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

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Back when GeForce GTX 780 sold for $650, slinging a bunch of 760s together looked like a great deal. Now that the 780's down to $500, is there still value in going three-way SLI with GK104, or are you better served by a couple of GK110-based 780 cards?

Can Three GeForce GTX 760s Take Two 780s?

Our tests show that, while a pair of GeForce GTX 760s offers better overall performance than a single 780, two 780s easily best a trio of GeForce GTX 760s. This pursuit of more performance ends with two 780s in SLI. But what about value?

Thanks to Nvidia's recent price drops, one GeForce GTX 780 now offers better value than a pair of GTX 760s. The 780's value story gets even better in SLI, where a three-way array of 760s is soundly defeated. Once again, though, we see that the $1200 of supporting parts have a normalizing effect on the above chart.

The problem I see with basing value charts on the price of one component is that you need an entire machine to back it up. Nvidia's GeForce GTX 760 would have given us the highest value if the rest of the system was free, but the only way that GK104-based board can beat the 780's value is if our supporting configuration sold for less than $200.

We planned this comparison as a hunt for the best graphics value back when Nvidia's GeForce GTX 780 was twice as expensive as the 760, but lost that aspect of the article when the company slashed prices on its highest-end cards to contend with AMD's introductions. We were hoping the three-way 760-based setup would still give us a performance advantage, but that didn’t work out either. And while a pair of GeForce GTX 760s outperform the single 780, the extra speed isn't worth the now-higher price, in my opinion. My best performance recommendation to Nvidia fans with $500-600 to spend is to start with the GeForce GTX 780 and forget about SLI until prices come down even more.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
36 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Zac Lloyd-Jones
    Very interesting article. Would have been great to have the GTX 770 SLI'd in there for comparison :).
    Reply
  • rolli59
    Agree with the conclusion totally since after the price drop on the GTX780 I stopped recommending dual GTX760 over the GTX780.
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    770 is the 680 with more hz... 760 is a new nvidia product is a 660ti with more muscle. 760 = 670 in power
    Reply
  • 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.
    Reply
  • airplanegeek
    would've been interesting to see the 2GB cards in SLI also
    Reply
  • Crashman
    12245834 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.
    12245939 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.
    Reply
  • 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.
    Reply
  • iam2thecrowe
    12246217 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.
    Reply
  • 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.
    Reply
  • 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
    Reply