Upgrade from 680GTX (4GB) SLI to 980?

Bandalo

Junior Member
Feb 7, 2013
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I've been running a pair of 680's for some time now, on a 2560x1600 Dell. Playing Shadows of Mordor and FC4 lately, and I've noticed I have to scale back the detail to keep the game at a decent framerate.

Do I go with a single Titan X? Or 980SLI for a bit more cash? Or wait until the 980 Ti is released? My 680's are watercooled and I'll watercool whatever else I get. Right now I'm leaning towards a pair of Asus Poseidon's with the built-in waterblocks.

Most of the benchmarks I can find either look at 1440p or 4k, and I don't plan on getting a 4k monitor for another couple years.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
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If you are going to watercool, get the Titan X since you'll be able to get 1.45-1.5Ghz out of it with an unlocked BIOS. At that point, it's basically as fast as R9 295X2/GTX970 SLI at 1600p but you don't care if SLI/CF works. Personally, I would wait for R9 390 series as I have a feeling R9 390 nonX might offer 85-87% of the stock Titan X performance for < $600, which means I'd rather pick 2 of those over a Titan X. However, if you can afford it, and don't want to wait, the Titan X is the best card out today.
 

Bandalo

Junior Member
Feb 7, 2013
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My only objection to the Titan X at this point is the cost. For $100 more than the cost of a Titan X and a waterblock, I could pick up the 2 Asus 980GTXs with built-in waterblocks. And these cards look like they're decent overclockers as well.

I still haven't seen any expected release dates for the AMD card.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
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My only objection to the Titan X at this point is the cost. For $100 more than the cost of a Titan X and a waterblock, I could pick up the 2 Asus 980GTXs with built-in waterblocks. And these cards look like they're decent overclockers as well.

I still haven't seen any expected release dates for the AMD card.

My reasoning is that if SLI doesn't work, the Titan X will be 30-40% faster. The issue with GTX980 SLI is that GTX970 SLI provides 88-90% of the performance for nearly half the price. With the Titan X OC vs. GTX980 SLI OC there is a legitimate reason to pay a premium for a single GPU experience - frame times and guaranteed performance when SLI doesn't work. In the case of GTX980 SLI vs. GTX970 SLI at 1600p and below, if you can back off 4xMSAA in games where VRAM becomes an issue for 970s, you are in a situation where you pay a massive premium for what is more or less a similar gaming experience.

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GTX970 SLI can be purchased for $640-660 today vs. $1060-1200 for GTX980 SLI and all you get is 10-12% more performance. Ouch.
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Maybe even consider EVGA GTX970 SLI and this way you have 3 months to step-up if the performance doesn't meet your needs and/or if NV launches GM200 6GB cards, and or if NV drops the price on a GTX980 in 3 months from now (a possibility considering R9 390X should be announced on June 2-5, 2015 at Computex). In all honestly between GTX970 SLI and the Titan X, the 980 SLI seems like a solution that sits in no-man's land.
 
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scooterlibby

Senior member
Feb 28, 2009
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I basically have the same thing (a 690), and I'm waiting for the 390X or the 980Ti. Titan X is too much and so is the 980. I want a single GPU that flat out beats my 690 for about $750 max.
 

raghu78

Diamond Member
Aug 23, 2012
4,093
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OP wait for the R9 390X and R9 380X to launch at Computex in early June. These cards will force price cuts on Nvidia GTX 980 and also make Nvidia release a fully enabled GM200 6GB at a lower price. You have a pretty powerful setup already. So waiting for 2 months is not a deal breaker. :thumbsup:
 

Bandalo

Junior Member
Feb 7, 2013
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I'm not sure if Nvidia will cut prices on the 980GTX even when the new AMD card is released. They've rarely cut prices on the top-end stuff. Don't think they did it for the 680 or 780.

I was thinking the 980SLI would be fairly future-proof. I had the 680SLI for almost two and half years now, so if it lasts that long it would be worth it, right?

Regarding VRAM - Wouldn't 4GB be sufficient at 1600p for almost everything? I could see needing more for 4k. Or at least that's what I've read.
 

