Opinions on sidegrading to a 980 or upgrading to an Titan X

escrow4

Diamond Member
Feb 4, 2013
3,339
122
106
Option 1, so I have a Gigabyte 780 Ti Ghz @ 1215MHz in-game that has served me well since Feb 14, now that Nvidia has gassed and cremated Kepler in terms of drivers, what say the forums to sidegrading to a Gigabyte G1 Gaming? Cost here would be around $350 after selling off the Ti.

Option 2, would be a Titan X at around $1100 after selling off the Ti.

Option 3, would be staying put.

Both are for 1200p as I never bothered to upgrade my monitor for super max settings and AA @ solid 60FPS. Decisions, decisions, opinions?
 

lehtv

Elite Member
Dec 8, 2010
11,897
74
91
Nvidia has gassed and cremated Kepler in terms of drivers

What's this?

IMO wait for 980 Ti. Both 980 and Titan X are overpriced. And 980 is not enough of an upgrade anyway
 

escrow4

Diamond Member
Feb 4, 2013
3,339
122
106
What's this?

IMO wait for 980 Ti. Both 980 and Titan X are overpriced. And 980 is not enough of an upgrade anyway

Flick through some of the older threads. The gap is now wider than 10% and drivers are focussed now on Maxwell.
 

lehtv

Elite Member
Dec 8, 2010
11,897
74
91
10% is hardly enough of a reason to upgrade.

You sure that the focus on Maxwell doesn't have anything to do with the possibility that Maxwell simply needs more focusing, and Kepler already had its improvements? Don't fix something that isn't broken and all that.

Also no, I can't be bothered to wade through pages upon pages of old threads just to find some nugget of evidence that Kepler is being "gassed and cremated" in the drivers. You have read the relevant threads so you probably have them in your browser history and can link them here.
 

lehtv

Elite Member
Dec 8, 2010
11,897
74
91

Okay. I'll just quote the second link here

Silverforce11 said:
Some say NV is maximizing/optimizing Maxwell because its a new architecture so there's more performance to extract so the gap grows over time. Some say NV is not bothering to optimize for Kepler and focus on Maxwell only. Believe what you will.

I'm leaning towards the first hypothesis. Though the second hypothesis doesn't really make much sense to me anyway, as Kepler already had a year of optimizing before Maxwell was released.
 
Last edited:

DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
I'm still using my GTX 680 and haven't felt the need to upgrade yet for the +70%.

I'd say to wait until there's some game that annoys you because it forces you to dial down the settings too far. By then the 980 ti and Radeon 3xx might be out.
 

Pandora's Box

Senior member
Apr 26, 2011
428
151
116
780Ti to a 980 is a definite side grade, especially at 1200P. 3GB of VRAM is still ok for that res, for now anyway.
 

escrow4

Diamond Member
Feb 4, 2013
3,339
122
106
Isn't the definition of a sidegrade a waste of cash?

Money isn't an issue. Lack of a decent upgrade is. AMDs 390X is MIA, the mythical 980 Ti is a mystery, so its a toss up between the 980 and the X.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
Option 3, would be staying put.

Both are for 1200p as I never bothered to upgrade my monitor for super max settings and AA @ solid 60FPS. Decisions, decisions, opinions?

This sounds like a reasonable option here. $350 to move from 780Ti OC to a 980 OC seems like a waste of money to me. You are also gaming at 1200P which means a card like 780Ti is still fast. Ultimately based on the games and FPS vs. IQ balance you use/play, you should be the one judging if it still meets your performance requirements. In your case I would either wait for GM200 6GB / R9 390/X or even all the way until 14nm/16nm generation. Let's see how 780Ti fares at your resolution in upcoming games like GTA V, Batman AK, Project CARS, the Witcher 3. IMO, you completely missed the time to sell a 780Ti and side-grade to a 980. Since you didn't sell the 780Ti around 980's launch, your 780Ti has lost a lot of resale value up to today, while 980 has hardly dropped in price since launch. For that reason 980 at today's prices should be ruled out automatically as a viable upgrade, not to mention it's hardly more than 15% faster than your card on average at 1080p-1200p.

If anything, getting a 2nd used 780Ti for $350-400 would be better for you than selling a 780Ti and paying $350 on top to move to a 980.

The only viable upgrade for you today is Titan X or 780TI SLI.

9475
 

lehtv

Elite Member
Dec 8, 2010
11,897
74
91
If anything, getting a 2nd used 780Ti for $350-400 would be better for you than selling a 780Ti and paying $350 on top to move to a 980.

Or sell the 780 Ti for $350-400 and upgrade to new GTX 770 SLI for around $330 per card, and get free Witcher 3 on top of that. 512mb more VRAM and 50W less power consumption per card
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
Or sell the 780 Ti for $350-400 and upgrade to new GTX 970 SLI for around $330 per card, and get free Witcher 3 on top of that. 512mb more VRAM and 50W less power consumption per card

Ya, that's a decent option too if he is not against SLI. This way he'll get 2 Witcher 3 coupons, possibly selling 1 to subsidize the cost.

The power reduction is actually more than 50W.

