just msrp, but gave us coupons), 290x, then distantly 5700XT because nvidia tax here was always mad
The GOAT, is the one you, yes you reading this, have. Budget matters for people so chances are better it is a mid-range model. Steam Hardware Surveys show this over the years. IMHO creators focus on enthusiast class hardware too much, because we are curious about the stuff we don't have.
I don't know if this is a coincidence or not but my former gpu is galax gtx 1080ti, it's still running every modern games i play on it pretty great, but i feel like retiring my gtx 1080ti so i bought asrock rx 6900xt last year and it was the same feeling as the day i bought my gtx 1080ti, it feels like I'm having a brand new pc!
Picking a model in particular for each of the candidates would've been a nice touch. A lot of work and research of course, but there are often marked differences in cooling and overclocking performance between different vendors. I have a 3090 ti FTW3 Ultra, and the amount of power I can push through it during overclocking even on the stock cooler is just insane. EVGA was special.
My criteria is a little different. I think most fondly on the GPU that "did their job". Like GPU that banged out frames at solid value. I guess to me the great GPUs are always going to be the bang for the buck. This is really important when you ran a gaming LAN. Especially cards with high-overoclock. My list would include cards like the 9600 pro and 8800GT.
Great video, personally weighing in here - the HD7970/r9 280x stayed relevant in 1080p gaming for nearly 10 years and could be had for peanuts. Definitely my favourite :)
We should take into account the generational upgrade too, Pascal was a huge jump from Maxwell. And yes, I can confirm that GTX7 series left a sour taste. It wasn't just the frames falling off the cliff, it was that render quality became appalling. My 770 started making new games look like old games in a way I've never seen in any other card. BTW I think the GOAT is normally the mid-tier card because it's the one the vast majority actually owned, it's the card that all new games have to be made to run on.
For me it's RDNA2 for it's exeptional tech stack allowing Linux+wayland+DXVK+Wine Gaming. Now even workstation moved from win32 to QT5 and QT6 frameworks.
For me 280x or as I bought it before rebrand 7970 GHz edition, card literally was good from 2012 till 2022... and is still alive today can play esports like Valorant at 180 fps, so not e-waste yet...
1080ti was the only GPU to ever actually BLOW me away . When i upgraded from a 660ti to and 1080ti, it was like a whole new world opened up to me. And the GPU was so good, I didn't update until the 4000 series. It had LEGS.
I wouldn't give the GOAT to the 6900XT, it hasn't really existed long enough to warrant it. Whereas the 1080 Ti has witnessed all this new tech and plenty of new generations yet still doesn't stop the card from performing extremely well even after close to a decade.
To me? My old GeForce 2 GTS is the all time winner. That card gave me INSANE performance (for the time) in games for like 3 years - and it really wasn't that expensive to begin with. I think it was like $250 or something like that. Why did I get a new card at that time - well - someone offered me a Geforce 4 TI 4800 for in trade because he is a collector of hardware - and he didn't have my card and wanted it - and had 2 of the GF4. (Yeah I don't know why he didn't just buy a new one since they were still being sold - but I didn't stop to ask since that was a serious no brainer! LOL) Other than that - WELL - I have a curveball for you: The RX 6650 XT / RX 7600 Why? Very simply. Those cards are actually a mindboggling level of performance for the price. You can literally run anything on them - and especially with FSR3 the price/performance is literally insane. No you can't run 4K ultra on them - but for less than $250 - which is about the price of a trip to the grossers these days - you get 1080p high at a decent framerate in basically any game. People are blinded by the higher performance card - however - people don't understand how wild this is! Want a reference you might understand? In 2016 - aka 6-7 years earlier - another card launched - aka my #3 on this list: The GTX 1060. Guess how much that card was. That's right - $249! Now the GTX 1060 was a champ at the time - however people forget - you were newer able to go full throttle in the most demanding games at the time with the 1060. It was LITERALLY in the same "level" as the RX 6650 XT and the RX 7600 are today. I filled the exact same gap - and people are OBLIVIOUS to it! Most people agree that the GTX 1060 is one of the all time greats - and just check the steam stats - it's still on there with some frankly impressive numbers of the "share" - however - The AMD cards - not so much... and it's frankly moronic! Most games don't need anything more than an RX 7600 - however the tech-tubers are making them buy RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4080 cards like crazy - even though it's a LITERAL waste of money for about 90% of all games! You don't get better at Fortnite because is you running 400 FPS rather than 200... It seriously doesn't matter at that point other than "numbers go higher weeeee"
Honestly. Rx 470/480/570/580 are just as goated as the 1060 6GB Especially the 8GB variants. Bought a 570 during the crypto winter of 2020, never been more grateful. 570/580 new price are sane too, unlike the 1060
@@3dcomrade Yeah I would agree with you if we are PURELY speaking hardware - however - sadly - AMD were CRAP at making good, stable and compatible drivers for their cards - which is luckly a non-issue these days. I owned several RX 4XX and 5XX cards - and they were great when they were great!... only issue was they were sometimes not that great - where the GTX 1060 (and yes - OBVIOUSLY I'm talking about the 6GB card here) never had those issue... it just kept on trucking leaving you with a feeling of being content with the card at all time. I wish I could say the same for the RX cards... but the random performance and stability between games and programs was just... well frankly infuriating at times. For this reason I would never compare them to an RX 6650 XT or RX 7600 - because those cards - like the GTX 1060 - just do what they are supposed to do and does it very well! 😀Hope that clears up my stance on it 😀On that note - I DID have one of the golden samples RX 580 cards - and that thing OC'd insanely well - and performed WAY above its weight - so I do have a lot of fond memories of that generation - just - not as much as the GTX 1060... and trust me when you are running a place which charges people to game on the systems - you appreciate the stability which cards like the GTX 1060 brings to the table!
It's the Radeon 9700 Pro, then 8800 GTX and then 1080 Ti. I must say, the 2080 Ti is a real sleeper too. It came out in 2018 and still usable after 6 years.