RaistlinZ

Diamond Member
Oct 15, 2001
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The reason your 680SLI is now limiting is because of the VRAM. Maybe a 6GB 780 SLI configuration would be good for your resolution. You might be able to find them at a good price used. I just think the Titan X is too much.
 

raghu78

Diamond Member
Aug 23, 2012
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I'm not sure if Nvidia will cut prices on the 980GTX even when the new AMD card is released. They've rarely cut prices on the top-end stuff. Don't think they did it for the 680 or 780.

I was thinking the 980SLI would be fairly future-proof. I had the 680SLI for almost two and half years now, so if it lasts that long it would be worth it, right?

Regarding VRAM - Wouldn't 4GB be sufficient at 1600p for almost everything? I could see needing more for 4k. Or at least that's what I've read.

You realize GTX 980 uses the GM204 chip and that Nvidia will bring a 980 Ti which will use the GM200 big Maxwell chip. Buying a GTX 980 SLI now is a very bad idea. You should atleast wait till June and then see how the competitive situation is and then pick the card you want. I can bet the GTX 980 will come down to USD 350 - 400 once R9 380X / R9 380 and R9 390X / 390 launch.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
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I'm not sure if Nvidia will cut prices on the 980GTX even when the new AMD card is released. They've rarely cut prices on the top-end stuff. Don't think they did it for the 680 or 780.

NV cut the price of GTX780 by $150 when R9 290/290X launched. What is true is that NV rarely cuts the price until AMD forces their hand but once AMD has competitive parts, NV does cut prices:

"First and foremost, both GeForce GTX 780 and GeForce GTX 770 are getting price cuts, effective tomorrow (October 29th). GTX 780 will be reduced by $150 to $499, and meanwhile GTX 770 will be getting smaller $70 trim, bringing the price of that card down to $329. For the GTX 770 this is something of a delayed price cut &#8211; AMD launched their competitive Radeon R9 280X just shy of 3 weeks ago &#8211; but as the saying goes it&#8217;s never too late."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7465/...-gtx-780770-price-cuts-gtx-780-ti-launch-date

^ The crazy part is that even after a $150 price cut to $499, the $399 R9 290 was still a better buy than the 780. Essentially overnight a $400 R9 290 made a $650 780 irrelevant. If you bought 2 of those 780s 2-3 months before R9 290 launched, you just lost $500, got less VRAM and worse SLI scaling. Of course in hindsight it's easier to see how horrible of an investment $1300 GTX780 SLI was at launch considering its performance vs. HD7970Ghz CF and R9 290/290X CF today.

I was thinking the 980SLI would be fairly future-proof. I had the 680SLI for almost two and half years now, so if it lasts that long it would be worth it, right?

A GTX960 is 95% as fast as a 680. You can see where GTX960 SLI sits in that Sweclockers chart I linked. Either GTX970 SLI or GTX980 SLI are solid upgrades. Honestly, in terms of future-proofness, it's better to buy GTX970 SLI and set aside $500-600 saved from NOT buying GTX980 SLI and just buy new cards in 18-20 months from now. I am telling you that you buying GTX980 SLI will not give you any more future-proofness over GTX970 SLI. Ask yourself this, did GTX480 SLI/580 SLI/680 SLI provide more future-proofness than GTX470 SLI/570 SLI/670 SLI? No. The gamer would have been way better off getting 2nd tier NV cards in SLI and just upgrading quicker with the $ saved.

By the time next generation games come out, both 970 SLI and 980 SLI will be equally slow, but in the former case you'll have $500+ in your bank account for Pascal or 14nm AMD GPU upgrade that will bring 40-50% more performance than a GTX970. Another way to think about it, you'll have $500 extra towards a 4K monitor down the line.

IMO, don't fall for the hype of a 980. It's not worth the price over the 970 even with the 3.5GB of VRAM on the 970.

Remember with SLI/CF you have a scaling penalty which means the 16-19% advantage GTX980 normally has needs to be multiplied by 0.7x-0.8x factor which in turn gives us an "SLI-equivalent" advantage of just 11.2-15.2%. If you look at TPU and Sweclockers, that's about where 980 SLI falls vs. 970 SLI = 10-12% advantage at most.

Also, don't forget that after-market 970s with good overclocking headroom have very good scaling too.

