780 VS. SLi 760's

The single card solution will have less hassles and has room for a second if needed down the road.

If your looking for the absolute best performance for your buck, typically sli weaker cards is the way to go. Still, if your even considering the GTX 780, get that instead. Why?

1. Powerful enough to handle 99% of the games out there in max settings/maintain at least 60 fps, especially on single monitors (assuming 1920x1080/1200).
2. A lot Quieter.
3. Cooler (Temp wise).
4. SLI later on and you'll have an even more powerful setup (if you even need that much power).

The CPU would manage fine (and probably the PSU too if it's quality). Why not try a single GTX760 and then add a second when you need it? That way you'll be buying the second after prices have had a chance to drop and the first GTX760 delivers ample performance in the meantime. Are you specifically wanting to max Crysis 3 at ultra?

What type of monitor are you using? Resolution, 3D, and Refresh Rate? If your using a standard 1080p/60Hz Non 3D monitor all you need is a 780. Besides with the new consoles coming out and the whole slew of games, another 780 sli and your set for whatever comes. Can't upgrade much from 760 sli.

1, you can run SLi 780s off a 750watt psu. so yes its more than enough.

2, SLi 760s especially partner stock OC version are better than a titan by a very decent amount. remember that nvidia hasn't released a full sli profile yet so benchmarks will only get better from day 1 review stats.

3, since im in AU, im using AU currency. But it will still relate. here, Titans are $1250, 760s are $340. So the value compared to a Titan and even more so 780, is massive. $1300 performance for <$700!!!

Do it i am.

Haha who doesn't! I'd personally be disappointed if I bought two GTX760s to see gains of 30% of less in games poorly optimised for SLI. That's the thing with SLI - some games you'll see a 90% (or even higher) gain from the second GPU, but other games see little to no gain over a single GPU. I've seen it a thousand times in reviews and experienced it first hand with a dual-GPU card.

If you won't be bothered about very small gains in some games then it's a good option. Otherwise, get that GTX780. A single GTX760 is very capable, but not quite enough muscle to max everything at 1080p (at least not without overclocking).

Unless your playing games from 2001, all current AAA or B titles you will see a 80-90% gain from SLI. (with a mature profile & drivers). I am still running SLI GTX 460s, because i OC'd them to the moon and they still match a single 660 TI. 4 years later, which if you can see isn't that far off a single 760.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/500150

In conclusion, if you are after performance that will last 3-4 years. But have a <$700 budget, SLI 760s are a prime choice. 7950s & 670s might be slightly faster, but they are old tech and won't even be on the market in 3months.

That's totally wrong. I was running 2010-2012 AAA games on my dual-GPU card and got very disappointing performance in Assassin's Creed 2, Rage, several others. And Rage is id Software - absolute programming legends. It was absolutely hopeless - the GTX550 Ti delivered smoother gameplay on it for 1/5th the price of my card! If id Software can't get it right then we're a long way off perfect scaling.

80-90% is absolute crap. Look at any real benchmarks in recent reviews if you want to see how games scale. And forget 3D Mark - it's not a game. It's designed to give an idea of gaming performance. Which everyone knows is almost worthless when you can benchmark actual games (which is what you'll be playing after all).

I'll back up what I'm saying with examples:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-780-performance-review,review-32694-8.html

GTX780 Borderlands 2 - 94.9fps or 97fps in SLI
Skyrim - 97fps or 99fps in SLI
Hitman - 55fps or 54fps in SLI (this game is so bad with SLI it's actually slower!)

Hopefully after a few months the SLI scaling would improve in these games, but if you look at the GTX Titan results (card has been out several months now) they tell the same story (besides, you really want to wait months for your games to be fixed? I had to wait over 4 months until Dead Space 2 was even playable - below 1fps until they finally fixed it).

These games are worst-case examples but they're absolute AAA new titles that prove that there's big games that don't benefit.

Rage is a bad example as the game was a pure console port and ran bad even on single cards. Even with mature drivers.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2224/1/

BF3 @1080 SLi 760s are 90% than Single 760
Metro LL: @1080 SLi 70% over single
Bioshock I: @1080 SLi 80% over single

and so on....