Not nominating the HD 5850 or 5870 as one of AMDs GOATs is a huge oversight imo (even if they were technically ATI cards, although AMD had started their acquisition by then). The first DirectX 11 capable cards ever, and an absolutely monstrous performance leap from the 4870. Not only that, but it wasn't until March 2011, a full 6 months later (!) that Nvidia managed to get their first DirectX 11 cards out of the door. And even then, the 480 (Nvidia's top of the line at that time) couldn't hold a candle to the 5970, and it was only ~10-15% faster than the 5870, which was $100 cheaper. Not to mention the massive issues Nvidia had with temperatures. Still, my nomination for AMD GOAT goes to the HD 5850. A full $100 cheaper than the 5870, but only ~18% slower, which you could often make up for with overclocking.
GREATEST GPUs of all time: ATI 9700 Pro (arguably also 9800 Pro), 8800 GT 512 MB (maybe 9600 GT 512 MB), (maybe HD 3850-3870), HD 4770, HD 4850, HD 7970, R9 290/290X/390/390X, RX 480/580 8 GB, 1070, 1080 Ti, RX 5700 XT, RX 6800 non XT. Undecided on 6950 XT. Depending if price continues to drop: 7900 GRE or 7900 XT could join the ranks, but need to be cheaper.
Before watching this video, it is unequivocally the 1080 ti. Launching at $900 in today's dollar value (factoring in average inflation from 2017 to 2024), it had 11GB of VRAM (plenty then and still suffices 7-8 years later), and could handle 1080p and 1440p, even today. Hell, NVIDIA had to fight their OWN marketing by noting how it's "finally time to upgrade" when launching the RTX 20 series AND 30 series.
I'm actually content with your conclusion. 6900 XT was of a card when one has no interest in RT. It was just so good for raster in it's price point. I had one and never felt lacking anything. Never had 1080ti but had a 1070, I can say that pascal was a true generational leap. All the pascal cards were worthy successors to their previous gen siblings, so it is no surprise that a pascal card is at the top. Good work.
the GOAT gpu in terms of retro gaming, GTX 980/TI as it can be made to run on windows XP with modded drivers Best value for money and still capable today: RX 5700 XT no contest Biggest generational improvement(imo and without the accompanying price hikes lol): GTX 1080/ti Biggest generational improvement even with proportional price hikes: RTX 3080/TI I'm a huge fan of AMD but if I had to choose a GOAT, I'd pick the GTX 1080/TI(I personally went with a 1080, this was also the only time I went with Intel for CPU) my second choice would be the 5700 XT. FYI, Almost all of my PC's from past to present excluding one have been all AMD. My current rig is also 100% AMD work horse; Ryzen 9 5950x, 6800 XT, 7900 XT, and 128GB DDR4
Great video and a very good series!!! I really enjoyed it as well as the rest of your videos. I have a 6900 XT (replacing my good old GTX 1080) and am super happy that it came in first place (sort of) !! I'm even happier because I bought it for around 370$ in a sale (if you buy an entire PC, which I intended to do anyways). Even better, after selling my previous PC, it means my new R7 7700x + 6900 XT PC only cost me 1040$ before tax!!! What an amazing sale, so lucky I found it.
The 1080ti not only was amazing by itself, but also was relevant in a period when games peaked in a way. That 2017-2020 time period was incredible for gaming. Only thinking of playing AC Origins on a 1080ti + 8700k combo for example on a fresh new 144hz 1440p monitor... makes me insta nostalgic. Those were the times. Not that today you don't have good stuff, but the stars never quite allign as they did back then. It's always someyhing missing from the puzzle.
I just bought an RX 6900xt from Facebook Mkt for $100. The PCB was cracked and I put it on my bench and fixed it. It's been running Furmark for a while now and runs great.
I have a 1080ti in my work computer and a 3060ti at home. They are almost identical in performance. Nvidia really nailed it with the 1080ti. 11GB of vram in 2017!! Hell yeah!
@@nismo2070 I wouldn’t have used the word ‘identical’ but they are of a similar level in performance. The 3060 Ti should be slightly faster in most cases, but not by much.
I feel you, i had a RX Vega 64 Nitro+ until last week that i got for 100€ in 2021, it served me very well and i was very happy with it but holy SHIT was it a space heater
you should do a video of the best for value creator GPU. As GPU’s are not only used for Gaming some folks also want to edit videos with it smoothly or maybe add visual effects or stream casually on the side either for an audience or with the boys on discord
My GOAT was the RX 5700. Bought at MSRP when it first came out and then sold a year later for double the MSRP during the mining craze. Then bought a 5700xt for $150 about a year ago to build a SFF budget 1080p PC. RDNA 1 has been good to me!
As an owner of the 6950Xt, the slightly higher clocked 6900XT, I will happily say that it will probably stay in my system for the next 8-10 years. It slaps.
Cracking series, tyvm:) But what are we suppose to watch now? Arrow Lake and X & Z 870 motherboard reviews: I think not. We need proper entertainment, so please keep them coming Mr. Iceberg. We will grant you two days rest though:)
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So yeah, this could probably have been an email
We appreciate it anyway
Na, this is way more entertaining.
every work meeting ever:
Your awesome!
Tbh this line was used by JerryRigEverything in the latest iPhone 16 pro video.
Surprised to see it here too
The true GOAT are the frames we made along the way
I had a 980 ti, the 1080 ti was miles ahead. The generational improvement that gen was amazing!!!!
What was the die size of the 1080ti? 650mm2 die? Insanity!
It really was.....second best generational jump. what a legend.
@@OldManJam 2nd? What is the 1st?
@@2cars10 Nvidia 2000-3000 series = largest generational jump in GPU performance
Yup I basically did this upgrade. 980Ti to Titan Xp (paid around what 1080Tis were going for)…and I’m still on it due to probably needing an entire new pc to get anything out of a further gpu upgrade (pc is from 2015). Maybe I’ll do a 5080/9700x3d build but I say that every gen lol
before watching, i'm calling Voodoo 3dfx!
me 2, wrote almost the same comment ;)
😂 nice one Jensen huang should appear behind you
I think I'd have to go for the Voodoo 2 instead... More mature and the jump is massive for the couple of years between them. Voodoo was definitely more revolutionary. But Voodoo 2 had all of the compatibility with a lot more stability when it comes to drivers and software.
