Going from a 780 to either a 970 or 390x need advice.

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Godmachine

[H]F Junkie
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So I've done some recent upgrades (6700K overclocked to 4.6Ghz , 16GB DDR4 3000mhz) to my well aged i7 930 setup (wow night and day difference!). My GTX 780 is next on the chopping block but I'm conflicted. I haven't really been following much of the past few years of GPU's and based on what I've read from benchmarks to user impressions I can't decide what card should be my next upgrade. I know Nvidia and AMD have new series cards coming sometime this year but I'm not really wanting to wait because I've got my friends all bugging me to start playing again (CS : GO , The Division and so on) so I want something better and competitive right now.

I have a G-sync 1080p monitor and a 3 x Qnix setup (so 1440p) so that's the resolutions I'll be dealing with. Have zero interest in 4K and likely won't for sometime. VR isn't important because its in its infancy and right now I feel like I would rather wait for the second or third generation VR headsets before jumping in on that. So upgrading to a Freesync monitor is also really unlikely because I want a 1440p IPS that isn't a luck of the draw in terms of panel lottery (I've read people have returned up to 10 monitors and continued to always have problems so not really wanting to do that). Also I don't plan to run all 3 1440p Qnix's at the same time while gaming just one and the G-sync monitor now and again.

I know the 970 has a crippled memory interface but how often does that effect VRAM heavy games? Will it be a serious issue in the future? Also from what I've seen the 390x shows varying performance and right now in Direct X 11 it seems inferior in a lot of benchmarks ( no offense to any fans just what I've been reading ) to the 970 which offers more stable fps while the 390x can climb higher in terms of fps but often has frequent dips. Also I have no idea how AMD drivers are. Last time I used an AMD card drivers were an absolute nightmare.

What's everyone's opinion? Also I don't SLI. Its a pain in the ass. I do not feel like dealing with SLI malfunctions with every game or new driver release so single card solution only. Also the 980ti is too expensive for my blood right now so that's out of the question.

Budget $400 as well. Thanks!
 
I have a 780 myself, don't see the need to upgrade on 1080p yet.

The 780 will kill CS:GO; The Division - not so sure.
 
@1440p Vram will be a bit more of an issue, although not always. So then it comes down to 8Gb (390X) or 4/3.5Gb (970). I'd say 390X.
 
Was in the same situation. Went 390X. No regrets. Some games will use more than 4GB VRAM at 1440P.
 
Have you given any thought to overclocking that 780? I got approximately 15-25% more performance out of mine when I had it. That might get you another month or two, which is apparently when the announcements for the next gen of cards is going to start taking place. I think with the CPU/Ram upgrade, and if you OC, you will be quite competitive. The gtx780 is still no slouch. Try to get 1000-1100Mhz or more out of it, and you'll be rocking!
 
At this point I would hang on since a new gen is so close. I usually don't advocate "waiting for the next thing" but I can't see buying 3-4 year old tech when the new stuff is within 2-3 months away. OC the piss out of it and buy the next $400 card. Its sure to be nice since its a node shrink.
 
OC and wait out the new cards...

Both AMD and NVDA will be releasing new cards this year.

If you dont mind used, you probably can get something great then...or brand new tech if the price is right.

You can sell your 780 and use that toward increasing your budget.
 
CS:GO does not need much power, a 780 is way more than needed to max it at extremely high FPS with Gsync if you want to play that way (although competitive people will say play with all forms of vsync/gsync off). I get about 50fps average in Division on my overclocked 970 (it's actually at 1450Mhz now) which is probably comparable to a 780. It's running mostly high/ultra settings but not totally maxed out.

Given that, I would recommend waiting. NVidia should be announcing next gen cards in mid to late April according to the rumour mill.
 
Neither. 970 is useless for 1440p, and 390X is just not a good deal at this point in time. If you must get something now, a 390 (non X) for $275 after MIR + free Hitman code is likely the best deal you can get right now.

The 390 is literally 5-7% behind the 390X, and you won't even notice the difference in actual gaming unless you stared at the FPS counter the whole time.
 
