GPU Advice at 1440p

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Ws60

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 12, 2012
Messages
124
Hello all. I've recently managed, in part with advice given here, to assemble my very first build though due to budgetary reasons I had to temporarily reuse my old card. Due to unforeseen events of the fortunate kind however that has potentially come a bit sooner then originally expected. Now while I have been semi-lurking on this forum for a few months now I'm still not quite sure what I want my next upgrade to be and could use some external perspective. I've been eying an Evga 780 Ti superclocked lately for example but the idea of a ~$700 price tag is a bit much to swallow when thats over 2/3's of what I paid for the rest of my build though the non-Ti version seems a bit more palatable. Typical gaming can at time range from from Civ 4/5 to Warframe to (Modded) Fallout:NV to Batman Arkham Origins.

The wrench in the system is just how soon Maxwell may or may not come out but I'd rather buy something soon and enjoy this display fully now rather then possibly wait 6+ months or more for partner boards to come out and even then potentially take even longer.

Objective:
*High image quality while gaming at 2560@1440p full screen with an acceptable minimum FPS somewhere 40-50fps with a preference towards the higher end of that range.
*High levels of AA while nice are not mandatory given the already high resolution.
*No preference for either team green or red but I will be keeping this card for at least two years.
*I do NOT plan on overclocking the card as I've never found a need nor desire for it.
*Warranty is a factor in whichever manufacturer I do purchase from.
*I am NOT able to SLI/Crossfire with this motherboard nor do I have a desire to deal with that potential headache even if I could.

Budget:
$500-700 USD ceiling, preference towards the lower end for obvious reasons.

System Specs:
Case: NZXT Phantom 530
CPU: Intel Core i5 4670
RAM: 16GB 1600 DDR3
MoBo: ASRock H87 Pro4
PSU: Seasonic 760 XP2
Display: X-star DP2710LED@60 Hertz
 
Grab a single 780ti or 290x and call it a day.I have the vanilla 780, have the same image quality preferences as you, and it works great at 1440.
 
^ Yep, the ASUS GTX 780Ti DCUII http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HSY1RVC is definitely going to be your best option.

Any time you go with a multiple GPU setup you over double the noise produced because of all the added heat. The DCUII cooler is the quietest and most efficient and the 780Ti will be able to perform without being completely stressed at 1440p.
 
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dont wait for maxwell. reports are that a highend part will not be out till 2015. its not NVs fault, damn tsmc, always behind.
 
My single 780 SC with a ACX cooler does this job perfectly. 99.999% of games run flawlessly with all eye candy cranked.
 
Any of the modern/high-end cards from Nvidia (780 and above) and AMD/ATI (280x or above) will produce the results you need currently at 1440.
 
I do appreciate the responses and have looked them all over even if I only picked one to quote below. Thank you. :)

lloose said:
Grab a single 780ti or 290x and call it a day.I have the vanilla 780, have the same image quality preferences as you, and it works great at 1440.
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That is more or less what I'm planning on doing truth be told despite the initial sticker shock. Which is funny considering the sale TD/Amazon just had on the Gigabyte 780 Ti for ~$600 but the funds were sadly not available at the time. Ah well you win some and you lose some. Just means I'll need to keep my eyes peeled for the next decent deal. Now is there any actual difference, besides personal preference, between the 780 Ti and 290x? Also which board partners for each have reasonably solid warranty plans? Main reason being given the expense either way I'd rather have the peace of mind just in case an act of Murphy happens. For a cheaper mid-level card I wouldn't care as much but this would be far from that. :D I know Evga for instance is pretty solid for team green as is supposedly MSI but I know little for team reds offerings. So with that in mind who would you all suggest looking into?
 
Pick up a used EVGA gtx 780 ti. You're going to save money and still got a strong transferable warranty. I've seen them as low as 560 to 630 on ebay and Amazon.
 
Ws60 said:
I do appreciate the responses and have looked them all over even if I only picked one to quote below. Thank you. :)



That is more or less what I'm planning on doing truth be told despite the initial sticker shock. Which is funny considering the sale TD/Amazon just had on the Gigabyte 780 Ti for ~$600 but the funds were sadly not available at the time. Ah well you win some and you lose some. Just means I'll need to keep my eyes peeled for the next decent deal. Now is there any actual difference, besides personal preference, between the 780 Ti and 290x? Also which board partners for each have reasonably solid warranty plans? Main reason being given the expense either way I'd rather have the peace of mind just in case an act of Murphy happens. For a cheaper mid-level card I wouldn't care as much but this would be far from that. :D I know Evga for instance is pretty solid for team green as is supposedly MSI but I know little for team reds offerings. So with that in mind who would you all suggest looking into?
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The 290X runs hotter and uses more power than the 780 Ti, but the 290X has vastly superior compute performance (which probably doesn't make a big difference in gaming). NVIDIA, of course, supports hardware PhysX acceleration. AMD also supports hardware-level physics acceleration through OpenCL and will probably gain more widespread adoption in the future. Both cards are about equal gaming performance wise in games using DirectX 11 with the current drivers. The 290X has more VRAM than the 780 Ti which may allow for higher levels of AA to be used at 1440p.