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Regarding VRAM - Wouldn't 4GB be sufficient at 1600p for almost everything? I could see needing more for 4k. Or at least that's what I've read.

Ya I don't think you are VRAM limited since your 680 has 4GB each. If you had 680 2GB in SLI, that would be different.
 
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Bandalo

Junior Member
Feb 7, 2013
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First off, thanks for the input from everyone so far.

I get what you're saying on the scaling, but the cost difference is a little less than expected with the watercooling. I just priced out a 970 SLI solution with waterblocks and such, and it's going to run around $1050 or so total. The Asus Poseidon 980 solution with everything I need will run around $1350. So it's a smaller difference. The question then becomes is the extra $300 worth the extra 15 or so percent performance increase. I don't mind upgrading every 2 - 2.5 years, but more frequent than that gets too expensive, especially with SLI.

I wouldn't mind waiting a bit, but eventually I'll have to decide. When the new AMD card comes out, Nvidia might drop prices. By then though the 980 Ti will almost be out. Then waiting a bit more might net you the new 1080 GTX (or whatever it'll be called). The sooner I upgrade though, the more my old 680's will fetch on eBay.

I'm still trying to read up a bit more on VRAM issues in current games. Most sources seem to say the 3.5 vs 4GB isn't really noticeable. Just not sure how true that will be in the future, or how much it applies at 1600p. (again, most articles and tests seem to focus on 1440p or 4k only)
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
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I wouldn't mind waiting a bit, but eventually I'll have to decide. When the new AMD card comes out, Nvidia might drop prices. By then though the 980 Ti will almost be out. Then waiting a bit more might net you the new 1080 GTX (or whatever it'll be called). The sooner I upgrade though, the more my old 680's will fetch on eBay.

I don't think there will be a 980Ti and this mythical much faster 1080GTX Maxwell. Once full 3072 CUDA core GM200 consumer cards launch, that's about it for this generation. Even if NV launches a 2880 version, with an after-market cooler and 1217mhz clocks, it will be nearly as fast as the Titan X. The next time we are going to see a huge increase in performance and perf/watt will be with Pascal. Tom Peterson already said that the GM200 in the Titan X is the final frontier for Maxwell architecture -- the only thing he hinted they can do is play with clock speeds but we aren't going to see a GeForce Maxwell chip with more than 3072 CUDA cores before Pascal.

As far as your 680s go, they more or less bottomed out in resale value. From now on, whatever little value they will drop will be a small fraction of the amount of $ you could save should you go R9 390/390X CF or GM200 6GB SLI vs. Titan X SLI. The other thing is you kinda mistimed your GPU upgrade path to be honest. It's already 6+ months since 980 came out and you waited all this time. If you waited 6 months to get them, might as well wait another 3 months and get GM200 6GB/R9 390 that will surely be way faster. However, since you want to watercool, that changes the picture a bit since as you said the Poseidon cards are already that way from the factory. I personally see no reason at all to watercool 970/980 style cards since they don't overclock any better on water other than another 50mhz or so.

If you don't mind upgrading every 2-2.5 years and you are really unhappy with the performance of your 680 4GB SLI, might as well get the 980s. Me personally, I would wait since I think $1300+ for what are mid-range Maxwell chips is a bad deal.
 

Bandalo

Junior Member
Feb 7, 2013
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0
I'm seeing Sept as a possible release date for the 980 Ti, if it exists. I'm curious how NVidia will build and market them, since they won't want to cut into Titan X sales I'd imagine. Or maybe they have some other plan.

I wanted to watercool for two reasons. One, keep the temps down and get a better overclock. Two, I already have a nice cube case with 2 big radiators, fans, pumps and tubing galore. I've had watercooled cards for a long time, and I don't want to waste all the cooling hardware now! Even if it's looking like it might be pointless on future Nvidia cards. We'll see what the future brings I suppose, maybe I could down-size the case if the next cards are that good.

You've pretty much talked me out of the 980's at this point. I had them in my cart all ready to go too! I didn't have too much control over my upgrade timing. I was gone for work a lot of last year, and I've been too busy to game much since I got back, so it's only now I'm starting to work on some new titles that are pushing my current cards hard. I think I can hold onto them for another few months anyway though. We'll see if the new AMD card blows everything out of the water, or if at least it makes Nvidia drop some prices.