@@MarkLangdahl the jump from voodoo 1 to voodoo 2 was nothing compared to jump from Matrox MIllenium II to Voodoo 1....
Goated gen.
Bruh thats easy! 1080Ti is the GOAT! Nivida will never make that mistake again
It wasn't a mistake, at the time at least because Nvidia was not as greedy as they are now
@@ahmed-0775 he's just repeating what other TH-camrs said. It's easy for them to call the 1080ti a mistake since they don't have to pay for their cards. Bryan from TYC is about the only tech-tuber that has a grasp on marktes.
The 1080ti made perfect sense back when it launched. Back in early 2017 inflation was low, tech companies had not quite gone on hiring binges, investors were still mostly rooted in metals and bonds, Nvidia was only paying $13k/usd for a 16nm wafer, and GPU Crypto mining was a mere blip on the radar.
How about this...
RX 6800 XT > GTX 1080 Ti
The RX 6800 XT was released FOUR YEARS ago and its performance twin, the RX 7800 XT is still lauded as a high-end card despite being on par or only slightly faster than the RX 6800 XT.
The RX 6900 XT tied the GTX 1080 Ti but the RX 6800 XT beats both of them because the RX 6900 XT is only 8% faster but was 54% more expensive.
The RX 6800 XT would've scored higher than the RX 6900 XT which means that it would've also scored higher than the GTX 1080 Ti.
Iceberg really dropped the ball on this one.
@@ahmed-0775 You're new to this aren't you? There has never been a time when nVidia was NOT stupidly greedy.
Let's go back 16 years to 2008. The GeForce GTX 260 was $450 and the Radeon HD 4870 was $300.
Look up ANY review of the Radeon HD 4870 and you'll see that the performance numbers of the HD 4870 and GTX 260 were IDENTICAL. Meanwhile the GTX 260 was exactly 50% more expensive. That was probably the height of their greed.
I wanted to upgrade to a GTX 260 from my 8500 GT when I started working at Tiger Direct and saw all of this from the other side of the counter. Instead of a GTX 260, I bought an HD 4870 and was so pleased with it that the only GeForce card that I've purchased since was an RTX 2060 Super that I got for $150CAD just to screw around with it a bit. As expected, you still can't tell one from the other when gaming.
The greed and hubris of nVidia turned me off of them sixteen years ago. To be honest, Intel did the same thing and I haven't owned anything of theirs either (except the network circuitry on my ASRock motherboards).
There's a long and terrible history of things that nVidia did to screw over gamers but gamers are generally spineless and are williing to just take the abuse and keep buying cards in green boxes.
@@AvroBellowSilly take.
No room for interpretation. Glad it's sorted out!
No room for interpolation. Glad it’s sorted out!
I cannot fathom the amount of work and data that went into making this video, let alone this entire series. Fantastic work!
Thanks ☺️
NGL installing and uninstalling drivers must've been a headache
@@ItsZim0 Yeah, I became best friends with DDU.
great, now i have to find a 6900xt to put on my wall with the 1080ti.
Actually, neither of those cards is the G.O.A.T. and I'll prove it:
- The RX 6900 XT and GTX 1080 Ti are tied for GOAT
- The RX 6900 XT is 8% faster than the RX 6800 XT (TechPowerUp)
- The RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT have the same GPU (Navi 21)
- The RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT have the same frame buffer (16GB)
- The RX 6900 XT was 54% more expensive than the RX 6800 XT ($999 vs $649)
Doesn't that prove the RX 6800 XT as the G.O.A.T. by these same metrics? I mean, the performance difference between it and the RX 6900 XT is single-digit but the cost difference is HUGE. A 54% increase in price is like going from an RX 7800 XT to an RX 7900 XT in price.
If someone offered you the choice between the $500 RX 7800 XT or a card costing $700 that only had the performance level of the RX 7900 GRE, which would you choose? Exactly, I would choose the RX 7800 XT as well. Since the RX 6800 XT easily defeats the RX 6900 XT, it must also be overall superior to the card that is tied with the RX 6900 XT, the GTX 1080 Ti.
Therefore, the RX 6800 XT is the G.O.A.T.
@@AvroBellow girl math goes hard, but on a serious note the video focused on "flagship" (with alot of exceptions) cards so 🤷♂
@@BobBob-zu2dt Girl math? WTF is "girl math"? You know what, I don't care.
Like you said, "with a lot of exceptions" which means that there is no hard and fast rule. You managed to make an argument and destroy it in the same sentence, bravo!
He just chose the RX 6900 XT because he happens to own one. The RX 6800 XT is objectively the better card and it wouldn't have tied the GTX 1080 Ti, it would have beaten it.
🔥
Man, I'd be happy to put a 6900XT in my gaming PC.
This channel's been an excellent and refreshing deep dive into PC building for me.
Keep it up mate, looking forward to more of your videos.
gtx 1080 ti. held its performance the longest although its starting to show its age right now
Still tough with the help of FSR :)
No longer than 7970, to be fair.
Still about as powerful as 4060 which is still madly impressive for a 2016 technology, even the though it consumes like 4x as much power
starting?
it supposed to die few years ago but it didn’t
There are should be numerous GOATS
1. The fastest one
2. Most energy efficient one
3. Perf/dollar one
4. Etc...
RX 570 gets my vote for performance/dollar GOAT
The 570 is awful even at that.@@SAT-ou2wy
Can't make everyone happy 🤡
I feel like gtx 1660ti is the goat of energy usage to performance.
@@SAT-ou2wy Polaris is the goat !
Combining the performance and value proposition placements at the end was exactly what I was hoping for while watching, you stand alone in having the nuance to identify all different perspectives of what defines a product. I'm still running a 1080 ti, and even though it's finally showing its age, this card blew my mind when I got it. My brother's 1060 6GB also surprised me with how long it held up - in my mind that card is also one of the greatest of all time for more budget-oriented considerations.
Had the 5700XT for a few years, sold it to crypto miner for $1K, and then used the money to buy a 3080. I considered both cards top 10. Great video!
