Would I get anything out of "upgrading" 780 SLI->980Ti?

StoleMyOwnCar

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My 780's are EVGA... SC? Not sure. Both of them are on Kraken G10's at the moment, and they run fine. I game on an ASUS RoG Swift as my main monitor; something that will not likely change in the near future, unless it dies.

I'm considering going to Microcenter within the next few hours or so (or tomorrow or not at all) and picking up one of their open box 980 Ti's (in particular, they have an open box ASUS strix for 602 and EVGA SC+ for 611; granted they also have tax). My friend is planning to build a computer so I figure I could maybe give him my old ones on the cheap. Basically I was saving for a house down payment but ultimately decided against going for one and staying in my condo. I have a lot of money I could waste. >_>;

So, basically aside from my PS4 I could also use a new toy in my PC... but I kinda need more justification than "just because". So, convince me... or dissuade me. Whichever works. Odd request I know. Lol.

The only reason I can think of off the top of my head is more VRAM and likely smoother experience. Goal is to keep running everything smoothly on my Swift for the next few years at the least.
 
I would do the jump without even think on it, yes it will be a good upgrade even in games where SLI works perfect and with perfect scaling a single 980TI will be a good upgrade even at stock speed.. and in games where SLI doesn't work good the jump in performance can be enormous, I was using 780 SLI (OC'd at 1200mhz each card) setup before moving to a single 980 and then a 980TI, once overclocked a 980TI its a big upgrade.
 
I've only seen happy posts from people who went 970 SLI -> 980ti. Basically the same boat.
 
Should be a happy camper if you're playing the latest and most demanding games @1440p. Now you do know that Pascal is coming next year. So it's sort of late in the game to be upgrading if what you have can hold you over for an even larger upgrade.
 
Should be a happy camper if you're playing the latest and most demanding games @1440p. Now you do know that Pascal is coming next year. So it's sort of late in the game to be upgrading if what you have can hold you over for an even larger upgrade.

This, although it is still going to likely be 4-5 months still.
 
No idea.
You havent stated your quality setting preference and minimum expected framerate.

Instead of stating the monitor model, it would help to say the resolution as that is what matters.
 
... The first line says "RoG Swift". I'm not sure why I would be using anything but 1440p on this monitor. As for minimum expected framerate... that's difficult to say; G-Sync can make things smoother than they are. Image quality... I like to keep it as high as possible while staying within a smooth framerate range. Generally ultra.

I see you slightly edited your post since I typed this up, but that doesn't really help anything because I don't think this monitor can be confused with anything else, and its optimal resolution is 1440p.

How early is Pascal slated to come? No ideas? Just wondering how big of an upgrade it will be.
 
I went from sli 780s to 780tis, and now 980tis. At the same time i went 980ti, i grabbed a swift. I didnt get to test the 780tis @ 1440p, but in very happy with my current 980ti sli /rog swift setup and i haven't looked back once.
 
I went from SLI 780s to a Titan X, and I didn't feel like it was a waste. More consistent performance (even if it was lower in some games) and no more insufficient VRAM issues made it worth it for me. Went SLI Titan less than a month later because why not.
 
... The first line says "RoG Swift". I'm not sure why I would be using anything but 1440p on this monitor. As for minimum expected framerate... that's difficult to say; G-Sync can make things smoother than they are. Image quality... I like to keep it as high as possible while staying within a smooth framerate range. Generally ultra.

I see you slightly edited your post since I typed this up, but that doesn't really help anything because I don't think this monitor can be confused with anything else, and its optimal resolution is 1440p.

How early is Pascal slated to come? No ideas? Just wondering how big of an upgrade it will be.

No idea.
You havent stated your quality setting preference and minimum expected framerate.
 
I went from 780 SLI to a single 980 Ti. Monitor is 1080p 144 Hz, and I like to crank up the eye candy.

Huge difference in VRAM heavy games (even Shadow of Mordor) going from a 3GB frame buffer to 6GB. Was experiencing some stuttering as VRAM got saturated, but now it's gone.

Half the power draw, way less heat, and way way less noise since I no longer have to keep my chassis fans going full-tilt while the GPU is under load.

