Gigabyte Reveals GTX 770 WindForce 3X OC, Has 4GB VRAM
Gigabyte has launched its GTX 770 WindForce 3X OC with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory.
Gigabyte has announced a new version of its GeForce GTX 770 card, this one packing a meatier cooler and more memory. The GTX 770 WindForce 3X OC is a card that is built using a custom PCB, carrying the WindForce 3X cooler, having higher factory clock speeds, and a couple of extra gigabytes of graphics memory.
The card's WindForce 3X cooler is built with six copper heat pipes, some big aluminum fin stacks, and three 80 mm fans. This cooler can generate up to 450 W of cooling power. Of course, with such cooling power the manufacturer cannot get away with giving us a card with factory clocks. As such, the card is clocked at 1137 MHz base and 1189 MHz boost speeds. This makes the boost clock over 100 MHz higher than the reference specification.
Gigabyte's GTX 770 WindForce 3X OC also carries 4 GB of GDDR5 memory that runs over a 256-bit memory bus at an effective speed of 7.0 GHz.
The card should already be available through retail channels for an MSRP of around $499.99.
Why?
Yeah, real smart.
If anyone has a website with benchmarks showing a SINGLE card making a REAL difference with anything over 2GB please give links
Again if you can point to 2GB showing worse than the same card in 3GB or 4GB where you are ABOVE 30fps min (or say 60fps avg - which are basically the same thing) then please give links.
With maxwell or volcanic islands we may get a gpu that can change this, where there will be more situations where the gpu itself can actually push 30fps min at 1440p etc a lot more so this may not need a 2nd card to be useful but until I see these there really isn't a point over 2GB. Of course if you can get an extra gig at about the same price take it. But if it's quite a bit more realize you're missing NOTHING, take the cheap card
Also realize according to steampowered.com survey only 1.25% of use use ABOVE 1920x1200 (and according to the same survey 99% of that 1.25% use 2 cards or more...LOL). This is why I think anandtech's recent 1440p articles are so dumb and their cpu recommendations at 1440p are ridiculous. An A8-5600 is fine for ANY single card they say...ROFL...Yeah if you're retarded and haven't seen this cpu benched vs an ivy bridge/haswell at 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 where it leaves AMD chips completely in the dust. They should be ashamed of making such statements. The cpus part like the red sea at 1920x1200 or below WITH A SINGLE CARD and do it again at above this RESOLUTION the second you add another (very needed) gpu, and this happens in FAR MORE than just civilization 5 as Ian Cutress says at anandtech. I don't know how much AMD is paying them to put crap like that out (but they were the only site visited personally by AMD recently...LOL - do the math - No FCAT etc there either - constant excuses for leaving that data out). I'm starting to tell friends in IT to avoid all their cpu or gpu articles as they are so slanted. Their alexa traffic is 1/2 off since their 660TI article in Sept or so, so clearly people are starting to see this and comments on those articles show people aren't fooled. You can only lie for so long before your reputation turns to crap.
While I agree with most of what you say, there is a factual error: VRAM does not stack. So it doesn't matter if you have 2,3 or 4-way SLI/CF setup, you are stuck with whatever VRAM one of your card has.
When I bought my 2 2gb 670's last year I looked into it also. It was said that unless you were planning to go 3-way SLI you would run out of raw horsepower before you could use up all the VRAM. From my own experience, so far this statement holds true (I'm gaming at 5760x1080). It would have cost me another 150$ extra to get 4gb versions. Back then I didn't think it was worth it and still think that way today.
SLI increases GPU power but not vram. So SLI setups could benefit from higher vram when it otherwise might not for single gpu configurations.