GTX 780 or GTX 770 SLI?

Did you noticed the word "theoretically"?
That means in theory.

And yeah, GTX 770 is 15% slower than GTX 780, so in theory 2 x GTX 770 = 170%. Take GTX 780 as 100%.

That is about 1:1.7 ratio.

While practically it won't get you that much of performance if you are not into benchmarks but I can say that SLI configuration would easily beat 780 by at least half.

And I didn't recommended it for no reason. OP gave two choices, and I was supposed to select the better one which I did.
Kindly don't be rude to people. On very high resolutions (2560 x 1440) your card would struggle to get you even playable frame rates on maxed out settings.

Nvidia SLI scales really well. OP wants to play at 1440p maxed. Its probably overkill to sli it. Some quick googling showed a 7950 at 1440p getting an average of 54 fps and min of 40. 1 770 should be fine.

If you're actually going to play at that resolution you'll want to wait until the GTX 770 4GB version cards are released so you have enough VRAM. But yes, GTX 770 SLI will be faster than a single GTX 780.

Yeah I know it won't double FPS but could sure result in some solid FPS gains as compared to GTX 780.
If his other parts wont prove to be bottleneck, he can get around 40% - 50% more performance, not 70% increase, but still much more than a single GPU.

Actually when playing a game at those settings and resolutions it can make a bit of difference in FPS. As said, GTX 780 is just a overclocked GTX 680 (With minor tweaks) and GTX 680 gets about 30 FPS on Crysis 3 on ultra at full HD. So playing the same on a 1440p display would get it somewhere in between of 20 - 25.

At that time, GTX 770 SLI can make a difference. At the moment I would recommend two configurations -

1) GTX 770 Single 4 GB.
2) GTX 770 SLI 8 GB

Buying GTX 780 over 770 is a big mistake because it is just a bit more powerful but is much pricier.

770 sli is the way to go for the price. I recommend the 4 gigabyte cards. If u sli two 770s you only have 4 gigs of ram not 8 like the other guy said. Also the 780 is a great card yet 3 gigs of ram is the bare minimum amount of RAM. As games are improving games are requiring more RAM to max out the graphics. The GPUs are so powerful that it will eventually be bottleneck by the RAM. This is what happened to me with my 560 ti sli on BF3. Nvidia was like the 560 ti will give ultimate graphic settings on battlefield 3. Yet they fell short because of RAM. Bottom line get the 770s for the RAM amount.

Im playing on a 27" just like this one.

Heres my rig: http://www.3dmark.com/cg/141561

One 670 and before 570 couldnt do it at native resolution with maxed out details.

Even now when i play starcraft 2 maxed out WITH ONE 670 ONLY frame rates drop below 20 sometimes

For this resolution you want to have two cards, its my subjective opinion

770 sli will be far better than 780, dont know what that other guys on about man.. sli scaling is tremendous with cards of late.. especially nvidia ones..

with those kinds of resolutions it would be a good choice,.. however

like a previous post said, wait for the 4GB version, as if you SLI the 2Gb version the amount of usable memory will be 2GB,
if you sli you dont add the memory together and thats how much it uses,, it doesnt work like that im affraid.

but again, bigger psu will be needed for more power, more heat, micro stuttering etc.

a single solution is always best when it can be achieved, but i think it your circumstances, sli would be good, or sli 780s ;p

A GTX 780 is more than a slightly powerful 680 that's what a 770 is dude. A 780 uses the same gpu as a Titan and gets almost all the performance of a titan for 350 dollars less. If overclocked a 780 is more powerful then a titan please do more research. A 780 is much more than 15% more powerful than a 770

I never say stuff without researching. If that is Titan, then why is it for $350 less? It shouldn't be.
If that is so cheaper, it also has some performance disadvantages as compared to Titan which make it around 15 - 20% faster than GTX 770. And this is proved by benchmarks in various games on same hardware.
Some are published on Tom's Hardware as well.

It has the exact same gpu as a Titan and in most cases only has a 9% disadvantage to the titan. When overclocked it exceeds the Titan. They cut down mostly in compute units to keep gaming performance high while price lower than the Titan. What benchmarks have you seen because the ons I've seen say differently.

While I am not able to find the exact website from where I viewed, this is also from toms hardware -

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GTX-770-Leak-Benchmark,22810.html

As you can see in most games (except SC II) the maximum difference is 25% while average difference is 15 - 20%.
It has got Titans core but do you think the performance is good enough? No it isn't!

Now SLI two GTX 770s, and there will be 25% increase in performance? It would almost double up nicely outclassing GTX 780 big time.

Then just overclock the 780 and you'll see it outclass every other single card. All it takes is an overclock to make the 780 look better as it has a large headroom for overclocking unlike the 770 and it allows you to have time to upgrade your monitor set up due to the higher memory bus. http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/msi_gtx_770/images/19crysis.htm

In no way an overclocked GTX 780 can outclass two GTX 770s. Are you kidding? Think about it first mate.
By the way here we are talking about normal GTX 780. That is the debate, from where did overclocking came from?

Why are you dodging the real subject mate?

I am not against GTX 780 by any means but just don't like the fact that its price / performance ratio is fairly bad. If two cheaper cards are combined they can produce much better performance than it.

GTX 770 is one of the hit cards out there for some reason. It is the best value for money besides HD 7900 series.