Almost all AIB warranties look to be pretty spotty right now. EVGA might have the best out there right now for Green. I have not heard anything too bad about MSI, either, for both Red & Green. But XFX looks to have the best cooler for the 290X with the Double Dissipation. EVGA and ASUS are also solid with the ACX and DCUII, respectively. You might want to stay away from ASUS, though, considering some of the RMA stories floating around these forums.

Personally, I like NVIDIA because of their driver support. They always seem to add support for the newest release before AMD, and NVIDIA's release schedule is always pretty frequent. I also like the feature set better when compared with AMD. But I wouldn't mind having a 290X to play around with ;).
 
Armenius said:
The 290X runs hotter and uses more power than the 780 Ti, but the 290X has vastly superior compute performance (which probably doesn't make a big difference in gaming).
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Thanks for the reply, and in some ways it makes me wonder if the 290x situation is akin to how things were for Nvidia back in the GTX 480 days. Loud, hot, and utterly brutal in terms of the performance you received in return. :D Regardless of the card I end up getting I have also been toying with the idea of eventually getting a G10 bracket and slapping an AIO cooler on it so the heat may not end up to be that big of an issue. Even with the money set aside early what I'm currently using isn't terrible, by my standards anyway, so I can afford to wait a little bit and see what deals come up for either side.
 
The vanilla 780 overclocked does a nice job. IMO the 780ti is not worth the price difference.
 
The answer is simple. Buy a GTX 780 and spend the $200 budget surplus and get a half decent motherboard. You have a big full tower case, there's no reason not to have a full fledged Z87 ATX board.

Throw in a 2nd 780 later. Anyone who says they run everything maxed out with a single card @ 60fps minimum clearly doesn't play 3D games or at 1440p.
 
Hooy said:
The answer is simple. Buy a GTX 780 and spend the $200 budget surplus and get a half decent motherboard. You have a big full tower case, there's no reason not to have a full fledged Z87 ATX board.

Throw in a 2nd 780 later. Anyone who says they run everything maxed out with a single card @ 60fps minimum clearly doesn't play 3D games or at 1440p.
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I appreciate the advice, but unfortunately I have no interest nor budget to mess with SLI.

---


On a side note I wonder if picking up a reference cooled card would be worth it. Especially if as mentioned before I've considered slapping a G10 bracket on it anyway in the near future.
 
Ws60 said:
I appreciate the advice, but unfortunately I have no interest nor budget to mess with SLI.

---


On a side note I wonder if picking up a reference cooled card would be worth it. Especially if as mentioned before I've considered slapping a G10 bracket on it anyway in the near future.
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That is a sensible consideration if you're going with NVIDIA. My GTX 780 with a reference cooler gets around 72-75C while playing games, so I'm always getting the best possible Boost clocks. The reference cooler on the 290X is insufficient, though, and it will probably always be throttling.
 
SLI and Xfire are both useless right now. Maybe 10% of the games that have come out in the last 2 years actually even support it. I'm actually going to be selling 2 of my 290x cards because they're just they're just decoration at this point. Even playing at 7990x1440 with everything at max I'm not having framerate issues on any of the games I play. BF4 is about the only game on the market right now that supports multicard setups and well...I don't play that game.
 
I am copying a post I made in another thread, this was from a guy asking whether he should get another 670 for sli or upgrade to something else...

Price have dropped significantly just in the last few days for high-end amd gpus. Your best bet is to act quickly and pick up a 290 for around $300 as the above poster said or get the 290x (like I did) for around $380. You can likely get around $200 for your 670 still (but I assume market will go down on these once prices even out.)

Just paying $100 net to get similar performace to 670 sli is a great move for you not to mention the jump up to 4gb ram. If you want to totally flex your e-peen you could opt for the 290x for a bit more.

I just bought a 1440p monitor and should have my 290x in today.
 
ssnyder28 said:
I am copying a post I made in another thread, this was from a guy asking whether he should get another 670 for sli or upgrade to something else...

