Which Card?

[phazer11]

Alright everybody I can FINALLY order my card. I'm still on the fence as to which one to get.

Either the EVGA GTX 780 3GB or the EVGA GTX 770 4GB. I'm upgrading my desktop's video card from a GTX 460 768MB so either are HUGE improvements. I have $125 EVGA bucks and $400-500 in other cash. So basically nix $125 off the price of the card on EVGA's site.

Product Listing

 

I'm comfortable overclocking it myself if it isn't already so whatever works best price and performance wise. Ideas?

[Spock]

Well, I think both cards are on the usual price/performance scale. You won't get the same performance per dollar if you go for a high end card, but it doesn't seem unreasonalbe (if not considering AMD cards). On those occasions my consciousness tells me to buy the cheaper card and use the money for an earlier upgrade.

But in my GPU purchase I want the performance for Skyrim now so I personally go for the more expensive card, the 290 in my case.

Hope that helped :)

[phazer11]

Yeah as I said I have money at EVGA so I'll be able to buy a higher end card without hurting the pocket book so much. Anyone else?

Oh I almost forgot to mention that I'll probably be switching to Linux as soon as Steam gets things done with the Nvidia drivers (since they won't be using AMD cards for quite some time from all the things I've read). Not to mention ENB.

[Spock]

I'm sorry, I don't really understand what you want to hear. Both the 770 and 780 are quality graphics cards and EVGA is known for their very good aftermarked coolers. The only question really is how much you want to spend. Maybe this chart will help you:

https://techreport.com/review/25611/nvidia-geforce-gtx-780-ti-graphics-card-reviewed/12

(this is actually from the ti review, but it displays all the recent cards on their price/performance scale)

 

Also be aware that not all 780 have the same performance:

https://techreport.com/review/24832/nvidia-geforce-gtx-780-graphics-card-reviewed

[killd1]

I'd go with the 780. It's the same architecture as the Titan and so is just a better card in general. The 770 is basically a retooled 680 - even overclocked it won't quite reach the same performance as the 780. The question then is whether or not the extra 1GB of VRAM makes a difference in your gaming. If your res is 1080 or less then I'd say no. But if you're playing at 1600 res, or multi monitor, then you may want to forfeit the raw power of the 780 for the increased texture capacity you get with the 4GBs.

[phazer11]

Thanks for some of the input guys. After talking it over with some people on overclock.net in the forums and privately I've decided on the EVGA GTX 780 Classified (which will be thoroughly put through the overclocking ringer) with that new cooler that EVGA replaced Nvidia's reference design with. All in all I should have it by Wednesday and it'll be about $430 after all is said in done with 2 day air. Now all I have to do is bring the vacuum upstairs and use my electronics kit and attachments to do a complete and thorough cleaning (unlike the cursory passes I do every so often of the bottom tray, the fans and the dust filters) and wipe down the plastic and reconfiguring the storage bays.

 

I'll also be installing Windows 8 Professional 64-bit on and installing the second 240GB SSD I bought in April and redoing the cabling, case air flow and fan layout. I might see about taking th ecpu cooler off and reseating it with some new thermal paste to see if I can get it stable at the same voltage and clocks again. Had a few storms and surges lately that seem to have made it get a bit wonky. It's possibly just because I've had it OC'd for a bit since I'm fairly certain between the surge arrester in the circuit breaker. The industrial ups with power conditioner and the three 3k joule surge protectors I have all my equipment plug into it should be fine but... Here's hoping it's fine. If not it's still under warranty I think (3 year if I'm not mistaken) so I should be able to RMA it for another month or two (unless they count it from when they shipped this one to me, in which case I have until September).

[z929669]

Question: Why on Earth would you want to throw that kind of money into a GFX card? It will be worthless in two years ... If you have loads of cash to burn and are set for life, I get it. But if you are a normal person, never buy top of the line. Shoot for high-mid end and pay no more than $400 for a video card. That will buy you plenty of power for any game.

 

I got my Radeon 7970 recently for $280, and my frame rates and GFX are fantastic and will be for any game over the next two years ....

[TechAngel85]

I'm in the same state of mind. I never buy top-of-the-line products as they're usually just overpriced in my opinion. My personal build that is happening soon will most likely have the GTX 660 for around $200 or the GTX 760 for around $250...depending on the cash I have to spend. I'd never pay more than that for a video card.

[deathneko11]

I bought the gtx 760 SC 4GB edition card and I'm doing great. I have the hell modded out of my skyrim game and with enb and all of my texture mods I maintain average above 30 fps, and the only other game i've played that can really tax my card is Metro Last Light. Anything else I can just about destroy at 45fps to a solid 60fps.

[phazer11]

I bought it. I'm not just using it for gaming but also video processing. It's mostly for gaming but it will be used for processing (anything I can do to make it faster). I haven't had a video card upgrade in at least 3 years. As my desktop only had a GTX 460 768MB it was in dire need of an update. I haven't bought anything but two Humble Bundles, and two SSD's in April. I bought nothing last year or the year before but the bare necessities.

 

I haven't had the top of the line anything before so I decided to splurge for once, since CPU processing for videos and such seem to have hit a bottleneck, at least on my (consumer grade) end and since I needed a new card for gaming I decided to get the biggest beast I could for the video processing as well.

 

I have some pictures if anyone wants to see them.

[Spock]

Man you need to work on your cable management :p

 

Congratulations to your new graphics card!

[phazer11]

The cables are in better shape than they look since I have velcro ties around the wires the photos didn't turn out too well when everything was inside the case. The pictures were also very grainy for some reason. Thanks.