My understanding is that the GeForce GTX 1070 (8g Black Edition) is still more than adequate for gaming, but for future proofing, what would be a step up without a huge price jump?
Ray tracing and ray pathing are coming. None of the cards on the market are remotely capable of being called âfuture proofâ. Turning isnât powerful enough for a reasonable ray tracing experience.
If Intelâs supposed multi-GPU API works like itâs rumored, not even a 2080 TI has a prayer against a high scaling GPU cluster.
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âŚwell, yes, but I need to replace my Windows 7 machine by the end of the year.
The literal next step up from a 1070 is the 1070Ti. But I get the feeling thatâs not quite what you had in mind.
In terms of a card with a higher feature set (in this case, hardware DXR compatibility), with roughly the same or slightly higher performance outside of those features, is going to be something in the 2060 line-up. Probably the RTX 2060 SUPER at this point, though the non-SUPER should still be around the same speed as a 1070.
But, as Aribeth mentioned, future proofing is a bit of a pipe dream. Turing was really only a âproof of conceptâ card - Ampere, RDNA2, and Xe, all of which are expected some time in 1H 2020, are rumoured to have significantly better ray tracing support (and lower prices compared to Turing, largely due to competition).
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With prices up here that step up would be a RX 5700 XT or spend more and get a 2070 and get ray tracing.
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Thanks Asterchades and Canadiana.
After reading you and Aribeth one thought that comes to mind is Warcraft is really the only game I spend time playing (very limiting, I know, but iâm not that serious a gamer anymore). Since Warcraft doesnât use RTX and is not certain to in Shadowlands focusing on price may be the best option at this point. Some last minute research points to the GTX 1660 Super, maybe after Black Friday (for a lower price) and buying into RTX later next year if it becomes used in Warcraft and even then Iâm not sure Iâm all that excited about the RTX visuals; does that sound reasonable?
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At that point it hardly seems worth it. You might gain a tiny bit of performance here or there, but it probably wonât be enough to make the whole endeavour worthwhile without gaining anything in the way of features.
If it were me in that situation⌠Iâd just wait until the next generation. No sense in buying just for the sake of buying unless youâve got some sort of Brewsterâs Millions situation going on.
PS According to some of the feedback from BlizzCon, the WoW devs are looking at what they can do with RTX/DXR. But thereâs no time frame on when that will become even an option for testing, much less a release feature.
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If the only game you play is wow, thereâs a very LOW LOW chance of it ever supporting ray tracing. I would fall off my chair if they ever decided to support it, Blizz has always been about their stuff running on toasters.
If that is the case then you are OK to stick with the 1070 as it is still overkill for wow and looking at recommended settings for the next expansion, you are still fine.
Which is why they never bothered with a 64-bit client, DirectX 11, or DirectX 12. Only they did. And for a long, long while most of those were voluntary. Even toasters eventually die or get upgraded.
https://www.mmo-champion.com/content/8832-BlizzCon-2019-Developer-Interview
- The engine team is working on taking advantage of RTX.
- The team strongly believes that the more machines that can run WoW, the better. At the same time they want to embrace modern technologies such as ray tracing, multi threading, and DX12.
Sure if it effects their wallets who wouldnât want this ? 
I believe that is why theyâve been so successful. Now they just need to work on their skills to make better content than COUGH BFA, hereâs to hoping Shadowlands keeps me engaged like Legion did.
To go with what Asterchades is saying⌠if youâre not going to get at least a 30% performance uplift, i wouldnât consider it a worthwhile upgrade.
To get that right now, from a 1070, youâd have to head to 2070 SUPER or 2080 SUPER.
And even thenâŚ
I agree. Its still a great card. Wait till the 3000 series or to see what AMD brings with the high-end Navi cards (5800 or whatever they call them) early next year.
Thanks, Asterchades. What I really have going on is a much loved/well used Windows 7 machine at least 5 years old with a GTX 660 card; the whole thing needs replacing. 
Well then, that does change things up. I donât know about anyone else, but I was under the impression that perhaps you already had the 1070.
That being the case, yeah - something in the RTX 2060 line-up would probably be about where youâre aiming. Performance starts around the same as the 1070 and goes up depending on which variant you get, but youâll add on the RTX/DXR support and AI cores. Bang-for-buck would probably lean towards the SUPER.
Given the rumours Iâd probably still try to hold off if you can. As I mentioned they suggest the entire wave of next-gen graphics cards will offer significantly better DXR performance and a much lower (comparatively) price, but they are just rumours at this point so itâs impossible to be certain. Ultimately you just have to pick a time, a price, and a rough performance level, and then commit - something better is always in the pipeline, after all.
https://i.redd.it/dewtig6gfcz31.jpg
16 chiplets and HBM. If Intel pulls this off get ready for some pain on AMD and Nvidia graphics in datacenters. I canât wait to see what their desktop looks like.
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