Is it worth upgrading from a 4070 Super to a 5080?

I finally pulled the trigger on buying a gaming PC with a 4070 Super and 7800x3d for $1.7k at Best Buy. I had been looking around for a used PC with a 7800x3d at a good price, thinking I could just swap out the GPU with a 5080 or a used 4080/90 after the 50 series drops. Looking around, everyone is selling used hardware for the same price, or even more, than new hardware. So, I ended up finding a good price on a new PC that had a good GPU already in it. I’ve never played PCVR, but I’ve heard that you can’t get enough GPU. I’m considering if it would still be worth me trying to snag a 5080 on launch day. From what I’ve seen shopping around for used GPUs recently, it’s cheaper to buy them new than it is to buy them used, so I don’t want to miss out on getting a new one at MSRP. I could turn around and sell the 4070 Super for a few hundred bucks, so I’d be maybe around $650 net for the upgrade from 4070 Super to 5080. Unfortunately, my new PC will not be ready until January 28th, so I won’t have time to see what it can do before the 50 series drops on January 30th. I’m also not familiar with how much 5080 stock will stabilize and be readily available, or if tariffs will increase their price. I’ve only ever played standalone games on my Quest 3, so I’ll be blown away I’m sure, even with the 4070 Super. I’ll probably play through all the PCVR games that are at least semi-optimized for VR like HL:A, Skyrim, RE7, etc. first, but I’d also like to be able to play UEVR and the Luke Ross mods like Cyberpunk, hopefully on high settings. I won’t be playing MSFS2024 or sim racing games. I know that ‘worth’ is relative, so perhaps I’m just asking if I should expect to notice a material difference between the 4070 Super and 5080 for VR gaming performance. So, TL;DR, do you feel there will be a material, noticeable difference between the 4070 Super and the 5080 for VR gaming performance that would make it worth the upgrade? Any feedback on how well the 4070 Super performs with VR gaming would be great.

For what it’s worth, I have a 4070 Super with a Quest 3 and I’ve had no issues running HL:A, Into the Radius, Subnautica, Skyrim, etc. on most settings. I believe when I tried out the max settings for HL:A, I did get a warning that I was pushing things. I have an i5 13400F processor.

Anytime you think about upgrading your gaming PC, you should always ask this question: can it play the games I want to play at the performance level that I want? What that means is getting the FPS you want even if that means potentially turning down resolution or graphics settings and tweaking other things to get it out of the games you play. Most PC gamers upgrade their PCs because there is a game they want to play but they can’t play it because their PC can’t handle it. Upgrading every generation is almost never worth it. That 4070 should last you at least until the 6070 comes out. Maybe the 7070 or 8070. It depends on what you want in terms of performance. Most newer VR games only require a 2070 anyway.

The 5080 is an unknown for now. Benchmarks are set to release next Friday, I thought. But if we go by the incremental upgrade path, the 5080 should be a decent-ish upgrade from the 4070 Super. By how much? No clue right now. Is it worth it? That’s up to you. Probably around 15-25% faster in terms of rasterization compared to your 4070 Super. And that’s purely a guess.

If I were you, I would wait for the 50xx Super in one year with more VRAM or even two years for the 60xx series.

I think you’ll be very happy with a 4070 Super for now. Especially as a first-time PCVR player, when I got into it, I had an Oculus Rift, which was blurry compared to the Quest 3. The Quest 3 is very well equipped to play PCVR. Any of the 40 series cards will get you going, and the 12GB 4070 Super should be good enough to enjoy just about everything. Though not on Cyberpunk, but even on low in VR, it is pretty great on my 4070 Ti Super. There are a few games that you could push past the 12GB limit, but you’ll be able to play just about everything with it at what I’d say is still good visuals and realistic performance expectations.

It might be worth looking into getting a dedicated router for PCVR. Getting one that will allow you to maximize the streaming quality to utilize wirelessly is a must.

From experience, most of the intro prices on new GPUs are inflated. Last night, the prices for MSI’s 5080 and 5090 models were leaked. The stock will very likely be pretty limited and will inflate for as long as there’s more demand than supply. I have memories of a few years where there wasn’t this pattern, but it’s close enough to being rare that I expect it. I just about always wait a year or so, just in case some weird issue with the cards is discovered and to let the market prices come back to reality.

I have this exact PC since Black Friday. It’s so good, you’re gonna love it. I’m playing HL:A on high settings and it’s performing amazing, but I haven’t done anything else that’s really tested it yet, sorry.

It’s the best deal I found new or used. I’m excited to try it out. Are you able to max out the settings on HL:A?

HL:A is the worst game to use as a benchmark. It’s the most optimized game that exists for VR and even some low-end PCs can run it pretty well. Simpler games should run decently well on 4070 Super. More demanding ones might pose some challenges. Very demanding ones are already straining 4080/4090.