What a weird time that was, sold my Vega 56 for $600 to buy an overpriced 3070 :D
I bought a 3080 too, but it was only a couple of months ago so I scored it for ~$400!
@@MrJonas7 Not bad. I actually got my 3080 for the MSRP at Best Buy for the FE. It was $699. I was following one of those GPU stock bots and happened to be free exactly during a restock. The crazy part is I sold my 5700XT in the same week as the drop so I pretty much got a free upgrade to my 3080. The way pricing is going for the latest GPUs, I may have my 3080 a while longer. I upgraded my CPU to a 5700X3D this year and honestly I can still play practically all my games at 1440P high settings with 60-120fps.
💀
Lol, like you could buy a 3080 for $1k during the mining boom.
Iceberg this was a cool series. I looked forward to enjoying these on my Friday morning commute - thanks a lot! I’m sure this was a ton of work.
Idea, how about a midrange / budget GOAT? I really wanna see how the RX580 and 1060 would fare in your testing.
Bonus for you - cheap products!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but here's my take:
- Best bang for the buck, with an emphasis on saving dollars: 5700xt
- Best longevity, becoming "affordable" just because it has lasted for so g****mn long: 1080 Ti
- You want 4k AND Ray Tracing without mortgaging your house for a GPU? The 3080/2080 Ti is for you.
The goat has spoken on the goat
Another fantastic video once again, Mr. Iceberg! 🎉 Got a good chuckle out of me at the end there
YOU are the GOAT. This amount of work its INSANE.
The math done for these rankings must have been exhausting💀
cheers another great video from iceberg. never fail to amaze
It was because of your GOAT project that I bought the Vega 56 instead of a 1070ti and i’m really happy. Great work this was super interesting.
GOAT GPUs: ATI HD 5970, 8800GTX & GTX 1080 TI.
🐐 The model numbers of my childhood
Had an XFX 8800GTS (but 320Mb version). It played Crysis! :D Friend got the 8800GTX Ultra and had to cut his Case because of that size lol. He got the Card from his Parents after he said "yes, i am going to stop smoking". He stopped for 2 Weeks. Did the same to get a huge Steel Zweihänder Sword :D He only played WoW with that Card lol.
I'd switch the 5970 with the 5850 or the 5870. The 5970 was too hot, too power hungry, and too expensive to make sense. The 5850 and 5870 were just perfect in every way. Especially the 5850 which was almost as fast as the 5870 but a full $100 cheaper.
2600 xt / 4870x2 / 6970 / 7970 / 6600 :D... good enough
this...
1- Geforce 8800GT- Truly unbelievable value. This card offered 85-90% of the performance of the 8800GTX, while costing less than half as much. Good longevity.
2- Geforce GTX 1080 Ti- No explanation required
3- Radeon 9600 XT- This was an incredible bang for buck GPU back in the early 2000s, and it ended up having good longevity as well.
I would include a 3dfx card, but they weren't technically GPUs. That term started being used for PC consumer graphics cards when the Geforce 256 came out.
What a great series of videos, with a satisfying finale. Thank you and kudos for your hard work.
I've been saying for a while that the 6800 XT is the new 1080 Ti, and with how well the marginally-better-yet-insanely-more-expensive 6900 XT scored, I think I might have been on to something... 👀
Even the regular 6800 is a pretty decent card. There's nothing that I could buy to really justify the price to performance as an upgrade.
The greatest single GPU for me would have to be the ATI 9800 Pro, Sapphire X800 GTO2 or Geforce 8800 GT 512Mb, while modern cards like the 1080 Ti were amazing, these cards were game changers back in the day.
Had a 9800 Pro. Eventually replaced it with a 1950 Pro. Those were the days.
Great ending to the GOAT challenge! Really do love this channel! Keep it coming 👍
5700XT was definitely my vote for GOAT. Bought it for MSRP at launch. Carried me through the pandemic, then sold it for 150 to upgrade in 2023. What Trooper
Mine is still chugging along, it is awesome, although I think it's time for an upgrade in the next 6 months.
I’m still rocking the Ryzen 5 3600 with a RX5700XT. It was a hell of a deal at the time.
Yeah idk why he considers it an imposter that card gave us 2070 to 2070super performance for 2060 prices
It was a good gaming GPU but an even better mining GPU. Best bang for your buck and best efficiency. Sold the last of mine late last year for $130. But it was an XFX Thicc II so it was a fair price. That was the ugliest GPU I ever owned; had a friggin' chrome grille on it that made it look like a '58 Impala. Needlessly chunky shroud too.
I've been running it since launch. With the driver updates this year that brought upscaling to it, it doubled the effective fps for the card in 4k and now it's running all modern games again smoothly.
Voodoo 3 3000 from 3DFX, has been my biggest jump in performance. i came from 2MB onboard :)
The difference between voodoo 2 and voodoo 3 wasn't that great. But it did have the thing going for it that it didn't need another card for the 2D capabilities.
I can remember how astonishing the Voodoo 1 was with that VGA loop-cable. From 0% 3D acceleration (I think my S3Virge had some DX3 support, wich crashed windows directly) to WOW. The Voodoo1 will always hold a special place in my heart.
I had the Matrox Millennium II which was considered the best 2D GPU at the time but NFS2SE on Voodoo 1 was on another level compared to NFS2 on Matrox. There can never again be that big of an upgrade....
Ahhh yes... The S3 Virge, probably the best 2D graphics card...just before the Voodoo turned up and absolutely embarrassed it
Poorly supported card that was an expensive waste of money. I waited for the RIVA TNT. You sound like the people who say you gotta get a 4090 because of path tracing, when it is supported by all of 5 titles. The Voodoo still needed a separate 2 card to work. 3dFX has been defunct for over 2 decades and this is because they were too busy patting themselves on the back and greedily wanting to make royalties on their own API, which most devs didn't want to pay royalties for. They were late to the DX party.
Meanwhile, the RIVA TNT had a built in 2d accelerator and was very affordable. It put Nvidia on the map. Without it, they likely would have faded into obscurity. If that had happened, maybe 3dFX would have had a chance. I have Voodoo 2, 3 and 5 cards in my collection and I really don't do anything with them because it is too much work for what you get out of it.