Price have dropped significantly just in the last few days for high-end amd gpus. Your best bet is to act quickly and pick up a 290 for around $300 as the above poster said or get the 290x (like I did) for around $380. You can likely get around $200 for your 670 still (but I assume market will go down on these once prices even out.)

Just paying $100 net to get similar performace to 670 sli is a great move for you not to mention the jump up to 4gb ram. If you want to totally flex your e-peen you could opt for the 290x for a bit more.

I just bought a 1440p monitor and should have my 290x in today.
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I actually recognize that qoute, and it is some solid advice. :D
 
The GTX 780 Ti is 12-15% faster clock per clock vs. a GTX 780. A R9 290X is 6% slower clock per clock than a GTX 780 Ti, making a the GTX 780 a great card to buy for the price, although I would buy used. At 1440p, I would rethink overclocking your video card. It can make a decent amount of difference when you are GPU limited. It doesn't take much for a GTX 780 to equal stock GTX 780 Ti performance.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2368928&highlight=termie
 
I think a 780 would be your best bet for the objectives you stated as a 'set it and forget it' option. A non-reference 290 could be good too especially considering how many are being dumped on ebay for around $350, bonus points if it's unlockable. :)
 
who the hell compares video cards based on ipc? cpus sure because the architecture are so similar but gpus are so dissimilar that the only determining factor should be price/performance. get the xfx 290 dd. under $500, good overclocking headroom, and lifetime warranty. done.

ah...no overclocking. msi 290 gaming. factory overclocked, cheaper than the xfx, easy serial number based rma support.
 
I ended up finally nutting up and going with a MSI GTX 780 Ti Gaming for ~$640 shipped after MIR from the egg. While not the absolute best deal out there I felt it was a solid card to pick and priced decently for the performance increase, especially as I'm limited to a single slot so may as well get the beefiest GPU I can afford. Of course the day after I put in the order and with it already out the warehouse door the MSI R9 290x Gaming, which is a worthy opponent to its Nvidia cousin, went on sale at the same place after MIR for $570 shipped. Win some you lose some I guess but I don't regret it either way. Pity though as difference would cover the cost of a decent water block and I would love to dabble a bit with a single loop system cooling for the GPU in the near future. :p
 
Ws60 said:
I ended up finally nutting up and going with a MSI GTX 780 Ti Gaming for ~$640 shipped after MIR from the egg. While not the absolute best deal out there I felt it was a solid card to pick and priced decently for the performance increase, especially as I'm limited to a single slot so may as well get the beefiest GPU I can afford. Of course the day after I put in the order and with it already out the warehouse door the MSI R9 290x Gaming, which is a worthy opponent to its Nvidia cousin, went on sale at the same place after MIR for $570 shipped. Win some you lose some I guess but I don't regret it either way. Pity though as difference would cover the cost of a decent water block and I would love to dabble a bit with a single loop system cooling for the GPU in the near future. :p
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I have the same card, and after ordering it I was like hmm, maybe I should have gotten the 290x too but actually it's a good choice IMO for 1440p, with BF4 MP I get well over 60fps min with everything on high. Temps are great, and the fans are very quiet - trust me, you'll enjoy it!
 
I've got a 780 OC that I got for $480 that handles 1440p at 120hz pretty well. My average frame rate in BF4 (mostly ultra settings, no AA) are ~100fps. Personally I don't see the reason to have more power at only 1440p.
 
Camberwell said:
I have the same card, and after ordering it I was like hmm, maybe I should have gotten the 290x too but actually it's a good choice IMO for 1440p, with BF4 MP I get well over 60fps min with everything on high. Temps are great, and the fans are very quiet - trust me, you'll enjoy it!
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Heh yeah it looks from all the reviews to be a solid card, not to knock the AMD variant at all. The only concern I have is with the potential ram temps under load but we'll see how that goes. Either way I am considering eventually water cooling it for lower operating temps as video cards are a prime candidate for it but that will be a little bit down the road.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
780 Ti at $640 or 290x at $570, I'd still take the Ti.
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The only reason to get a 290 over a Ti is if you can get it cheap. Buying an X isn't worth the extra money either. Luckily I got all of my 290s before the miners made prices go nuts and all 3 unlocked to full X :) If I were buying today, I'd get either a Ti or a normal 290 depending on price at the time.
 
290 series as long as its not the OEM cooler or a 780 would be my recommendation. I have a 280x and I game at 1440p without issues - most games are on high with 2x MSAA or FXAA and games are smooth for me.
 
Just an update:

The card game a few days ago and the install went pretty smooth. So far save some physics related issues with Metro Last Light its taking everything I can throw at it with solid frame rates at my monitors native resolution. Very happy with my purchase so far.
 
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