Wrong. And don't start linking benchmarks where SLI helps. OBVIOUSLY SLI helps some games or NOBODY would use it. What you originally said is that every recent AAA game benefits. And that's totally wrong. And don't whine about console ports - we can't control which games are ports. Fact remains it's a new and AAA title, which according to you is 80-90% gain. Your words.

What I originally said is you'll get 90% (or more) in some games and little or no gain in others. Which has been proved.

First off chill this is just a healthy discussion. But being someone who has used SLI since 6800 ultra's active on nvdia forums and a new hardware benchmarker. Yes not "every" games has a 90% benefit. But "most" will land in the range of 70-90% & some 40-60%. Once a mature driver and sli profile is out for each of those games. You took what i said out of context to the discussion.

My point originally was that almost all reviews as of today for the SLi 760s are done using a beta driver without a full sli profile for each game/benchmark they run. And that buying SLI 760s right now over a $1300 titan or $800 780 is a clear no brainer.

(edit) These things come down to what you play, what budget you have and how long you want your system to last before your next upgrade. You have to research your needs. From research generally SLI scales better than crossfire, It also has faster more regular updates.

@Sam in particular, you seem to feel very strongly on this matter. But saying i am totally wrong isn't correct, There have been a lot of games built from game engines that where never designed for multi gpu configurations. BUT 90% of the "current" gen and "coming soon" titles for PC are built for multi GPU scaling. This is why both AMD and nvidia partner with game companies so that the engine is developed along side the current gen hardware.

This is like the old 32bit OS vs 64bit OS argument, where we are in a time where the game engine have transitioned from pure single card development, then patch fixed for multi GPU support. To where Frostbite 3, Unreal 3 etc all have native multi GPU support built into the engine. So yes my argument that all AAA titles as of 2013+ will see a SLi increase greater than 50% over a single card. So while you where correct in listing a 2011 game, build from a modified 2008 era game engine will not see a 90% gain. If you are someone playing AAA games today and in the future they will have a consistent 70-90% increase in SLi over a single card. Again Once a mature driver and SLi profile is out. Not many AAA games companies these days are not aligned with either AMD or Nvidia. So its getting less and less likely bad multi gpu scaling will happen.

Thank you. All I'm after is the truth, and now you've admitted your initial statement was wrong. As for being taken out of context, your original post is there for everyone to see and it's unambiguous. It stated that all new games are 80-90%. Your new post ^ is more or less accurate. I've demonstrated gains as little as 0% (less infact) but like I said, with patience, decent gains will hopefully become available in time.

Since GF104/106, scaling has been averaging 60-90%, depending on the selection of games used for benchmarking. Emphasis on "average" though - it's a huge range (0-100% infact!) and when the game you've been looking forward to for years is underperforming, it's really disappointing.



That's correct that there's room for optimisation. I did already acknowledge that - if you're patient enough to wait months then it MAY become less of an issue. Then I pointed out the GTX Titan (which has been out several months and wasn't using beta drivers) as evidence that scaling issues do persist.

Consider also the fact that GTX770 and GTX760 are both based on an a mature architecture that launched over a year ago - it's already seen a lot of optimisation, unlike a totally new architecture with a lot of untapped potential.

Apologies if my posts seem harsh but it's wrong to mislead people when they're spending so much money on their hardware. You could argue that they should do their own research (and you'd be right) but still we need to give accurate and helpful advice that acknowledges the drawbacks.

Agreed

Enjoy your purchases

You're welcome! And not a problem - it's your money I'd make up my own mind about things too and then learn from my mistakes (I think that's the most effective way to learn). The GTX780 is insanely overpriced for what it is anyway - nVIDIA tried to make it look like a bargain by launching the GTX Titan so that price/performance comparisons to the Titan make it appear a good deal. But compared to any other GPU (and looking at previous generation precedents), it's absolutely horrible value. That said, you need to throw as much rendering muscle as possible at Crysis 3 for max settings, and lesser cards just won't do it.

760 with 4 gigs of ram will out last the 780 with 3 gigs of ram. Reason is simple games are needing more ram as we move into the future. Remember battlefield 3 and the 580 and not enough ram to max out the settings. Wait and see when battlefield 4 comes out and everyone is upset with the 780 lol...