@@oddball_the_blue You're thinking about the Vision 968, used on the best ever 2D GPU, the Diamond Stealth 64 VRAM 4MB. I had one. The Virge was a 2d/3d chip.
And the only embarrassment was the fact only a handful of games supported Glide. Didn't help you coudl run glide without a Voodoo if you had a premium CPU capable of rendering the game in software mode. You can't really compare a 2d card to a 3 d card and, when the RIVA TNT launched, it spelled the beginning of the end for 3dfx.
@@Lurch-Bot Yeah, TNT was basically the end of 3Dfx although they pumped out some more cards. I had a TNT1 and it was awesome as well. You are right there were only a couple of games when voodoo1 came out, I remember crushing Turok and Starwars ;) but it was great going from basically zero 3D to max and that is why I still remember the Voodoo1. BTW: I am not into the 4090 hype, still running my Rx5700XT to play my bf 4/1/5/2042 although 2042 is completely filled with cheaters. I just upgrade when I need it. My next graphics card will be a good value card when I want to play a game that needs it. I don't believe in Upscalers, Framegeneration and Ray-Tracing in its' current state.
Other than the 1080Ti the ones that come to mind are the GTX 970, GTX 1060 and the HD 7970.
I think the goat should take into account both the MSRP and how well it held up over time. In that sense I think it will come down to these 3
Methodology suggestion: Give 1 point for each game each card held up still playable in the 5 most demanding games of each year since the card realease than divide the MSRP by the total of points, the lowest price for each point wins.
(Playable being low at 1080p 30 because all these cards were 1080p cards and as soon as you have to downgrade your resolution is in my opinion the last straw to warrant an upgrade.)
Feel free to include any other card you like, just stick to 1080p cards and pre-RTX since other resolutions and cards that didn't end it's life cicle are incomparable. That's a video for 5 years from now.
The 970 with its 3.5+.5 vram was part of ngreedia's scum tactic series... And I doubt anyone who got a GTX 970 was entitled to a $50 partial refund due NVIDIA getting busted and it being part of their legal obligations towards customer protection.
Amazing video, I never realized you were working towards this all this time! Thank you for your hard work!
3dfx voodoo 2, ati 9700 pro, nvidia 8800 gtx, amd r9 295 x2, gtx 1080ti.
The problem is that not enough people support AMD when it does have better value. Reviewers always find a way to undersell AMD during benchmarks even when it clearly has better value. The RX 580 was only praised because it outlasted its lower VRAM competitors when people started to see the importance of having more VRAM.
They all suck the green D then complain when they get shafted with higher and higher prices
Nividia must have hit on a winning strategy with paying developers to include their latest gimmick technologies, like Physx. Don't miss out on the latest and greatest gaming features, even if they prove to be impractical and underwhelming.
@@Herrikias definitely. In Black Myth Wukong a RX6500XT 4GB performs the same as a RTX 2050(yes it exists) which is 23% slower. I compared hardware unboxed's benchmark result with my laptop which has the 2050 and this dissapointed me a lot.
Battlefield 1 at ultra looks far better than medium settings at BM:W. Yet it runs well and dont have GPU optimization biases
Nvidia has more capital, such questionable actions are a given to prevent what could have been a loss of market share
😢
I guess we are too new on this one but imo the GOAT goes to the Geforce 8800 GTX
only the greatest generational leap ever seen.
Actually Fermi to Kepler was a large leap that matched Curie to Tesla, but Nvidia did not go straight to their flagship GPU. An accurate comparison of Fermi to Kepler would be comparing the GTX 580 to the GTX 780ti.
I really love that Iceberg tech is genuinely entertaining informative and different from the endless skew of bench markers and "tech" youtubers,, awesome stuff really.
I've been watching your stuff for a while now and been keeping up with the GOAT project. I've got to say this is a phenomenal video. I think all your vids are top notch but this is by far your best work yet! You've tackled a very subjective topic in such a precise yet entertaining way. I also I appreciate how many angles and considerations you took, which allows for people who have different criteria for what they consider the GOAT to still come out of the video with a conclusion applicable to them. Awesome stuff!
No Radeon 9700? That is the only legit challenger to the 1080 ti
No 3dfx? No ATI Radeon 9700 Pro? No Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX?
Before the original 3dfx Voodoo, there wasn't a 3D accelerator card that could render 3D at high frame rates.
'Of all time' if time starts is 2013.
Yes, weird. 9700 Pro and 8800 GTX were literally twice as fast as the competitors.
Finally, Friday procrastination @ work! - Thanks Iceberg!
I've absolutely loved the G.O.A.T. series. To see all of these differing GPU's be tested against eachother with solid video footage, and graphs to boot, has just been great. Thanks for all the work you've put into making this series, and your content in general.
To be honest I feel like the RX 6800XT should be on the list, not the 6900XT. The price difference is pretty big (even back in the days) considering how small the performance increase is. I would go as far as to say that the RX 6800XT is probably the single standing GOAT.
Well by that logic the 3080 non-Ti should also have been here as it was pretty much the same story there.
Same with the Vega56, You can always pick and choose so i can understand his approach.
@@CarbonPanther Fair, but still putting the 3080 into the pool wouldn‘t change much since the 6800XT is faster if you‘re not taking Ray Tracing performance into consideration.
Even 4 years later people constantly build PCs with RX 6800s and 6800XTs because they are a terrific deal even on the new market if you can find one. If that doesn‘t scream GOAT i don‘t know what does.
It can't be the goat when the product was never available at launch (or for the next year) for the masses nor was it sold at MSRP. It's the same problem with the RTX 3080. The 1080 Ti is the real goat for availability, longevity, and performance (It could OC to the moon if you had any of the 3rd party cards). It performed the same as the RTX 2080 and was only really superseded by the RTX 3080 that even Jensen said the Pascal owners can now upgrade during the launch of Ampere. You have to remember the 1080 Ti was 87% faster at 4k and 72% faster at 1440p compared to the 980 ti. Ampere (RTX 3xxx)never had that big of a jump compared to Turing (RTX 2xxx). It only had 30% in 4k and 21% in 1440p. Turing had like a 5-10% jump from Pascal. Nvidia learned their lesson and will never launch a 1080 Ti type ever again because no one bought cards that succeded it.