Do it while your 780s still have some value...I listed both of mine as a set on eBay on Sep 1st and accepted a best offer of $510 shipped to someone in West Virginia. YMMV, of course...I realize I lucked out (was willing to take $400 shipped min).
 
NOT worth it.

That said ASUS strix for 602 is a good deal, unless it's returned because it can't OC for shit.
 
Willing to bet money if it's open box more than likely it had intolerable coil whine.
 
Well I found a 980 Ti Classified on Amazon Warehouse deals (fulfilled by Amazon and all that) for $612 (650 after taxes). Frankly I got tired of looking at the cards and just decided to give it a shot. I'll see how the single card solution will work out. Hopefully it doesn't have some crazy coil whine or something. If it does, I'll just return it and go back to my 780's. It also darn well better overclock to 1450-1500. I have no real incentive for keeping the thing, and I can return it to Amazon for utterly vague reasons.

If Pascal starts looking like it's going to be really amazing, I'll just sell it before they release it. I think Classy cards have decent resale.


I'll have to wait for Tuesday for it to be here though...
 
Good choice. Hope it's an issue free one...please keep us posted!
 
It also darn well better overclock to 1450-1500. I have no real incentive for keeping the thing, and I can return it to Amazon for utterly vague reasons.

If Pascal starts looking like it's going to be really amazing, I'll just sell it before they release it. I think Classy cards have decent resale.


I'll have to wait for Tuesday for it to be here though...

Damn, no weekend fun! The classies should reach past 1450 easy, my ref boards do.

As far as resale, it should hold a stronger value cause of the title. All 980tis though are quite similar in OC ability minus the added features on custom boards which do give a little more 'gaurantee' of a higher OC
 
The only "indication" of OC on Maxwell is ASIC quality per my post here. Custom PCBs don't really mean much especially when there's no voltage response past 1.25V, and even the ref boards with their 6 phase VRMs can easily handle that no problem.
 
Honestly it was mostly because I had never owned a Classy before, and it looked like a decent deal. Maybe it wasn't, dunno. Amazon warehouse has some really good deals for EVGA 980 Ti's in general right now. Some of them going as low as 560. I'm not sure how the warranty would be on these, though. I suppose that's something to consider for this purchase...
 
The only "indication" of OC on Maxwell is ASIC quality per my post here. Custom PCBs don't really mean much especially when there's no voltage response past 1.25V, and even the ref boards with their 6 phase VRMs can easily handle that no problem.

Nice write up....so EVGA, with their infinite wisdom, marked up the higher ASIC KPE's...hahahaha. Funny stuff, reasoning behind that madness.
 
Yep pretty much. And the real punchline is this:

Does high ASIC guarantee highest clocks on air? NO. The other part of ASIC which is Leakage is high on these, so that can actually hold back some high asic gpus on air. This doesn't mean its bad on Ln2 as well, and usually the contrary. I Tested around 15 pieces or so of KP980Ti these days, all different asic levels. Some as high as 81% all the way to 64% (which we wont even sell :) the average clocks on air were roughly 1550mhz Lowest was 1526mhz, highest was 1592mhz . Seemed like every card went to 1539mhz or so :) Most of the higher asic cards did as expected and hit the upper 1550's. None could pass 1600mhz, but some came really close! Those were mostly higher ASIC%'s.

So the spread from highest to lowest is less than 70MHz, and that's across the entire 64-81% ASIC range.

And on top of that a high ASIC still doesn't guarantee a good OC. So yeah, those ASIC-binned Kingpins truly are a ripoff indeed, especially when the regular Classified is just $700.
 
... Well if ASIC doesn't really actually matter, from what I've read in your post, it seems like it's down to the quality of the components on the actual board. Wouldn't this one be better in that regard?
 
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Sure, except "quality components" on 980 Ti i is about as useful as putting Pirellis on a Prius.

You see, since voltage scaling doesn't go past 1.23-1.25V on air/water, you won't ever stress even a reference 6 phase VRM enough to have to worry about shortening their lifespan or blowing them up.

This is unlike Kepler, where Kingpin specifically said more volts = more overclock, and you could easily push a 780 Ti Kingpin all the way past 1.4V to get some insane OC even on water. So yes in that case quality components would actually make a difference, but not with Maxwell no.
 
