SLI Scaling: Can Three GeForce GTX 760s Beat Two 780s?

Name: Results: 3DMark And Far Cry 3 - SLI Scaling: Can Three GeForce GTX 760s Beat Two 780s?
Author: Thomas Soderstrom

by Thomas Soderstrom December 22, 2013 at 10:00 PM

36 Comments

Results: 3DMark And Far Cry 3

Why is there a synthetic test and a real-world game on the same page? All of the cards I'm testing were on loan. Embarrassingly, all of the cards in today’s comparison were on loan, and I figured out that some of my data was missing after sending them back. I could have scrapped the piece altogether, but because some readers are probably only looking for comparisons between three-way GeForce GTX 760s and two-way 780s, I figured I'd simply march on with a couple of holes in-place.

If the scaling we see in 3DMark carries over to any of our real-world games, the cheaper cards could have trouble proving their value in three-way SLI.

Although I was missing results for two-way SLI on the 760s in 3DMark, it was the three-way numbers that I lacked for Far Cry 3. I'm keeping the charts anyway for the folks more interested in comparing a pair of GeForce GTX 760s to one 780.

Far Cry 3 suggests that two 760s is the way to go for around $600. This would have been a pretty definitive win if the GeForce GTX 780 were still a $650 card. Perhaps that's what Asus had in mind when it started designing its latest dual-GPU endeavor. That board's 2 GB per GPU would likely limit performance at very high resolutions and detail levels, but at least a pair of the GeForce GTX 760s on which Asus' solution is based would at least have sold for the same price as GeForce GTX 780.

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About the author

Thomas Soderstrom @hardware_tom

Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.

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Zac Lloyd-Jones

Very interesting article. Would have been great to have the GTX 770 SLI'd in there for comparison .
rolli59

Agree with the conclusion totally since after the price drop on the GTX780 I stopped recommending dual GTX760 over the GTX780.
Amdlova

770 is the 680 with more hz... 760 is a new nvidia product is a 660ti with more muscle. 760 = 670 in power
iam2thecrowe

there are some major fps drops in the sli configurations on bf3, wonder why? did that happen on the single monitor solution? and in other games? crap like that is why i switched my sli config out for a better single card.
airplanegeek

would've been interesting to see the 2GB cards in SLI also
Crashman

388413 said:

there are some major fps drops in the sli configurations on bf3, wonder why? did that happen on the single monitor solution? and in other games? crap like that is why i switched my sli config out for a better single card.

I checked and found 1 stuck frame on the GTX 780 SLI at 1920x1080. It lasted far less than a second and dropped FPS from 200 (capped) to 54.

1021242 said:

would've been interesting to see the 2GB cards in SLI also

Yes, but the problem is that it's hard to find six cards laying around (three of each), and we quit buying 2GB cards for 3-way SLI a couple years back when they started running out of memory at 2560x1600. It got worse in Surround mode.
bystander

I noticed in Tomb Raider that 780 SLI was broken, yet 760 SLI worked well. 780 SLI had worse scores than a single 780 using Surround setups, yet the 760 SLI worked with surround setups quite well. I wonder what is up with that.
iam2thecrowe

314633 said:

I noticed in Tomb Raider that 780 SLI was broken, yet 760 SLI worked well. 780 SLI had worse scores than a single 780 using Surround setups, yet the 760 SLI worked with surround setups quite well. I wonder what is up with that.

weird sh!t sometimes happens with multi-card setups. i have owned both crossfire and sli in the last couple years, and now i'm dead set on single card is the only way to go, only takes one game not to work properly to ruin your day. Multi card for me, is only for when the best card available isn't powerful enough for you, or maybe second best card as the best is often overpriced ridiculously.
giovanni86

Waiting for Maxwell. Prices on both sides need to come down. Best for single GPU's was $500 with dual gpu's being double the price, i miss old prices.
Au_equus

How about 2x 760 v 780 ti and 3x 780 v 2x 780 ti?
http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?page=0&itemid=1172
aint2good

Why is it that the graphs show 1 760 at 100% price, 2 at 200% price, and 3 at 400% price? Should 3 of them be 300% price?
Crashman

1524676 said:

Why is it that the graphs show 1 760 at 100% price, 2 at 200% price, and 3 at 400% price? Should 3 of them be 300% price?

Thanks for pointing out that the last page charts were based on QUAD pricing and Tri performance! Fortunately, knocking the B out of FUBAR is my specialty
redgarl

I am sorry, but it is quite evident that what we are seeing here is a lack of support and bad quality drivers. 3 760 GTX result should have been more in the line of Tomb Raider results. Funny to see NVIDIA fanboys cry over ATI bad drivers, but at least a third AMD card generally ends in better framerate... unlike what we can conclude here.
RCguitarist

Funny, my single MSI 660 only runs 5fps slower than the single 760 in all of those tests. I must have a freak of a good card.
boytitan2

Why no 770 I feel 4 x 3 gb of gpu ram is over kill and it is just a 30-40 buck price difference between the 770 2gb and 760 4gb. The 770 would have been a better buy.
bucknutty

Why not test this on COD Ghosts? Oh that's right, its been out for 6 weeks and it still does not work right with SLI. All the flickering sights and trees are making me nauseous.
Crashman

393703 said:

Why not test this on COD Ghosts? Oh that's right, its been out for 6 weeks and it still does not work right with SLI. All the flickering sights and trees are making me nauseous.

Funny, because the article was written about six weeks ago We had a flood of launch articles in November dalay a bunch of non-timed articles by 4-6 weeks.
larsoncc

This article is relevant to my interests! LOL
husker

I'm curious if SLI (or xfire) is ever really a good value when you consider things like game support, time invested, mental sanity, and so forth. I mean how much savings is that much aggravation worth? Just because I could save money by using old newspapers instead of toilet paper doesn't mean I should.
bystander

290340 said:

I'm curious if SLI (or xfire) is ever really a good value when you consider things like game support, time invested, mental sanity, and so forth. I mean how much savings is that much aggravation worth? Just because I could save money by using old newspapers instead of toilet paper doesn't mean I should.

In the case of two way SLI, there is rarely aggravation. It just works in almost every game. The ones it doesn't work in usually don't need SLI to get good performance and you just don't realize it isn't working.

That said, a single card is a better way to go, IF you can get that performance from a single GPU. If you want more performance than a single GPU can give, then go with two.

IMO, SLI should only be done with higher end GPU's, when you want more performance than a single card can give.
g-unit1111

Man those numbers are amazingly close and value wise three GTX 760s cost just a little more than a single Titan. I'd still take dual GTX 780TIs any day of the week though!
JackNaylorPE

nVidia's wizing up....

580 sales tanked cause two 560s was 40% faster and 20% cheaper.
Two $150 650 Ti Boosts paired up edged any single gpu card waaay more

Tho over 75% of the builds I do are SLI/ CF, I have however always had trouble making a case for Tri SLI and Tri CF is not a place many will venture.
Mike Friesen

I found that the answer to the title was obvious. 780 vs 760, 2304 vs 1152 shaders? One has literally twice as many, and 2x2304=4608, whereas 1152*3= 3456. I know this oversimplifies the question, as number of shaders aren't everything, but when comparing shaders, even when considering the higher clock rate, the 780's will win. Even with perfect scaling, the 760's just don't have the computing power. 2 770's vs 3 780's would have been more interesting; same number of shaders(approx), but 770 is clocked much higher, and the 780's have better scaling. OC'd 780's would put up a very fair fight, I'd say.
damian86

Just buy a 780 ffs.And how can you have over 120 fps at 1920x1080? I can only get 60