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Gtx 780 6gb worth it?

S

Slick Fork

Member
Hi there,

I'm considering upgrading my gpu and am torn between the 780-3gb vs the 780-6gb. The premium I'd pay is roughly $70. The two cards in question are the Asus dcu2 3gb and the evga 6gb.

My gaming is mostly heavily modded skyrim civ 5, various total war titles, and DCS flight sims.

Thoughts?
 
1080p?

If so, then a 3GB card is fine for these games and most games on the market today.

heavily modded skyrim civ 5, various total war titles, and DCS flight sims.
 
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1080p single monitor mostly for now, with DCS I fire up a second monitor for the targeting panel. I am hoping to get one of those ultra wide 2600*1080 monitors in the next two years
 
Slick Fork said:
1080p single monitor mostly for now, with DCS I fire up a second monitor for the targeting panel. I am hoping to get one of those ultra wide 2600*1080 monitors in the next two years
Click to expand...

Up to you then. I don't know of any game out now that needs more than 3GB of vram at 1080p. Not even highly modded Skyrim or WatchDogs. If you don't plan on upgrading the GTX 780 in the next two years, then it may be worth it? Personally I would be looking at the R9 290 to save some money and receive the same performance. You will also have the bonus of 4GB of vram.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202080
 
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The answer is likely still not worth it. They tested the new 6gb models, there is a post about it on these forums. They didn't see a benefit to them at 4k or surroundview resolutions. There isn't enough horsepower to properly utilize 6gb of vram on the card unfortunately.
 
I have both a EVGA GTX780 Classified AND a Sapphire R9-290 Tri-X. For the $$ spent now that the bit mining crazed has ebbed, the R9 290 is the best bang for the buck plus you get 4G vram.
 
digitaldurandal said:
The answer is likely still not worth it. They tested the new 6gb models, there is a post about it on these forums. They didn't see a benefit to them at 4k or surroundview resolutions. There isn't enough horsepower to properly utilize 6gb of vram on the card unfortunately.
Click to expand...


I wondered about that but couldn't find any information or tests to back that up anywhere.
 
guskline said:
I have both a EVGA GTX780 Classified AND a Sapphire R9-290 Tri-X. For the $$ spent now that the bit mining crazed has ebbed, the R9 290 is the best bang for the buck plus you get 4G vram.
Click to expand...


Staying away from the radeons for the time being. The price point is attractive enough that I keep toying with it but I'm not a fan of the power consumption. Just means that much more heat in my case.

As far as waiting for the 880, I get the impression that it might be a long wait and at a much higher price point than I'm at now.
 
6GB if I was buying.

The problem is that it does not have the horsepower to drive games that might require that amount of memory at the settings that will use more than 3GB.

The only game I can see it benefiting in my experience is COD Ghost. It goes a bit over the 3GB barrier and causes some hitching if you max the settings.
 
If you would consider a future purchase of a second card, and running an SLI rig, then I would definitely get the 6 GB card. An SLI set-up has the additional horsepower to utilize the additional memory, and you need to remember that memory in SLI setups isn't added together, but mirrored. Meaning that two 3GB card in SLI still only have 3GB of memory utilization.

If you don't plan or want to consider an SLI setup, then you won't regret anything by saving the cash now and purchasing the 3GB model.
 
6gb is worthless at 1080p if your buying a new monitor thats ultra wide in the future and if its closer to 2 years away you will be nearly 3 GPU generations back at which point the 6gb 780 will be slower and the extra memory wont make the difference.

Only a few games need more than 3gb and then only when modded
 
We have had a few games using more than 2GB, watchdogs, titanfall and Wolfenstein. But they have all come in healthily under 3GB.

Historically it was the case that extra VRAM wasn't really worth buying, it almost never paid off as the card wasn't fast enough to use the settings that would utilise the extra VRAM. But we are seeing a few games now adding higher texture options in there which do make a reasonable difference in quality. Its inevitable that VRAM usage will increase in the future, its not inevitable that it will increase at 780 levels of performance, because it will be extremely rare in the market place to find these upgraded cards. But at the same time the competition has 4GB VRAM.

Its not an easy call. For $70 extra I would personally live with the reduced setting here and there and not worry about it too much, but some people seem allergic to running anything but "maxed out". Really depends on how much you care about 1-2 settings in a few big games over the useful life of the card.
 
Slick Fork said:
Staying away from the radeons for the time being. The price point is attractive enough that I keep toying with it but I'm not a fan of the power consumption. Just means that much more heat in my case.