The thing you quoted just said that every single Kingpin went to at least 1539.

Most reviewers have said that theirs averages out around 1450. Since Kingpins can overclock higher regardless of ASIC, to me that seems to imply that higher quality components means a higher average overclock.

That's where I'm drawing my conclusions from, feel free to jump in at some place.
 
Most reviewers don't have the time to properly overclock a GPU. We also don't know what Kingpin means when he says "every card does 1539". Does he mean it can pass one loop of Fire Strike (not that hard), or a 1 hour gaming loop? Additionally, some of those 980 Ti cards come with a ridiculously low power limit, and you'll sooner hit the power limit than run out of OC headroom. The Kingpin card comes with an OC and LN2 bios that has something like 350W+ power limit, so obviously power limit won't be a problem. If you look around on [H]ard as well as OCN you'll find plenty of users with different 980 Ti's rocking 1500+ OC's. Sure some may require a bios mod to increase the power limit, but point being these non-Kingpin cards aren't inherently weaker if the playing field is leveled.

Also if you look at TPU's results here you can see it's pretty much just a silicon lottery. The Asus Strix has the best power delivery (12+2 phase) out of the custom cards they tested yet it was close to the bottom of the pile in terms of overclocking. Not only that, but the Palit 980 Ti JetStream runs off a reference board yet beat all other cards - ref or custom - in terms of OC. If that doesn't prove it's all a silicon lottery I don't know what does.

With that being said, I'm sure if we gave all those cards TPU tested to Kingpin, we'd see every singe one of those cards do over 1500.
 
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I agree.
I have an EVGA SC+ ACX2.0+ with Asic 68.9%.
My overclocking results:

Completely stock with boosted fan profile (not noisy) and 110% power limit it seems to level out at 1412MHz.

With unlocked voltage and power with 120% power limit it will run at 1454MHz with about 30mV extra voltage, same fan profile as above.

With the same unlocked BIOS with 120% power limit, voltage explicitly to 1.25V in the BIOS, high fan (cant remember how high, but was a bit loud) it ran at 1500MHz.
I dont run my card like this, it was to see what is possible.
NOTE: This card has 1x8pin and 1x6pin power connector yet can still pull 1500MHz with a lowish ASIC and none high performance cooler.


With a better cooler it would easily achieve higher than 1500MHz.
I may test this theory soon with an Xtreme IV cooler.
 
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I had the same choice and went 970SLI. Cheaper and faster was a win win for me and I needed the 3 DVI ports for surround. No way you will get anywhere near the same performance you have already with a 980ti but it might, MIGHT, be a bit smoother with more VRAM but even in 3D surround I have yet to hit any VRAM limits on my setup and that resolution is much much higher than what you run. SLI can sometimes be a hassle with nvidia's crap drivers and profiles but so far nothing I haven't been able to work around. I personally wouldn't have spent that kind of coin on what will be at best a lateral move.
 
my two cents is that you would notice a good boost in games that don't have good SLI support and games that require more VRAM. What are your 780s 2GB or 4GB? If you have the 4GB models it really is sufficient for now but 2GB models definitely have limitations. (or am I thinking of the 680s having 2 and 4GB versions)

Honestly it is so late now you might as well wait til next gen since that isn't that far away and your SLI is pretty damn good compared to most. The boost isn't night and day perse but noticeable but is the cash worth it considering the 980 TI will be crap in 6-9 months? These next gen GPUs will be like going to a 680 TI or whatever or even better. The last die shrink was a big jump but this one is supposed to be even bigger. Is 650 bucks worth it for a mere 6-9 months of debatable better performance?

EDIT: BTW with the 980 TIs low ASIC like 68* crap out at 1500+. I have a 68.9% or something like that and I get 1500 in all games at 1.254v and 1550 in select games but it is shaky. 1570 is stable in only the lowest demanding games like Saint Row 3rd but might still crash at some point. Basically getting 1500 is fairly common but break 1500 100% stable is limited only to the highend ASIC cards. Don't even dare plain on getting more then 1500 unless you get binned but again it just isn't worth the money. Running the card at 1.254v is perfectly fine. I have been running mine at that forever running F@H and games all god damn day. that voltage is perfectly fine. I have the Gigabyte G1 BTW. It runs cool too...bit loud on high fan setting but I play with headsets so never notice.