I'm never said an overclocked 780 will beat two 770s. I'm not dodging the real subject. Why wouldn't you overclock that card if you had it I mean GPU Boost 2.0 is there for a reason. It has great performance when you get into higher resolutions like 1440p like OP has that's where it destroys the 770. Now if he was buying for 1080p a 770 would make more sense but not at 1440 p

FPS also matters mate.

No matter how much you overclock a GTX 780, it will never give same FPS as two GTX 770s would. No argument with that.

Also, as you know, if CPU is not bottleneck, FPS just exactly doubles up with two cards of same type and clocks. So keeping that in mind, that makes sense. You would always want to get the smoothest game possible at full HD, also if in case in future he would like to buy a 1440p display (which he would eventually as technology progresses and considering his budget for this build)) he would not have to worry about the fact that whether his card would be able to take the load or not.

Two GTX 770s are damn a lot, there is no comparison between the two configurations. Its a better idea to go for SLI than overclocking.

Besides you can overclock both GTX 770s too to some extent to gain more performance. They don't have locked clocks.

lol, i get the reference, im planning on getting sli 770's or 780's not just for performance now, but to futureproof my pc

Iam too lazy to read all the comments, so not sure if this is relevant, one gtx 770 wont run crysis 3 (dont worry about bf3) 60 fps on ur resolution, neither will one gtx 780. get 2 770 if you really want to run both games on max settings with ur screen.(crysis 3 might not be super smooth with 2 770 and ur reso on max settings)

Sorry I have to point out the typo. The GTX 770 is the overclocked & tweaked 680. The GTX 780 is a different GPU (mini-Titan).

Oh yeah! Sorry for that. I use top row for numbers so that resulted in 780. That was GTX 770 (GK104).

Thank you for pointing out the mistake there. ^^

FYI i have hands on experience with this and actually returned both my gtx 770 sli because sli scaling is horrible still and you cant oc as well in sli bc of heat not to mention the noise. Crysis 3 will not run smooth either I'm not sure if its bc of the VRAM limit 2gb cards that is but I was getting a lot of skipping and gameplay was not smooth unless the GPS was 60, I did a test and only ran one gtx 770 for crysis 3 and even though it showed 30 fps on the same level very high and medium settings mixed at 1440p the gameplay was more smooth then the sli 770s showing 45fps. My conclusion is one gtx 780 will be fine for crysis 3 as the gtx 780 will scale better with higher resolution since alit of 1080p games are cpu bound at that resolution.

Hey Guys was just browsing around the web and stumbled across this thread and FINALLY made a Toms hardware account just so I could toss my two cents into this thread. Running 2 Sli 770's will get you more power then a single 780, which has already been pointed out which is great and all but everyone seems to be comparing Card vs Card performance here and there is a few more things you have to consider when making this decision. Power consumption and Heat coming out of the SLI 770's is going to be much more then what a single 780 would run at so you if you go the SLI route you will want to make sure your cooling setup will be able to handle it and that your PSU will be able to keep those babies running for the next few years. SLI is very powerful and can be cost effective yes but remember extra heat and power is more stress on your machine overall in the long run. SLi profiles can be a pain in the a** sometimes to I remember running 2 660ti's When metro last light came out and the performace of my machine then was pitiful compared to what one 780 gets me. Upgradability is another thing to consider, If you have a 780 and add another one you will roughly see a 90% performance increase where as if you have 2 770's adding a third will not scale nearly as much ( 2 780's destroy 3 770's in 3dmarks) This also leads back to my old point being More cards = More heat and power. I also hated the Micro stuttering I experienced with my SLI 660ti's I have not tested 2 770's in SLI so i cannot say if they have any stuttering issues either

For what you need you would most likely be better off with the Single 780 Preferably in a 4gb config if you can afford it to help with the large resolution then next year when more of the AAA titles come out such as The Witcher 3 Battlefield 4 Etc you will be able to almost max them or easily drop in another 780 as by then there price will going down as we will most likely be seeing the next gen of Nvidia Gpu's coming out.

With a 3770k and 2X Sli 770's you can score about 13000 in 3d marks
With a 3770K and a single 780 my system hits over 10000 so a bit less
With a 3770K and 2X Sli 780's you can get up to 20000 which is monstrous

1) Are you playing at 2560x1440 like the OP? (178% the pixels of 1920x1080)
2) Battlefield 3 is creeping up on 2 years old. Tell me you can play Metro: Last Light at max settings on a single 670 and I'll call you a liar to your face, even at 1080p
3) That's it, but lists need to be in 3's.

Bah, this is an old thread so I'm just flappin gums to the wind nowbut still - I just don't think it's fair to say "oh look, you're buying something better than what I have, must be because you're a rich daddy's boy" never mind that people scrimp and save to buy a beast ass machine that will be able to play games newer than 2 years old on "max settings" /rant

@OP: I would get the 780 just because single card solutions are always better and it gives you FURTHER upgradability later on. But finding a 780 when nVidia is in the 900 series is going to be sort of hard...(eBay and Craigslist! )

i have 2 770s in sli they are amazing. i also run at 1440p and have crysis 3 along with metro last ;light. i have no problem playing these games at ultra. They do get kinda of hot around 80 celius. im actually playing the battlefield 4 demo as i respawn it looks amazing i have no regrets buying these cards. They are the asus direct cu 2gb there great