GTX 980. Are they worth it?

Humpernator

Weaksauce
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I've read a lot of reviews about the 980 saying they generally aren't worth the price tag based on the performance they produce vs the 970 and 980 Ti. Seems that the 980 is the classic "middle child".

However... I have an opportunity to buy one off a friend of a friend for $330. It's the EVGA 980 SC with the ACX cooler. Do you guys say it's worth it at the price? I'll be using it with a 1440p monitor.
 
Since a brand new GTX 970 goes for around the same price, I'd say it's worth it. You won't have to worry about the segmented memory plus you get a 15-20% boost in performance. Buying a brand new card, I would definitely agree that the GTX 980 is not worth the price. Either save up a little more cash for a 980 Ti or go with the 970 to save a bit of cash.
 
The 390X is around $400 USD new while offering around the same performance as a GTX 980. $330 for a GTX 980 SC is still a good deal by comparison.
 
if you need it, get it at the very worst you could resell it and probably get your money back if you dont like it.
 
For that price I'd say its worth it, depending on what you have right now.
 
For that price I'd say its worth it, depending on what you have right now.

Yeah this is where things get tricky...

My current PC has SLI 4GB 770s but I am also in the process of building a mITX machine. My original plan was to upgrade to a 980 Ti, use one of the 770's for my mITX, and sell off the other. However, I'm not sure a single 980 will be better than my SLI 770's. It'll most likely depend on the game as more games often don't scale well in SLI.

The 390X is around $400 USD new while offering around the same performance as a GTX 980. $330 for a GTX 980 SC is still a good deal by comparison.

This is also true. I was looking at 390X's today and saw that Newegg has a MSI 390X for $360 after MIR
 
I have the exact card you're looking at getting. It runs great and overclocks sweet.

Is it better than two 770's?? well, yes. It's one card, so you'll never have to worry about SLI issues or incompatibilities.... You'll use WAY less power, generate way less heat/noise, and You get a full 4GB of RAM for games as they begin to demand more and more memory.

BUT, when your 770's are running perfect and the game is using both of them to their max, is a single 980 going to outshine them... meh. I'm not looking at benchmarks but raw horsepower wise, I'd bet it would be a close call.
 
980 is on average about 60% faster than a single 770 stock vs stock anyway (Source 1, Source 2), so with typical SLI scaling, 770 SLI will probably only end up being 10-15% faster, but with all the nuances, caveats, and headaches of a multi-GPU setup. And I'm willing to bet that 10-15% difference wouldn't even be perceptible IRL if you didn't use an FPS counter when gaming.

So yeah, a 980 for $330 is a good deal, and will definitely be a more than adequate replacement for 770 SLI. Just make sure you OC that thing to the max to get a free 15% performance boost.
 
You'll be better off with a single 980 most of the time vs 770 SLI for all the reasons n=1 listed.
 
For $330, yes it's worth it.

That said, for 1440p you probably want a 980Ti/Fury X level card.

If your 770's are the 4GB flavor. Keep them until next gen cards arrive.
 
Sell your GTX770's and you will get about $350-375. Get his 980 and then buy another 980 with money from the sale of your cards. If i were you, I'd sell both now and buy that 980 because it's a steal, put the $350 aside from the 770's and when the next cards come in June sell the 980 for the same price you bought it for and pick up a GTX1080.
 
Not a fan of mgpu, for now.
Go 390x or 980ti. Everything else is priced in ways that make them unattractive.
 
At that price, absolutely get it. The GTX 980 is a great GPU, truly the forgotten gem of Maxwell because of improper pricing. It has incredible performance per watt, and overall performance is still admirable even if it's not top tier anymore. And it doesn't have a driver dependent memory configuration of the 970.

The problem with the 980 is its absurd price. It's irrational. It's closer in price to the 980 Ti when its performance is closer to the 970. Usually performance per dollar goes down the higher you go, but a new 980 demands $170 more than the 970 and is $150 less than the 980 Ti. I truly do not understand this pricing, especially when a 390X matches it for less.

But $330 is a good deal. It's a better card than the 390 unless you mostly play games that favour AMD, like The Division and Far Cry Primal as recent examples.
 
FOr 330usd is a good price, unless you want to run a game that uses Directx 12 where a r9 390x is a better deal, or run multigpus where Hawaii XDMA makes a difference
 
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I run 3440x1440 with the same card, works pretty decent at that res. I'd buy it at that $330 price in a heartbeat.
 
Sell your GTX770's and you will get about $350-375. Get his 980 and then buy another 980 with money from the sale of your cards. If i were you, I'd sell both now and buy that 980 because it's a steal, put the $350 aside from the 770's and when the next cards come in June sell the 980 for the same price you bought it for and pick up a GTX1080.

Yeah I plan on selling the 770's along with my rest of my current machine to upgrade to Z170 and Pascal/Polaris, probably the 1080 or 1080 Ti. I will use the 980 in my new mITX build in the meantime. I'm a huge Dark Souls fan so a majority of my gaming starting next month will be that. I'm sure a single 980 will run flawlessly at 1440p/60.

I run 3440x1440 with the same card, works pretty decent at that res. I'd buy it at that $330 price in a heartbeat.

I ended up buying it. As mentioned by others, I can easily sell it for the same or more if I don't like it.
 
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