@@pkpnyt4711 Yeah thats a good point, availabilty really did suck for years after the launch. But to be honest it doesnt change the fact that the product itself was extremely good, almost flawless i would say.
Absoluteley. Nvidia and the 1080 Ti is basically like apple with their M1 Mac, nobody upgraded even years after it‘s release because the product was just too good. Both learned a lot from releasing such products I guess.
But in the era of dlss, dldsr and RT, no matter how good it was for regular performance still leaves owners with a bitter taste so i wouldn't consider it in the same category.
PS: i think 1080ti is the goat uncontested, and nowadays, 3080Ti and 4070Ti Super have similar flavour. With AMD is that annoying bitter taste of sucking in modern features.
well done conclusion to this series. Much more in depth than i expected. I like how you broke it down. depending on someone's focus you could yield a different result. but the overall is not all that surprising. Glad to see the value prop for the 5700XT getting it stacked as high as it is. It really is a diamond in the rough for budget gamers. also really like how you adjusted the value prop to inflation to level the playing field. would like to see the sweet spots for these, the "most popular" cards for each generation ranked like this some time. although some of us bought 6800XT during the scalpocalypse and paid well more than we should have, cough cough.
8800GT will still always be my GOAT
8800GTS 320 price for almost 8800GTX performance
even the 4090 doesn't feel like as big of an upgrade over the 3090 compared to when I got that 8800GT (and then went out later the same day and got a second one for SLi)
Insane work man. Love to see it.
not surprising at all. the 5700xt was a poor man's 1080ti.
Holy tits, I randomly check your page and boom there was a video
This correct. When i was buildinf my first gaming pc, i was considering both of them. Great video!
Did enjoy watching your GPU GOAT series and this is a nice conclusion..... Good Job !
Absolutely brilliant. Thank you! :D
excellent video mr frozenwater! I've been a loyal subscriber for about 10 months now and I must compliment you on achieving high quality, informative and entertaining videos consistently over that period whilst managing to give very much your own unique spin on things, which is dead impressive considering the VERY saturated bit of youtube you reside in! Excited what the future will bring! Thanks!
p.s. obviously the GOAT is the R9 295x2, but I suppose mere mortals such as yourself cannot comprehend that level of basedness...
Well I missed the 1080ti boat, but I got the 6900 XT when they were abundantly available new for $600 USD.
So yay, I win
Bravo. Excellent work. I bought a 5700XT for my sons 5600x build because I saw your video about it being underrated and he still plays 1440p with slight adjustments at 60FPS. He is very happy with his card to this day.
Great video and a really sane way to look at this.
Thanx for all your hard work!
Keep it up and please make follow up videos to this list in the future!
The 6800 XT is a sleeper pick haha
I remember that, in one of your videos, you mentioned that the 900 series had the advantage of being compatible (albeit with modded drivers for the most powerful cards) with Windows XP, and being the last Nvidia gen to feature analog-over-DVI out for CRT monitors.
I would like to point out that the 2080 TI deserves a shoutout for similar reasons, it is the last/best card for full compatibility with the later discontinued 3D Vision.
While fans are working hard to port the DirectX11 titles to newer GPUs via a DX9 wrapper, the only way to have full compatibility for 3D Vision is to use Windows 10, a pre-Ampere card and a driver from early 2020. Not to mention, it stayed at the top of the performance chart for a whopping 728 days, which is impressive.
That said, the 1080 TI was incredible value upon release and the 4090, although expensive, had the longest undisputed reign at the top (760+ days and counting since its launch), not to mention the Lovelace cards were the first to feature proprietary frame-generation, which previous gens sadly cannot use to extend their lifespan - I know, Lossless Scaling is a thing.
In any case, as a tinkerer, I'm glad I went with the 980 TI and the 2080 TI and skipped the 1000 series altogether because to me, special features come into the equation when decided which GPU is the greatest. The Voodoo 5500 will always be the best Windows 9x/DOS GPU because of GLide, I don't care that the Geforce 6800 Ultra beats it to a pulp.
2025 sounds like a good time to build a new high end PC, with the 9800X3D being a banger and the Blackwell cards incoming. I sure hope the 5090 will stay at the top as long as the 4090 did, at those prices it would be a shame if it didn't...
Edit: I should point out that, according to my research, TI variants tend to stay "on top of the heap" for longer than non-TI cards with the 3090 TI being the sole exception that I'm aware of, lasting only 197 days before being dethroned by the 4090.
I didn't buy a 4090 because I expected a 4090 TI to resume the previous pattern, but it never happened, therefore my next upgrade will be high-end Blackwell and, in the absence of potential discontinued tech or OS support, I'll try not to worry about what's next anyway.
Great series Iceberg, had fun watching it all.
Feeling very happy with my 5700XT. Been chugging along for almost 5 years now, still does well in everything I throw at it, I'm very stoked that it made it on the podium!
As a lot of people said, the GOAT is the 8800GT (G92) 512MB. Bought an EVGA used in 2010 and used it until 2018 with the same 1080p monitor, changing everything else but these two.
Core 2 Duo E7500
Phenom II 965
i5-2500K
And then i upgraded to an RX480.
The HD 7970 was the GOAT.
true
My Vega 64 lasted me from 2017 to 2024. That makes it the value king to me. Its ever-increasing performance through driver optimizations made it last very well in a LOT of games at 1440p even up to now and I only scored a 7900XT Nitro+ this last week for a very nice price to replace it.
in Australia street prices basically made it Vega 64 (they didnt just msrp, but gave us coupons), 290x, then distantly 5700XT because nvidia tax here was always mad
The GOAT, is the one you, yes you reading this, have. Budget matters for people so chances are better it is a mid-range model. Steam Hardware Surveys show this over the years. IMHO creators focus on enthusiast class hardware too much, because we are curious about the stuff we don't have.