MSI Gaming 780Ti
Avg = 230W
Peak = 278W

MSI Gaming 970
Avg = 168W (-62W)
Peak = 192W (-86W)

However, if the OP doesn't want dual cards, there is no upgrade option besides the Titan X.
 
Last edited:

ocre

Golden Member
Dec 26, 2008
1,594
7
81
Option 1, so I have a Gigabyte 780 Ti Ghz @ 1215MHz in-game that has served me well since Feb 14, now that Nvidia has gassed and cremated Kepler in terms of drivers, what say the forums to sidegrading to a Gigabyte G1 Gaming? Cost here would be around $350 after selling off the Ti.

Option 2, would be a Titan X at around $1100 after selling off the Ti.

Option 3, would be staying put.

Both are for 1200p as I never bothered to upgrade my monitor for super max settings and AA @ solid 60FPS. Decisions, decisions, opinions?

yeah, i dont think i would upgrade to a 980. An overclocked 780ti is fast enough.

Why would the titan X be 1100 after selling your 780ti?

Regardless, it is probably best if you wait. Your GPU overclocked is not far off from the gm204 and the titan x is really expensive. Unless you just dont care about the price at all, then wait till AMD launches and see what happens to the market then.

The titan X is pricey and completely out of reach for some. Then there are others who could afford it but dont see the reason or need to spend that much. Then there are some who dont even think twice and just want the best.

I think the titan X doesnt offer much to 980 owners and i am not interested in it at all. The 780ti overclocked, i consider it faster than a stock 970 and close enough to a 980. In your case, i would just wait it out

the GPU market is just dull right now.
 

Mondozei

Golden Member
Jul 7, 2013
1,043
41
86
Wait for 980 Ti to release during late summer if you have the patience(and if you *must* have an NV card).

Otherwise, I'd even recommend going for a second card for now and get the flagship single GPU next year. HBM is gonna be huge. Plus, a jump from 28 to 14/16 nm is also a very big deal. The stars are aligned for a very major boost next year.
 

lopri

Elite Member
Jul 27, 2002
13,310
687
126
Both are for 1200p as I never bothered to upgrade my monitor for super max settings and AA @ solid 60FPS. Decisions, decisions, opinions?

Have you actually used a larger, higher res screen, or are you simply afraid of losing frame rates or in-game quality settings without the experience of a larger screen?
 

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
9,147
1,329
126
If you're not concerned with the money then get the Titan X. If you are, wait for the next GM200 card to release, probably a 6GB Titan X with a different name.

The Titan X is crazy with an overclock. One of them @ 1400 Mhz is about as fast as my 780ti SLI @ 1300Mhz was in raw benchmarks, about 10-15% slower. A single overclocked Titan X is going to be better than 980 SLI accounting for the removal of SLI scaling, stuttering and lack of profile issues. One of my Titan X is idling all the time unless I'm playing Far Cry 4 or Crysis 3 with MSAA on. I went through most of my installed game library to see which games I could disable SLI for in the game's driver profile and it's almost everything.

The 6GB version of Titan X is going to be even faster out of the box than the Titan X is i expect. There will be cards with custom cooling, power delivery and big stock overclocks.

It's whether you are okay paying the extra $ for the Titan X now to not wait for the next GM200 card. I wouldn't bother with a 980. Even though nvidia has nuked Kepler by abandoning optimizations for the architecture in new games, I still don't think it's worth the upgrade as you'll only see a bump in newer games released since the 980/970 launched. In Battlefield 4 the 780ti and 980 are still performing almost the same for example.
 

escrow4

Diamond Member
Feb 4, 2013
3,339
122
106
Have you actually used a larger, higher res screen, or are you simply afraid of losing frame rates or in-game quality settings without the experience of a larger screen?

Moreso that both boxes are attached to the same screen. And 1600p would mean scaling with DPI likely for office use. Meh. Looks like I'm waiting. See what GTA V brings to the table at least. And those are AUD prices, the Titan X here isn't $1K its just under $1600.
 

kasakka

Senior member
Mar 16, 2013
334
1
81
The Titan X when overclocked is roughly the same as a GTX 970 SLI or a bit faster/slower depending on the game, at roughly 500-600 euros more. Of course avoiding the SLI or memory issues is worth it to some but it's still a pretty big premium for that.

I'd wait at least till AMD gets their new cards out. If anything at that point there might be some good cards for grabs on the used market to tide you over until a better upgrade comes along.
 

exar333

Diamond Member
Feb 7, 2004
8,518
8
91
If you NEED the raw power now, the Titan X is a great choice IF you plan to OC it. Stock, maybe not so much.

If you can wait another ~2 months, there will be a lot more choices. The 390/x will be arriving and likely the 980Ti as well. You could then make your decision based on the best option at that time. That is what I suggest, unless of course you are hurting for GPU grunt now.
 

5150Joker

Diamond Member
Feb 6, 2002
5,549
0
71
www.techinferno.com

See here: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37288761&postcount=14 I'll echo what others have said, either stay put with what you got (it's more than enough for most games at 1440p and below), go with a TitanX or wait on the GM200 version with 6 GB that's supposed to be released during late summer.
 
Last edited: