Funny enough, I have the 1080 and I tested qwen 3.5 9b on it today. I was positively surprised with the experience. It's no Opus but it did OK on the couple of queries and tasks I gave it. It's pretty impressive for a 10 year old gpu!
My old 1080 Ti now sits inside a 4U rackmount server. It's an EVGA SC2 HYBRID version and I am still amazed that the AIO cooler hasn't failed yet or leaked everywhere. One of the best things I've purchased in retrospect since it was my main GPU up until the middle of 2025, even though at the time in 2017 I felt the price of 1.5k NZD was extreme.
It's amazing how great the 10 series was. The 1060, a budget card, had the same amount of VRAM as the previous generations top tier card (6GB) with the 1080Ti having 11GB! the 5060 for example has only 8GB, the same as the GTX 1070 and 1080.
The RAM crunch has been a quiet victory for those older cards. I have a 10 year old video card in my rig that had at the time a decent but not chart topping 8GB of RAM. Developers are still targeting 8GB because so many of the cards released today still have that. Since I'm still using 1080p the performance is usually acceptable too. Surprisingly the biggest problem is becoming the CPU, with the i5-3570k lacking a few of the later SSE instructions and being completely unable to run some titles.
I'm still using a 1080ti in my main PC, though I don't play as many games as I used to. Control is the last title I picked up where I really felt like I was pushing the graphics capability of my rig.
I remember when I built my PC I was surprised when I'd come across a post of someone running ancient (at the time) chips like the i7-870, and now I'm realizing I am one of those people.
My 2700X and 1080ti do plenty of what I need these days. I meant to upgrade both a couple years ago but between job changes and then tariffs and whatnot it just never quite made sense to commit to the jump. I have a hard time imagining what an ideal upgrade would even be now with how expensive everything's gotten. I'm mostly hoping my machine continues to hold up for another couple years.
Mine is still going strong, it can run Gemma 4 26b. It can still play all the games I care about at near max settings at 1440p at 60 FPS (like Elden Ring).#
My PC did coincidentally die today (not GPU related) so I think it's time for an upgrade, what do you recommend?
I just threw together my old 1060 in a steamOS - adjacent box running cachyOS. It’s great for couch co-op platformers. The GPUs were overkill for most games then and can still run new indie 2d games now.
I had a 1080 in my previous build, it was an OC model that went from 180 up to 250W and could perform about halfway between a stock 1080 and a 1080ti. That was a nice card but by late Covid it was really showing its age.
Funny enough, I have the 1080 and I tested qwen 3.5 9b on it today. I was positively surprised with the experience. It's no Opus but it did OK on the couple of queries and tasks I gave it. It's pretty impressive for a 10 year old gpu!
My old 1080 Ti now sits inside a 4U rackmount server. It's an EVGA SC2 HYBRID version and I am still amazed that the AIO cooler hasn't failed yet or leaked everywhere. One of the best things I've purchased in retrospect since it was my main GPU up until the middle of 2025, even though at the time in 2017 I felt the price of 1.5k NZD was extreme.
It's amazing how great the 10 series was. The 1060, a budget card, had the same amount of VRAM as the previous generations top tier card (6GB) with the 1080Ti having 11GB! the 5060 for example has only 8GB, the same as the GTX 1070 and 1080.
The RAM crunch has been a quiet victory for those older cards. I have a 10 year old video card in my rig that had at the time a decent but not chart topping 8GB of RAM. Developers are still targeting 8GB because so many of the cards released today still have that. Since I'm still using 1080p the performance is usually acceptable too. Surprisingly the biggest problem is becoming the CPU, with the i5-3570k lacking a few of the later SSE instructions and being completely unable to run some titles.
My 1080ti is my local inference machine now. With the release of the Bonsai 27B models I can run a genuine dense model with usable context. GOAT card.
What exact runtime are you running Bonsai 27B with right now and what variants of the weights are you using?
I'm still using a 1080ti in my main PC, though I don't play as many games as I used to. Control is the last title I picked up where I really felt like I was pushing the graphics capability of my rig.
I remember when I built my PC I was surprised when I'd come across a post of someone running ancient (at the time) chips like the i7-870, and now I'm realizing I am one of those people.
My 2700X and 1080ti do plenty of what I need these days. I meant to upgrade both a couple years ago but between job changes and then tariffs and whatnot it just never quite made sense to commit to the jump. I have a hard time imagining what an ideal upgrade would even be now with how expensive everything's gotten. I'm mostly hoping my machine continues to hold up for another couple years.
Mine is still going strong, it can run Gemma 4 26b. It can still play all the games I care about at near max settings at 1440p at 60 FPS (like Elden Ring).#
My PC did coincidentally die today (not GPU related) so I think it's time for an upgrade, what do you recommend?
> so I think it's time for an upgrade, what do you recommend?
Without knowing what you'll use it for, probably a 9970x + RTX Pro 6000 would do the trick, YMMV.
I just threw together my old 1060 in a steamOS - adjacent box running cachyOS. It’s great for couch co-op platformers. The GPUs were overkill for most games then and can still run new indie 2d games now.
They still have great value in the used market. Swapped mine for a 3090, also used, for ~20% rebate.
What's legendary about the 1080? It's a smaller 980ti on a much smaller node.
Crazy for me to still own two
I own four in my office. Daily driven, mostly with photo editing tasks but some Blender, too. Work well for us.
I had a 1080 in my previous build, it was an OC model that went from 180 up to 250W and could perform about halfway between a stock 1080 and a 1080ti. That was a nice card but by late Covid it was really showing its age.