Hi all,
A quick, specific question. Has anyone upgraded from a 3080ti 12gb to a 5080 that is using a Pimax Crystal Light or other high-res headset and what is your opinion of the results? Worth it/not worth it?
I have been on the fence for a while thinking about the rumored 5080 Super or stop waiting and just get the 5080 16gb. 16gb vram is pretty lame for a 5080 level card. 5090 is simply not happening. I can afford it, but just no, lol.
Now the 5080 Super appears to be pushed back (if it even happens) until at least Q3 2026 according to rumors.
My PC is pretty good other than the GPU. 14700k, 48gb ram @ 6800, 1tb WD sn850x OS nvme Gen 4, 4tb TeamGroup Cardea A440 Pro Game drive nvme Gen 4, 1200w Corsair RMx Shift, Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master. Pimax Crystal Light headset.
Thanks for any info!
I tried to upgrade a 3060 to a 4070 when I bought my Crystal Light so I could improve the graphics, but the integral power supply couldn’t cope. So I raided the grandkids’ inheritance (they can have the machine when I pop off!) and on the advice of my local PC builder went for a 12GB VRAM 5070 together with an AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and 64GB of fast RAM. After spending some time tweaking settings, I’m more than happy with the result, although 16GB VRAM would have been nice - but cost etc prevailed.
So I’m waiting now for SU4 to be fully released (don’t do betas) as all the reports seem to indicate that Asobo have worked wonders with the performance. Maybe you should wait and see if it does what you’e looking for without the cost?
Thank you for the reply!
You are probably right in waiting at least until SU4 drops.
I also have not been in the BETA. I follow the thread though, and have also seen people saying how VR performance in much better.
The 5070 is a bit better than my 3080ti.
The 5070 has a much higher base clock and memory clock speed, and also has faster GDDR7 memory. The 5070 is a nice card!
I’m glad you are enjoying your new pc and PCL. 
That is the path I followed. I went from a 3080ti to my current 5080. Running an Intel 14700K CPU with 64GB DDR5 RAM and Pimax Crystal Light. It was well worth the upgrade to me. Right now in SU3, I am very happy with the performance. I am getting very smooth performance. I started my VR settings on the Ultra setting then dropped several items to High. My LODs are set at 150 and 100. Using FFR with everything set to maximum quality in Pimax Play. It’s easy to tell if I try and over estimate my settings. When I do, I get black bars on the outside edges of my headset screens that take a couple of seconds to catch up. With my current settings, I don’t get any of that. I have not tried SU4, but am really looking forward to it. I’m hoping it will let me bump my LODs up a bit. Only reason I haven’t switched to the SU4 beta is because I fly in a group flight every Friday night so I wouldn’t see every one else unless they were on the beta. I’m happy enough with my current performance that I haven’t been tempted to try the beta. The 5080 was a great upgrade.
@LonghornRam: May i ask what performance boost you got in 2D with that upgrade?
Also, when in developer mode showing FPS, were you limited by main thread with the 3080ti or limited by the GPU?
Thank you very much for your reply! That seems like quite the boost in performance!
My hang up has been the 16gb of vram, but it sounds like it is not holding you back.
Are you maxing out the vram? Do you feel like 16gb is holding you back?
I’m seeing FPS of 80-90 with 2x FG over New York City on the NYC Discovery flight in 2D and Anti-aliasing set to TAA. with AA set to DLSS Super and frame multiplier at 4x, I’m getting 140-175 FPS. This is on my 32” 4K monitor.
When I had the 3080ti I was using an Intel 9900K for my CPU which caused me to be mainthread limited. It was a struggle to maintain 20 FPS with my settings on High to Medium. I got my 5080 when I got my 14700K. Even with my 5080 and 14700K, I’m still limited by the mainthread, but am getting more than twice the frame rates (4x-8x more with frame generation). That is with all settings on Ultra with Terrain LOD 150 and Object LOD 150.
16GB hasn’t been an issue. I’m using about 11.5-12 GB with my current settings. If I bump the LODs up, then I’ll use all of my GPU memory and it causes the peripherals of my Pimax Crystal Light to go black on the edges when I turn my head.
Thank you very much for the replies Longhorn!
Very good info and much appreciated. That is what I am trying to avoid, but without 5090 prices. lol. I don’t want to be limited by my vram if at all possible. Especially if I am paying 1000+ for a gpu.
You mentioned you had everything at max in Pimax Play. Are you referring to the resolution? Are you running native resolution at 100 (1), or do you have the resolution dialed down a bit? Currently I am at 75 resolution in Pimax Play with sharpening at 2 and 90hz (no upscaling). In MSFS24 I am using FFR and Dynamic LOD locked at 30.
Are you running your 14700k in Performance Mode? The setting is in the BIOS.
I had the 3080Ti, and I went to the 4080Super to get 16GB of VRAM. As for the compute power of the GPU’s, the 50 series of cards are not going to be a big leap over the 40 series. It’s all about the VRAM.
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In Pimax Play, I have it set to 120 Hz. In the Games category, I have FOV set to Narrow since I didn’t really notice a visual difference in FS2024. I have Image Quality set to High (1:1), GPU Upscaling is set to FSR - Quality, Sharpness is unavailable since I’m using GPU Upscaling. FFR is set to QuadViews - Ultra. Central Priority Rendering is set to Quality and Smart Smoothing is enabled.
My CPU is set to the defaults in the BIOS.
Thanks for all that info!
I am going to try those settings when I get home today.
I think I will just give up waiting for a Super and go with a 5080.
Based on your experience, and the fact that my 3080ti is doing ok, it seems like a 5080 would be a worthwhile upgrade.
Also, if you are not running your 14700k in performance mode, you could be leaving some fps on the table.