Here is a deal on a Nano for $438. If I were a betting man I'd say that the FuryX, Fury, 380x, 380, and Nano aren't going away when Polaris launches. Nano is faster than the 390x as long as your case cooling is good.

Heck they just slapped (2) Fury X on a single PCB and are calling it the PowerDuo. So you know they are here to stay.

 
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Nano is only about 20% faster than 390 non-X, and at $438 it's still a terrible deal, especially when I pointed out the XFX 390 could be had for $275 after rebate AND you get a free game code, which you could easily sell for $20 at least.
 
So, without reading much of this thread, I want to let the OP know: The 970 and the 390X are not huge jumps over the 780. you're looking at 25% faster on a good day. If your budget is concrete, then try to find another 780? I would say a highly-OC'd 980 would be a noticeable bump from what you have right now...
 
silent-circuit said:
Now is not the time to upgrade. Stick with what you have for the moment.
Click to expand...

This guy knows.


Seriously, if you had a 680 or AMD 7970/280, sure: go nuts and grab a 970 or 390X, but because you already have a decent card (by today's standards), you don't really have many options for your budget. Wait a bit and snag a new release when it comes out.
 
2 months ago i went from 780 sli to 980 ti sli. Now that's an upgrade. IMO anything less than 3 tiers up is not an upgrade.
 
I went from a 1.3GHz ref 7970 to a 290X after the 7970 died. That 7970 benchmarked about where a 780 was. The difference between that and the 290x was minimal but just noticeably smoother, more enjoyable experience, maxed out on the ragged edge.
Other than necessity I would not have done it.. was not really a huge 'upgrade'. Main difference was crysis3 it would do ultra 40-60fps. 7970 1.3GHz struggled to 25-30. Went from unplayable to enjoyable.
 
if you absolutley want to upgrade right now, the 390x would probably be the best bet for your budget.
I would suggest holding out for a couple months and seeing what Nvidia/Amd have coming.

I recently sold off my 980Ti cards, and am currently running one of my old 780s in their place. It was a pretty drastic change, but I've not been playing many demanding games recently, so the 780 will hold me over until something new comes out.
 
I've been contemplating the same thing now. Have a 280X. Is the 390X much of an upgrade? Do they pretty much run on the same architecture? I need to give my daughter a newer moderate gaming card and was thinking of upgrading myself and passing the 280x to her. Or getting her like a R7 250 that's cheap and somewhat adequate and wait for the next gen cards for myself, then pass mines on.. decision decisions.
 
n=1 said:
Nano is only about 20% faster than 390 non-X, and at $438 it's still a terrible deal, especially when I pointed out the XFX 390 could be had for $275 after rebate AND you get a free game code, which you could easily sell for $20 at least.
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I'm not sure how you classify the nano at $438 as a "terrible deal" when it often matches or exceeds the performance of a 980 and is cheaper with that deal. It's not the best deal by any stretch of the imagination, but it's the most performance you'll get out of a sub $500 card right now unless you go xfire or SLI. Besides I'd rather have $20 in MIR than a $20 game code that I might be able to sell. But to each their own. Now should OP actually upgrade to the nano? That's up to them. I'm upgrading from a r9 270x and I feel like it's worth it. I'm also limited to ITX cards though, and OP isn't, so he's probably better off waiting for a new card launch and get something full size with less strict cooling requirements.
 
Context my friend, it's a terrible deal in comparison to the XFX 390 I linked to. You're paying 60% more (or 40% more if you ignore the rebate) for only 20% more performance. How is that a good deal? This is besides the fact that now is just not a good time to buy 28nm GPUs, and if you had to buy one, might as well grab the cheapest.

The 980 was and still is a shit deal that's no secret, so saying the Nano is a better deal than the 980 really doesn't mean much.
 
n=1 said:
Context my friend, it's a terrible deal in comparison to the XFX 390 I linked to. You're paying 60% more (or 40% more if you ignore the rebate) for only 20% more performance. How is that a good deal? This is besides the fact that now is just not a good time to buy 28nm GPUs, and if you had to buy one, might as well grab the cheapest.