As far as waiting for the 880, I get the impression that it might be a long wait and at a much higher price point than I'm at now.
Click to expand...

power_average.gif



I see ~15W avg between the two (780 vs 290). Not too big of a worry, really. Especially when you can get a 290 for $318.40AR shipped.
 
3DVagabond said:
power_average.gif



I see ~15W avg between the two (780 vs 290). Not too big of a worry, really. Especially when you can get a 290 for $318.40AR shipped.
Click to expand...

Hmm, the reviews I saw showed the difference at ~60 watts.

Regardless, I pulled the trigger on the 780 6gb this morning. It was about a 25% premium on the AMD290, which I'm ok with. I've had both brands in the past and while I don't have any solid complaints about the AMD's, NVidia does seem to have them beat in energy and therefore heat; and I just seem to like the Nvidia ecosystem better.

I did read this review yesterday:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/06/11/asus_strix_gtx_780_oc_6gb_review_exclusive#.U8AAlJUg9es
That suggested that there was a benefit to having the 6gb.

So, I figured I'd rather spend the few bucks now knowing that I'm likely buying way more than necessary at the moment and have the Vram "just in case" as opposed to sitting there in two years wishing I'd spent a little extra now. Running a pair in SLI was an excellent point for this card that I hadn't thought about.

This is my first time buying such a high end card so it's a little bit of an experiment. I'm hoping that it will remain usable for a little longer than my traditional practice of picking a mid-range card and getting impatient with it after two years.

As an additional bonus; it's an EVGA so if an 880 does pop up in the next 90 days I can just utilise the step-up program and jump onto that bus!

Thanks for all the help and comments everyone! It arrives on Monday via Amazon so it'll be a long wait over the weekend.
 
You are in so much trouble. The problem is that now you are about to get used to having your settings on high. So from now on as the card slowly falls behind and you are turning your settings down you will notice that its happening. The same process happened on a mid range card exactly the same way only you started with a little less good settings.

What will happen is a new card will be out in a couple of years and you'll be looking at what you could have graphical and what you do have and you'll be seeing your card in the reviews being compared. The problem will be the mid range will only be 50% faster and the high end card will be 100%. You'll immediately think "well its not worth just getting 50% so I'll get the 100%".

I know this is what will happen because I made the foolish mistake of going crossfire with a 4870X2. What happened is the next cards got released and the only way I could get a doubling of performance was to buy the dual card. Cue 4 sets of cards now where everytime I end up buying 2 high end cards. I will literally have to skip the next generation or only get the same performance but in 1 card because of it. So I applaud your desire to get longer out of the card, if you are do it you are a better disciplined man than I. But if you don't and you end up buying that high end card I'll get a kick out of hearing that in 2 years time!
 
RaulF said:
6GB if I was buying.

The problem is that it does not have the horsepower to drive games that might require that amount of memory at the settings that will use more than 3GB.

The only game I can see it benefiting in my experience is COD Ghost. It goes a bit over the 3GB barrier and causes some hitching if you max the settings.
Click to expand...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/call-of-duty-ghosts-pc-performance,3683-8.html

I do see a little of what you are talking about but 11.3ms variance is only a frame and a half. Shouldn't be that noticeable but maybe if you are very sensitive to it.

IMO turn AA to 4x instead of 8x. The difference when you are moving around in a quick game like that is not that much. However it is up to you because it is your money.

For OP:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2382888

Here is the thread with the 6gb SLI review. Even with two of them they were unable to use the VRAM effectively.
 
digitaldurandal said:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/call-of-duty-ghosts-pc-performance,3683-8.html

I do see a little of what you are talking about but 11.3ms variance is only a frame and a half. Shouldn't be that noticeable but maybe if you are very sensitive to it.

IMO turn AA to 4x instead of 8x. The difference when you are moving around in a quick game like that is not that much. However it is up to you because it is your money.

For OP:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2382888

Here is the thread with the 6gb SLI review. Even with two of them they were unable to use the VRAM effectively.
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That's a good suggestion, 8xFSAA doesn't do diddly for 1440p and above and is questionable over 4x at 1080p... FSAA and multiplayer games don't mix in the first place though 😀
 
digitaldurandal said:
The answer is likely still not worth it. They tested the new 6gb models, there is a post about it on these forums. They didn't see a benefit to them at 4k or surroundview resolutions. There isn't enough horsepower to properly utilize 6gb of vram on the card unfortunately.
Click to expand...
There's a couple things out there that can consume the full 6 GB of vram, but at the moment, gaming isn't one of them. Get the 3 GB.
 
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