I don't know if this is a coincidence or not but my former gpu is galax gtx 1080ti, it's still running every modern games i play on it pretty great, but i feel like retiring my gtx 1080ti so i bought asrock rx 6900xt last year and it was the same feeling as the day i bought my gtx 1080ti, it feels like I'm having a brand new pc!
Picking a model in particular for each of the candidates would've been a nice touch. A lot of work and research of course, but there are often marked differences in cooling and overclocking performance between different vendors. I have a 3090 ti FTW3 Ultra, and the amount of power I can push through it during overclocking even on the stock cooler is just insane. EVGA was special.
My criteria is a little different. I think most fondly on the GPU that "did their job". Like GPU that banged out frames at solid value. I guess to me the great GPUs are always going to be the bang for the buck. This is really important when you ran a gaming LAN. Especially cards with high-overoclock. My list would include cards like the 9600 pro and 8800GT.
I'm only 18 seconds in, so I haven't seen the answer yet, but it has to be the GTX 1080 Ti
Great video, personally weighing in here - the HD7970/r9 280x stayed relevant in 1080p gaming for nearly 10 years and could be had for peanuts. Definitely my favourite :)
We should take into account the generational upgrade too, Pascal was a huge jump from Maxwell. And yes, I can confirm that GTX7 series left a sour taste. It wasn't just the frames falling off the cliff, it was that render quality became appalling. My 770 started making new games look like old games in a way I've never seen in any other card. BTW I think the GOAT is normally the mid-tier card because it's the one the vast majority actually owned, it's the card that all new games have to be made to run on.
This has slowly become one of my favorite channels. Love your content!
For me it's RDNA2 for it's exeptional tech stack allowing Linux+wayland+DXVK+Wine Gaming.
Now even workstation moved from win32 to QT5 and QT6 frameworks.
I had the EVGA founders edition. Such a beautiful card. I was the envy of all the PC gamer nerds in my home town. AKA no one.
For me 280x or as I bought it before rebrand 7970 GHz edition, card literally was good from 2012 till 2022... and is still alive today can play esports like Valorant at 180 fps, so not e-waste yet...
My personal list :
- Matrox Mistique 220
- ATI Radeon 9700 pro
- AMD Radeon 290 in Crossfire
- AMD Radeon 5870 in Crossfire
- GTX1080ti
I don’t have much else to say than I really like your testing methodology and I look forward to when Blue Team can join these lists
1080ti was the only GPU to ever actually BLOW me away . When i upgraded from a 660ti to and 1080ti, it was like a whole new world opened up to me. And the GPU was so good, I didn't update until the 4000 series. It had LEGS.
Awesome video. In my country, RX 6900 XT and 6950 XTs are no-brainer, as they sell for pretty low price, while 3080 Ti is selling for over 60% more.
I wouldn't give the GOAT to the 6900XT, it hasn't really existed long enough to warrant it. Whereas the 1080 Ti has witnessed all this new tech and plenty of new generations yet still doesn't stop the card from performing extremely well even after close to a decade.
To me? My old GeForce 2 GTS is the all time winner. That card gave me INSANE performance (for the time) in games for like 3 years - and it really wasn't that expensive to begin with. I think it was like $250 or something like that. Why did I get a new card at that time - well - someone offered me a Geforce 4 TI 4800 for in trade because he is a collector of hardware - and he didn't have my card and wanted it - and had 2 of the GF4. (Yeah I don't know why he didn't just buy a new one since they were still being sold - but I didn't stop to ask since that was a serious no brainer! LOL)
Other than that - WELL - I have a curveball for you: The RX 6650 XT / RX 7600
Why?
Very simply. Those cards are actually a mindboggling level of performance for the price. You can literally run anything on them - and especially with FSR3 the price/performance is literally insane. No you can't run 4K ultra on them - but for less than $250 - which is about the price of a trip to the grossers these days - you get 1080p high at a decent framerate in basically any game. People are blinded by the higher performance card - however - people don't understand how wild this is! Want a reference you might understand? In 2016 - aka 6-7 years earlier - another card launched - aka my #3 on this list: The GTX 1060. Guess how much that card was. That's right - $249! Now the GTX 1060 was a champ at the time - however people forget - you were newer able to go full throttle in the most demanding games at the time with the 1060. It was LITERALLY in the same "level" as the RX 6650 XT and the RX 7600 are today. I filled the exact same gap - and people are OBLIVIOUS to it! Most people agree that the GTX 1060 is one of the all time greats - and just check the steam stats - it's still on there with some frankly impressive numbers of the "share" - however - The AMD cards - not so much... and it's frankly moronic! Most games don't need anything more than an RX 7600 - however the tech-tubers are making them buy RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4080 cards like crazy - even though it's a LITERAL waste of money for about 90% of all games! You don't get better at Fortnite because is you running 400 FPS rather than 200... It seriously doesn't matter at that point other than "numbers go higher weeeee"
Honestly. Rx 470/480/570/580 are just as goated as the 1060 6GB
Especially the 8GB variants. Bought a 570 during the crypto winter of 2020, never been more grateful. 570/580 new price are sane too, unlike the 1060
@@3dcomrade Yeah I would agree with you if we are PURELY speaking hardware - however - sadly - AMD were CRAP at making good, stable and compatible drivers for their cards - which is luckly a non-issue these days. I owned several RX 4XX and 5XX cards - and they were great when they were great!... only issue was they were sometimes not that great - where the GTX 1060 (and yes - OBVIOUSLY I'm talking about the 6GB card here) never had those issue... it just kept on trucking leaving you with a feeling of being content with the card at all time. I wish I could say the same for the RX cards... but the random performance and stability between games and programs was just... well frankly infuriating at times. For this reason I would never compare them to an RX 6650 XT or RX 7600 - because those cards - like the GTX 1060 - just do what they are supposed to do and does it very well! 😀Hope that clears up my stance on it 😀On that note - I DID have one of the golden samples RX 580 cards - and that thing OC'd insanely well - and performed WAY above its weight - so I do have a lot of fond memories of that generation - just - not as much as the GTX 1060... and trust me when you are running a place which charges people to game on the systems - you appreciate the stability which cards like the GTX 1060 brings to the table!