The 980 was and still is a shit deal that's no secret, so saying the Nano is a better deal than the 980 really doesn't mean much.
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Fair enough. I guess my logic is that it's a better deal than both the 980 and 390x, and if the goal is max performance, then it's the best deal for that tier of card (again, if max performance is what OP is looking for near his budget). I personally don't think the 390 is enough of a performance jump to justify upgrading from OP's 780 (it certainly wasn't enough of a jump to justify the jump from a 270x for me).
 
Thanks for all the replies guys , much appreciated for sure. I've decided to get a 980 and overclock the living shit out of it. It doesn't sound like Pascal or Polaris are going to be quite the leaps we've all been wanting from what I've read. HBM2 seems to be not even in full production so Polaris is still a ways off. And Pascal being leaked to have GDDR5X memory and really not the savior of VR that people thought it would be. It seems like the card that will get announced (on Nvidia's end) will probably be the near top tier which means way too expensive for my blood. I don't think we'll see a 970 type variant probably until Q4 of this year and the waiting game can be tricky. If the new mid range Nvidia cards come out around Christmas they will be probably be flying off the shelves for months and overpriced to take advantage of the holiday season. Also a bit of a deal breaker is that NONE of the AMD cards support HDMI 2.0 and I plan to get a 4k OLED around Christmas time. Its really hard to believe that not even the Fury cards even have it..

I also looked into the Fury , Fury X and Nano and frankly the performance of all of them versus the price is just really lacking. I also prefer to shop at Amazon because they have such great return policies so my pricing is inline with what they are offering. It seems like HBM should be an incredible boost but it seems like AMD is still stuck in a rut in that price range. I also saw that Nano is quite temp sensitive and throttles happily. I know Direct X 12 should see some serious benefits for AMD but it could take years before we have a large pool of Direct X 12 games to really take advantage of it (none of the upcoming ones really interest me) so there will be a newer , cheaper and better performing cards likely on both sides by then so.
 
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I'm running a gtx 770 at 1440x3440 and it's fine. Even with the newer games it's still suffient. I'm upgrading when the new HBM2 GPU's come out (I'd think another 9 months or so).
Currently running medium-high settings at that huge resolution.
 
the only card worth it on the Nvidia side is the 980Ti. All other tiers the AMD counterparts are better. The 980 (non Ti ) is overpriced for its segment. The 970 is a harbinger of evil after the 3.5Gb fiasco/lies and I flat out refuse to recommend it out of honor. The 950/960 is purely a price thing so they can be ok but I try from here out to not go low teir if I can.
 
Godmachine said:
Thanks for all the replies guys , much appreciated for sure. I've decided to get a 980 and overclock the living shit out of it. It doesn't sound like Pascal or Polaris are going to be quite the leaps we've all been wanting from what I've read. HBM2 seems to be not even in full production so Polaris is still a ways off. And Pascal being leaked to have GDDR5X memory and really not the savior of VR that people thought it would be. It seems like the card that will get announced (on Nvidia's end) will probably be the near top tier which means way too expensive for my blood. I don't think we'll see a 970 type variant probably until Q4 of this year and the waiting game can be tricky. If the new mid range Nvidia cards come out around Christmas they will be probably be flying off the shelves for months and overpriced to take advantage of the holiday season. Also a bit of a deal breaker is that NONE of the AMD cards support HDMI 2.0 and I plan to get a 4k OLED around Christmas time. Its really hard to believe that not even the Fury cards even have it..

I also looked into the Fury , Fury X and Nano and frankly the performance of all of them versus the price is just really lacking. I also prefer to shop at Amazon because they have such great return policies so my pricing is inline with what they are offering. It seems like HBM should be an incredible boost but it seems like AMD is still stuck in a rut in that price range. I also saw that Nano is quite temp sensitive and throttles happily. I know Direct X 12 should see some serious benefits for AMD but it could take years before we have a large pool of Direct X 12 games to really take advantage of it (none of the upcoming ones really interest me) so there will be a newer , cheaper and better performing cards likely on both sides by then so.
Click to expand...

