120hz or 1440p @ 27" gaming monitor? For someone who can't see them in real life

[provost]

@TheMighty- if you are preferring to with Nvidia, then get a 780 or even a 780 classy, if you want to have some fun with benching. Both the 780 and 780 classy have very good modded bios and soft volt mod hacks. 780 Ti and 780 Ti classy are turning out to be a bust because of a different chip that controls the voltage. No one has been able to hack it yet. In fact, there are a lot of upset early adopters due to this voltage locking.

You can get a pretty decent price on a used 780 or 780 classy, if you look around. I have heard that 290 is a great value too, and can be hacked to a 290x.
290x appears to perform very well on high resolutions due to the wider bus that any of gk110s. I haven't a clue about Gsync, as I have only read and heard about it. I am always skeptical of grandeur claims based on early marketing or reviews. I would like to see some real world data from users on the forums, before I take a leap of faith. And the same goes for AMD's Mantle tech that is supposed to give a magical boost to the new AMD cards.

 

[TheMighty]

I'm trying to decide which gtx 780 card I should purchase. I'm open to any models and I don't have a brand loyalty/preference. I have a $25 Best Buy gift card laying here that I'd like to use up.

I'm just having trouble figuring out the best card in terms of clock speeds, cooling, noise, and price. I don't HAVE to use the best buy card, but I'd like to. I'd much prefer to get the best card possible for the money though. I've been looking at GTX 780's in the 500-550 price range. Do the core clock speeds make that much difference?

For example, from what I've searched the ASUS models have really great cooling, but one of the Gigabyte models has the fastest core clock speed for relatively less money than some of the other cards?

Halp! lol

 

[moonbogg]

I'm trying to decide which gtx 780 card I should purchase. I'm open to any models and I don't have a brand loyalty/preference. I have a $25 Best Buy gift card laying here that I'd like to use up.

I'm just having trouble figuring out the best card in terms of clock speeds, cooling, noise, and price. I don't HAVE to use the best buy card, but I'd like to. I'd much prefer to get the best card possible for the money though. I've been looking at GTX 780's in the 500-550 price range. Do the core clock speeds make that much difference?

For example, from what I've searched the ASUS models have really great cooling, but one of the Gigabyte models has the fastest core clock speed for relatively less money than some of the other cards?

Halp! lol

Regarding the bolded text, you may not agree with my position here, but I have learned something over time. Within reason, it doesn't matter which card you get. The 780's in stock form are quiet, cool and clock well. I say get the cheapest one you can find because in 6 months any advantage a classy or whatever fancy brand you get won't matter, not even one little bit. Its my opinion that paying an extra hundred bucks or more for 10fps is laughable. The slowest 780 will give the same gaming experience as the most expensive one, but it will look better on graphs and the FPS counter will be a little higher, but the experience is the same.
For me, the GPU industry moves too fast to spend top dollar on premium models. They lose their appeal too quickly and I got tired of watching those dollars just get wasted year after year when the next gen mid range $300 card makes that premium high end look kind of ridiculous.

EDIT: To give an example, the money I saved over the past few years from buying gtx 570's instead of 580's, gtx 670's instead of 680's, buying a 3930k instead of an extreme chip, buying a fast SSD instead of the FASTEST SSD, 1600mhz ram instead of the FASTEST ram, all that money saved was spent on getting me into a whole new hobby. I bought a badass .223 target rifle, awesome zoom scope and reloading equipment with a little extra cash over what I saved over the years. Its just the way I roll now after feeling totally stupid after buying the top end everything for years and years.

 

[TheMighty]

Regarding the bolded text, you may not agree with my position here, but I have learned something over time. Within reason, it doesn't matter which card you get. The 780's in stock form are quiet, cool and clock well. I say get the cheapest one you can find because in 6 months any advantage a classy or whatever fancy brand you get won't matter, not even one little bit. Its my opinion that paying an extra hundred bucks or more for 10fps is laughable. The slowest 780 will give the same gaming experience as the most expensive one, but it will look better on graphs and the FPS counter will be a little higher, but the experience is the same.
For me, the GPU industry moves too fast to spend top dollar on premium models. They lose their appeal too quickly and I got tired of watching those dollars just get wasted year after year when the next gen mid range $300 card makes that premium high end look kind of ridiculous.

EDIT: To give an example, the money I saved over the past few years from buying gtx 570's instead of 580's, gtx 670's instead of 680's, buying a 3930k instead of an extreme chip, buying a fast SSD instead of the FASTEST SSD, 1600mhz ram instead of the FASTEST ram, all that money saved was spent on getting me into a whole new hobby. I bought a badass .223 target rifle, awesome zoom scope and reloading equipment with a little extra cash over what I saved over the years. Its just the way I roll now after feeling totally stupid after buying the top end everything for years and years.

So you're saying I'd be better off getting the cheapest one and overclocking it? Or are you recommending I buy two 770's and SLI them now?

I'm open to either suggestion

 

[bystander36]

I can say with experience that EVGA has great customer support and RMA policies. After my experiences, and some interesting ones I've read from others, I will likely stick with EVGA.

As far as the 780 ti and voltage locking, that is only an issue if you are an extreme overclocker. For the average user, they OC great.

 

[provost]

Moonbogg has really good advice about not chasing the latest and greatest (unless you are a bencher), and bystander 36 has also made a good suggestion as to the EVGA.
I believe EVGA 780 ACX is probably your best bet if you are not looking to watercool. I would have suggested the classy otherwise, since the prices in the resale market are crazy cheap for both, relatively speaking.
ACX is quite, overclocks just fine with modded bios, and it is also cooler than the stock cooler. You don't really need to flash the bios at all, if you are just gaming. Boost 2.0 would take care of the OC for you.

 

[Face2Face]

I couldn't wait for G-Sync and opted for a Qnix 2710 27" 1440P monitor. I ordered the perfect pixel model, hopefully it's worth the extra cost? I am looking forward to seeing the difference vs. 1080P..

Kind of crazy, my monitor left Korea on Dec 19th and is being delivered to me on Dec 19th...