When you come back to this once the 50 series and 8000 series gpus come out, do literally every graphics card from 2010 and up
such well crafted content! keep it up man
It's the Radeon 9700 Pro, then 8800 GTX and then 1080 Ti. I must say, the 2080 Ti is a real sleeper too. It came out in 2018 and still usable after 6 years.
Not nominating the HD 5850 or 5870 as one of AMDs GOATs is a huge oversight imo (even if they were technically ATI cards, although AMD had started their acquisition by then). The first DirectX 11 capable cards ever, and an absolutely monstrous performance leap from the 4870. Not only that, but it wasn't until March 2011, a full 6 months later (!) that Nvidia managed to get their first DirectX 11 cards out of the door. And even then, the 480 (Nvidia's top of the line at that time) couldn't hold a candle to the 5970, and it was only ~10-15% faster than the 5870, which was $100 cheaper. Not to mention the massive issues Nvidia had with temperatures.
Still, my nomination for AMD GOAT goes to the HD 5850. A full $100 cheaper than the 5870, but only ~18% slower, which you could often make up for with overclocking.
2010*
not 2011
@spazjackrabbit61 You're right, 2010.
GREATEST GPUs of all time: ATI 9700 Pro (arguably also 9800 Pro), 8800 GT 512 MB (maybe 9600 GT 512 MB), (maybe HD 3850-3870), HD 4770, HD 4850, HD 7970, R9 290/290X/390/390X, RX 480/580 8 GB, 1070, 1080 Ti, RX 5700 XT, RX 6800 non XT. Undecided on 6950 XT.
Depending if price continues to drop: 7900 GRE or 7900 XT could join the ranks, but need to be cheaper.
I made sure not to check the comments before watching - Felt nice to have my prediction validated!
6600 should have been here imo but hey awesome video man
Before watching this video, it is unequivocally the 1080 ti. Launching at $900 in today's dollar value (factoring in average inflation from 2017 to 2024), it had 11GB of VRAM (plenty then and still suffices 7-8 years later), and could handle 1080p and 1440p, even today. Hell, NVIDIA had to fight their OWN marketing by noting how it's "finally time to upgrade" when launching the RTX 20 series AND 30 series.
Iceberg going insane for the intro
I'm actually content with your conclusion. 6900 XT was of a card when one has no interest in RT. It was just so good for raster in it's price point. I had one and never felt lacking anything. Never had 1080ti but had a 1070, I can say that pascal was a true generational leap. All the pascal cards were worthy successors to their previous gen siblings, so it is no surprise that a pascal card is at the top. Good work.
1080ti seems like it would be the one
I also remember the 7970 being amazing
the GOAT gpu in terms of retro gaming, GTX 980/TI as it can be made to run on windows XP with modded drivers
Best value for money and still capable today: RX 5700 XT no contest
Biggest generational improvement(imo and without the accompanying price hikes lol): GTX 1080/ti
Biggest generational improvement even with proportional price hikes: RTX 3080/TI
I'm a huge fan of AMD but if I had to choose a GOAT, I'd pick the GTX 1080/TI(I personally went with a 1080, this was also the only time I went with Intel for CPU)
my second choice would be the 5700 XT.
FYI, Almost all of my PC's from past to present excluding one have been all AMD. My current rig is also 100% AMD work horse; Ryzen 9 5950x, 6800 XT, 7900 XT, and 128GB DDR4
Great video and a very good series!!!
I really enjoyed it as well as the rest of your videos.
I have a 6900 XT (replacing my good old GTX 1080) and am super happy that it came in first place (sort of) !!
I'm even happier because I bought it for around 370$ in a sale (if you buy an entire PC, which I intended to do anyways).
Even better, after selling my previous PC, it means my new R7 7700x + 6900 XT PC only cost me 1040$ before tax!!!
What an amazing sale, so lucky I found it.
The 1080ti not only was amazing by itself, but also was relevant in a period when games peaked in a way. That 2017-2020 time period was incredible for gaming. Only thinking of playing AC Origins on a 1080ti + 8700k combo for example on a fresh new 144hz 1440p monitor... makes me insta nostalgic. Those were the times.
Not that today you don't have good stuff, but the stars never quite allign as they did back then. It's always someyhing missing from the puzzle.
I just bought an RX 6900xt from Facebook Mkt for $100. The PCB was cracked and I put it on my bench and fixed it. It's been running Furmark for a while now and runs great.
as i sit here at 1:20 my first gpu i actually spent money on was a gt 610 then 3 years later a 750ti. are you watching me?
I have a 1080ti in my work computer and a 3060ti at home. They are almost identical in performance. Nvidia really nailed it with the 1080ti. 11GB of vram in 2017!! Hell yeah!
It was Nvidia's largest mistake due to being so good.
they shouldnt be identical performance the 3060 ti should do much better 😭
@@nismo2070 I wouldn’t have used the word ‘identical’ but they are of a similar level in performance. The 3060 Ti should be slightly faster in most cases, but not by much.
I don't think I'll ever sell my GTX 1080Ti, it's also an EVGA, gotta keep these legends alive.
I feel you, i had a RX Vega 64 Nitro+ until last week that i got for 100€ in 2021, it served me very well and i was very happy with it but holy SHIT was it a space heater
you should do a video of the best for value creator GPU. As GPU’s are not only used for Gaming some folks also want to edit videos with it smoothly or maybe add visual effects or stream casually on the side either for an audience or with the boys on discord
My GOAT was the RX 5700. Bought at MSRP when it first came out and then sold a year later for double the MSRP during the mining craze. Then bought a 5700xt for $150 about a year ago to build a SFF budget 1080p PC. RDNA 1 has been good to me!
As an owner of the 6950Xt, the slightly higher clocked 6900XT, I will happily say that it will probably stay in my system for the next 8-10 years. It slaps.
Cracking series, tyvm:) But what are we suppose to watch now? Arrow Lake and X & Z 870 motherboard reviews: I think not. We need proper entertainment, so please keep them coming Mr. Iceberg. We will grant you two days rest though:)