GPU Upgrade Advice

Redrock

Redrock

New member
So I have a GTX 780 currently and have been thinking of selling it and getting a 980 (or possibly even the Ti variant if funds allow).

My dilemma is that the Pascal series cards from Nvidia will probably be coming out at the end of next year.
How much do you think the price of a 780 will depreciate in that time?

I'm kinda leaning towards selling the 780 now so I can get the maximum amount of money back, get the 980 and then sell that next year and get a Pascal card. Just not entirely sure it will be worth it.

Thoughts?:)
 
Personally I would hold out a notch if you currently have a GTX 780, there is a very small difference between these two cards. Yes the GTX 980 is the better card.

The GTX 980 has 30% higher clock speed, 20% better PassMark score, 35% higher turbo clock speed, 75% higher pixel rate, 15% higher effective memory clock speed, 35% more memory, 15% better floating-point performance, 16 more render output processors, 25% better PassMark direct compute score and a 35% lower TDP.

You can basically almost keep the 780 for another year and still be ok. Wait for a Pascal series card (whatever they will call it)
 
PsychoFish said:
Personally I would hold out a notch if you currently have a GTX 780, there is a very small difference between these two cards. Yes the GTX 980 is the better card.

The GTX 980 has 30% higher clock speed, 20% better PassMark score, 35% higher turbo clock speed, 75% higher pixel rate, 15% higher effective memory clock speed, 35% more memory, 15% better floating-point performance, 16 more render output processors, 25% better PassMark direct compute score and a 35% lower TDP.

You can basically almost keep the 780 for another year and still be ok. Wait for a Pascal series card (whatever they will call it)
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Yeah that was my initial thought. I'm aware its only about a 20% improvement in actual game performance. I'm just worried I won't get terribly much for the 780 by the time Pascall rolls around, or not be able to sell it at all since the 900 series would have dropped in price by then as well.

My concern isn't performance. I still get 60+ FPS in most games on max settings (With the exception of those with more strenuous GameWorks features), heck I get 70+ FPS in Battlefront on max, except on Endor which sits at 60.

I'm just concerned about future proofing. Specifically since DX12 doesn't run natively on the 700 series. Apparently its software emulated or something along those lines. So I think the performance gap between the series will become larger in the coming year.
 
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Redrock said:
Yeah that was my initial thought. I'm aware its only about a 20% improvement in actual game performance. I'm just worried I won't get terribly much for the 780 by the time Pascall rolls around, or not be able to sell it at all since the 900 series would have dropped in price by then as well.

My concern isn't performance. I still get 60+ FPS in most games on max settings (With the exception of those with more strenuous GameWorks features), heck I get 70+ FPS in Battlefront on max, except on Endor which sits at 60.

I'm just concerned about future proofing. Specifically since DX12 doesn't run natively on the 700 series. Apparently its software emulated or something along those lines. So I think the performance gap between the series will become larger in the coming year.
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Yeah, the GeForce 700 series is DX11 with Direct3D 12 (feature level 11_0) support, the GeForce 900 series is Direct3D 12 (12_1) capable, but ultimately still a DX11 card. Using the new asynchronous compute and shader pipeline is not possible with Maxwell GPUs Nvidia partially implemented this core feature through a driver-based shim, coming at a high performance cost. Nvidia will rely on the driver to implement a software queue and a software distributor to forward asyncronous tasks to the hardware schedulers, capable of distributing the workload to the correct units.

So no, you won't even get a DX12 boost going Maxwell now. Wait for Pascal.

Don't worry too much around 2nd hand costs. What I'm planning to do with my old GTX 750 is to use it as a PhysX card with my GTX 980. So consider that ...

 
PsychoFish said:
Yeah, the GeForce 700 series is DX11 with Direct3D 12 (feature level 11_0) support, the GeForce 900 series is Direct3D 12 (12_1) capable, but ultimately still a DX11 card. Using the new asynchronous compute and shader pipeline is not possible with Maxwell GPUs Nvidia partially implemented this core feature through a driver-based shim, coming at a high performance cost. Nvidia will rely on the driver to implement a software queue and a software distributor to forward asyncronous tasks to the hardware schedulers, capable of distributing the workload to the correct units.

So no, you won't even get a DX12 boost going Maxwell now. Wait for Pascal.

Don't worry too much around 2nd hand costs. What I'm planning to do with my old GTX 750 is to use it as a PhysX card with my GTX 980. So consider that ...
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Alright fair point. 780 as a PhysX card though :P Overkill much? I need to actually dig out my old 550 Ti and see if I can get that running as a PhysX card.
 
Redrock said:
Alright fair point. 780 as a PhysX card though :P Overkill much?
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Naa, you want your PhysX card to be slightly slower than your primary card, but not too slow as this will have a negative effect on FPS. So a 970+ will be perfect with a 780 as PhysX. Even with two 980s in SLI the 780 as PhysX will still be fine.
 
PsychoFish said:
Naa, you want your PhysX card to be slightly slower than your primary card, but not too slow as this will have a negative effect on FPS. So a 970+ will be perfect with a 780 as PhysX. Even with two 980s in SLI the 780 as PhysX will still be fine.
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Still seems a little odd to have your PhysX card using more power than your main (potentially) I'd probably end up selling it though. Would rather lessen the sting of the price of the new card. But I guess that's where budgeting comes in as well ;)
 
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