Club3D and AMD developed an $30 adapter that allows any video card to have HDMI 2.0. This of course means that your GTX 780 can have HDMI 2.0 also.

Club3D Displayport 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 UHD (CAC-1070)
Amazon.com: Club3D Displayport 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 UHD (CAC-1070): Computers & Accessories

Club3D Mini Displayport 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 UHD (CAC-1170)
http://www.amazon.com/Club3D-Mini-D...r=8-1&keywords=club3d+displayport+to+hdmi+2.0

Accell B086B-012B Mini DisplayPort 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 Active Adapter
http://www.amazon.com/Accell-B086B-...r=8-1&keywords=accell+displayport+to+hdmi+2.0

Accell U187B-002B USB-C to HDMI 2.0 Adapter for Type-C Devices (e.g. 12" MacBook, Chromebook Pixel 2, Microsoft Lumia 950, etc.)
Amazon.com: Accell U187B-002B USB-C to HDMI 2.0 Adapter for Type-C Devices (e.g. 12" MacBook, Chromebook Pixel 2, Microsoft Lumia 950, etc.): Computers & Accessories

There might be more. Got tired of looking. ;)
 
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JustReason said:
The 970 is a harbinger of evil after the 3.5Gb fiasco/lies and I flat out refuse to recommend it out of honor.
Click to expand...

I've never laughed so hard at a comment about a graphics card in my life. In keeping with your noble sacrifice I present you with this portrait painted in your "honor".

amdhonor.jpg
 
cageymaru said:
Club3D and AMD developed an $30 adapter that allows any video card to have HDMI 2.0. This of course means that your GTX 780 can have HDMI 2.0 also.

Club3D Displayport 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 UHD (CAC-1070)
Amazon.com: Club3D Displayport 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 UHD (CAC-1070): Computers & Accessories

Club3D Mini Displayport 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 UHD (CAC-1170)
http://www.amazon.com/Club3D-Mini-D...r=8-1&keywords=club3d+displayport+to+hdmi+2.0

Accell B086B-012B Mini DisplayPort 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 Active Adapter
http://www.amazon.com/Accell-B086B-...r=8-1&keywords=accell+displayport+to+hdmi+2.0

Accell U187B-002B USB-C to HDMI 2.0 Adapter for Type-C Devices (e.g. 12" MacBook, Chromebook Pixel 2, Microsoft Lumia 950, etc.)
Amazon.com: Accell U187B-002B USB-C to HDMI 2.0 Adapter for Type-C Devices (e.g. 12" MacBook, Chromebook Pixel 2, Microsoft Lumia 950, etc.): Computers & Accessories

There might be more. Got tired of looking. ;)
Click to expand...

Stole the words right out of my mouth. I use the Club3D adapter to get 4k60 out of my 270x and plan to use it on my nano. Sure it's definitely annoying that HDMI 2.0 isn't supported out of the box, but the adapter works flawlessly (audio too!) so I really can't complain that much.
As a side note, I didn't have good luck with the Accell adapter when I wanted to run 1080p @ 120Hz. Worked at 4k for me, but was finicky at higher refresh rates. Zero issues with the Club3d at both 4k60 and 1080p120.
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
the
JustReason said:
the only card worth it on the Nvidia side is the 980Ti. All other tiers the AMD counterparts are better. The 980 (non Ti ) is overpriced for its segment. The 970 is a harbinger of evil after the 3.5Gb fiasco/lies and I flat out refuse to recommend it out of honor. The 950/960 is purely a price thing so they can be ok but I try from here out to not go low teir if I can.
Click to expand...

The GTX 970 is a good card if you need Linux support
 
It really depends. Are you gaming for now or the future?

If you are worried about DX 11 games, go NVidia. If you want something for DX 12 games, go AMD.
 
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