But again is it really worth 650 bucks when you could just save that for next gen that is going to be a solid 50-100% faster? I bought the 980TI because I was running a 770, winch was a rebranded 680 or whatever. So for me the jump was massive but if I had your rig i would simply wait til next gen. I plan on upgrading again then too because I always upgrade at the die shrinks. (the last die shrink was a laptop for me because i could own a desktop back then :/)
 
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Well I just received my 980 Ti Classy. Dang this thing is huge. It just looks quality, too. I mean really it looks... well... classy.

Anyway, the box was in decent condition. It had obviously been opened before. Everything was in there, and in good condition. All the stickers and whatnot were there. The GPU anti static bag was taped but it was obviously done after someone had opened it once. The only cap that was off the outputs was the HDMI output, so I guess that's all they used.

I slotted it in and fired the machine. Bootup went fine, installed the drivers just now. First thing I did was fire up GPU-Z and read ASIC quality. It's 81.8%. I guess that's not that bad?

I'm not sure about how it'll overclock or anything, haven't gotten around to that yet. Maybe gonna fire up 3DMark or something and check the boost speeds and temps.
 
First thing I did was fire up GPU-Z and read ASIC quality. It's 81.8%. I guess that's not that bad?

that's great, my MSI Gaming card is 72.2%. as you probably already know ASIC doesn't necessarily equate to overclock potential. congrats on the new card :)
 
I ran FireStrike Ultra. It looks like the stock boost is somewhere between 1413 and 1443. The GPU temps average around 77 with the fan operating at ~40%. At least that's what openhardwaremonitor reports.

My results were really freaking weird, though:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/9057287?
They were abnormally low, and the entire time I was looking in the monitor, the GPU usage was pinned at 89%. I'm not sure what's going on with that...
 
Nevermind, I figured out the issue. The problem was that since I have a G-Sync monitor, it turned G-Sync on by default. Apparently these test probably use v-sync. After I turned G-Sync off entirely, the test was actually capping out my GPU usage. This was the result:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/9057550?

It looks like it's on the higher end of average. As for the boost speeds, they were 1392-1430 throughout the tests. Temps stayed under 80, and the fan was always at 40-48%....

I'm guessing that this thing could really use a higher fan profile... >_>;

What do you folks think?
 
Mine has an ASIC of 77% and runs around 80-81C on stock can profile. After installing MSI Afterburner and making a custom fan curve, I get gaming load temps around 60-64C (fan speed between 55-65%) and peak load temps around 70-71C (fan speed between 70-80%)...stock clocks but with power factor set to 115%. Sustained core speed is around 1405 and peaks at 1430 during gaming. Can get a bit noisy when approaching 70C, but still a hell of a lot quieter and cooler than my previous 780 SLI setup.
 
Okay, I tried overclocking some while running Fire Strike Ultra (Including the demo, so the cooling would get a decent stress test) after every overclock. What I did was just pin the GPU fan to 80% for the mean time and then kept going up increments. I'm kind of new to GPU overclocking obviously. I haven't touched the power target yet.

Currently I have it at +75Mhz. It doesn't seem to be as high as it can go. It boosts anywhere between 1468 and 1517. This is the current FS result with that:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/9058121?
Temperatures seem to level out around 62 or so.

I'm going to try pushing the envelope a bit more I guess?
 
Yeah, I capped out at 130... well no, I didn't really cap out. I didn't push voltage any higher nor did I see if I could get it just slightly higher. I went for 158 and I saw a boost clock of 1600 for a few seconds and then the thing just died on. I had to restart. Went down to 130, but forgot to change the fan profile. Ended up crashing some time inwards. Jacked it down to 103 kept default fan profile. Still died. I just said screw it at that point and decided to mess with the fan profile a little. I've got it at 70% for anything above 60 and then ramping up after that. I'm playing Far Cry 4 and it seems to be quite stable (well for 30 minutes at least), staying at 1531 boost at pretty much all times. No crashes thus far. The gameplay is much smoother than it was on my 780's, and I'm really liking that part.

I think if I put this card on my Kraken G10, I could easily get it to stay stable at 1550-1572 boost, as it seems to not only run cooler than my 780's did, but I know for a fact that my 780's stayed at 60 or under at all times on my Kraken G10. The problem was that with the stock fan profile the card was hitting 77-80 temps, and that was not nearly good enough for 1550-1570 boost. With my new fan profile I'm at under 65C at all times.

I think the G10 may require a shim, though. I know it does for the 780 and 980 Ti SC's.

So I think this is a good card? These are decent clocks, right? I guess I'll put this in the 980 Ti OC thread in the nvidia section.

Edit: Stable for 1.5 hours now.
 
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I think the 'much smoother' is in your head ;) but I'm glad you're happy. It's a nice card for sure. Only reason I didn't buy one myself over the 970's is I needed to buy a $90 adapter to go with it for 3D surround which made the cost about $130 more than 2 970's which in the end are 10% faster anyway. SLI can be a PITA with nvidia's shitty drivers though, that much is true...
 
I think the 'much smoother' is in your head ;) but I'm glad you're happy.

This is something I also experienced going from 970 SLI to 980 Ti. Only did it because I pretty much sold the 970s for what I paid for them. I think it's a case of a bit less lag from having just one card and due to no SLI it somehow manages to feel a bit smoother. It's not a big difference if the framerates are the same.

OP, definitely put the G10 on the 980 Ti. IMO these should've come with watercoolers from the start.
 
I think the 'much smoother' is in your head ;) but I'm glad you're happy. It's a nice card for sure. Only reason I didn't buy one myself over the 970's is I needed to buy a $90 adapter to go with it for 3D surround which made the cost about $130 more than 2 970's which in the end are 10% faster anyway. SLI can be a PITA with nvidia's shitty drivers though, that much is true...

It's definitely not in my head. It's very real. Before I used to get very noticeable random stutters and stuff, and G-Sync wouldn't work quite as smoothly as it should (especially in demanding games). With this thing, all of that has literally just been thrown out the window. It's a very noticeable difference. Not sure if it's a "worth 650$" noticeable difference, but it's noticeable. Gaming is incredibly smooth now. Also my framerates seem to be higher, though I'm not sure if that's because of the clocks this thing can attain; my 780 SC's were at stock.

Anyway I've had to dial the overclock back from 1541 because while it's stable for hours (I had Far Cry 4 running for well over 6 hours straight while I slept), it doesn't seem to be long term stable; at some point it does crash out. That and Shadow of Mordor crashed it rather quickly somehow, and then it ran fine for several hours when I jacked the voltage up slightly, but then crashed again. Basically I'm getting this warning in the event viewer, and the game just pretty much locks up and I only hear the sound:
Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.
I'm pretty sure it's related to my overclock, but I wonder if anyone here has some tips. My temperatures are always under 65C.

In EVGA PrecisionX I have the clock offset to +75 atm, which is 1517 (+100 to get to 1541-ish, +130 gets me to 1572, though that only was stable for Firestrike Ultra benches...). When I set the OC to +158 before, it did a pretty hard crash. Like I can tell when it's really crashing because of the overclock. These latest few, the program just stops and nothing much else really happens. Is it maybe the adaptive voltage? I have "Overvoltage" set in Precision X to +37mV, but there doesn't seem to be an actual change in what it runs at... it caps out at 1.212 on the voltage reading; I'm not sure if this voltage setting is actually getting applied... I'm kind of confused here; Power Target is capped at 115%. There's also an "Overboost" option, and I guess this card allows that? I'm a relatively new GPU overclocker, could use some aid. I'm still not sure whether I'll keep this card, but I do want to see what it can do.
 
Things you'd gain by switching from 780ti SLI to a 980ti:

Quieter
Less demand on your PSU

lower case temps

Twice as much ram (I dont have too much issue with vram capping at 1080, hell most games I run DSR at 1440 and havent really noticed impact on my gaming.... but I know for a fact I am using up every last drop of vram)

+5 to sanity by switching to a single card


Plus with your 500 plus dollar purchase of a 980ti you'll buy decent driver support until the next chip comes out, and at that time you can come hang out under the bridge with the rest of the shunned "legacy" video card users.



Also, i see PrecisionX being mentioned in this thread.... do yourself a favor and use nvidia inspector instead if you want to OC and monitor your cards....
 
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