It's going to take a lot to make me go back to AMD though. I've had bad luck with the drivers in the past.

Thanks again for the insight and opinions. It's nice to get something other than "Nvidia sux" or "Asus is crap" for a response.
 

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
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I would stay with what you've got until 980ti or 390 comes out and see. You likely aren't GPU limited in 99% of the games out.
 

guskline

Diamond Member
Apr 17, 2006
5,338
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Bandalo: Are your video cards WC'D? What case do you have?

I had a 3770k matched with 2 GTX670 FTWs (2G Vram) in SLI and went to a single GTX970. Benchmark wise I dropped a slight bit but it actually "felt" faster with the 970. Unlike my rig below which is on one loop the 3770k has a AIO Kraken X60 cpu cooler but the gps were air cooled.

In your case, you are not held back by the Vram BUT the 680s, though very good, don't have the HP of a single GTX980 but they are close.

The Titan X is a totally different creature. Very expensive, but like RS said, might not be a bad move for a single gpu if you slap a water block on it.

I run 2 EK block water cooled Sapphire Tri-X R9-290s in CF in my rig below. In the league of a single Titan X for benchmarking BUT less Vram, etc, etc.

Since you watercool and you will be breaking down the loop to replace the 680s (I assume), I would "soldier" on until the release of the 980TI and AMDs 390. You need to see all the options before you break down the loop.
 
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ocre

Golden Member
Dec 26, 2008
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I'm not sure if Nvidia will cut prices on the 980GTX even when the new AMD card is released. They've rarely cut prices on the top-end stuff. Don't think they did it for the 680 or 780.

I was thinking the 980SLI would be fairly future-proof. I had the 680SLI for almost two and half years now, so if it lasts that long it would be worth it, right?

Regarding VRAM - Wouldn't 4GB be sufficient at 1600p for almost everything? I could see needing more for 4k. Or at least that's what I've read.

I wouldnt go with 970 sli with a water block. The 970 is easily cooled as it is. These are the options i would look at.

A) keep what you got and wait for new cards.
B) go with 970 SLI but just pick up two cards with decent cooling. You can get good deals on nice aftermarket 970s. I would say $650-680 for some great cards.
C) A single 980 and overclock the snot out of it
D) The titan X

You can pick up water block(s) down the road and dont have to spend the cash right away.

As for waiting.....
We know AMD will launch eventually. We also suspect they will offer a better value on the top end. They have to or it will be pointless.
But the thing is, how much can they change things? The titan X with a water block will be a beast, even after the 390x. An overclocked 980 will still be very powerful compared to a 390 non x.

I do see the situation improving when AMD launches, at least for price vs performance of the AMD cards. But that is months down the road. And doing the math, I dont think the improvement will be major. Not this time. Not while everyone is stuck on 28nm.

Right now the 970 offers 90% of the 980s performance for a little over 300$. I dont think things will change all that much in this price range. I dont see the 980 dropping to $350 either. I would say that AMD will launch a card faster than the 980 for 500-550 and nvidia may drop the 980 50 bucks. And overclocked 980 will still be extremely fast, they get pretty close to stock titan X performance.

Sure, months down the road prices things might change. They always do. prices always go down overtime. But its hard to imagine a drastic change. I will eat my hat if the 390 forces the 980 to $350. I just dont see it.
And if you are planning on water cooling, you are gonna have a lot of power there. No matter which card(s) you buy.

Anyway, think on it.


I would love to see a really powerful 390x for a very good price. Something 20% faster than the titan X and can overclock even further. If something like that launched for $699, i would sell my 980 in a heartbeat. It doesnt have to meet that criteria, that is an example. But if it is something great, i have already thought about what i am gonna do. The 980 will still have a decent resale in the used market, the 970 will probably hold even more of its value. If the 390x is epic, i will be selling my 980 and picking it up. (i even kept my old GPU for a backup)
It just has to be fast enough, a decent amount faster than a 1500mhz 980 without being priced too high. It has to meet those conditions.

I guess that is off topic. That has been in my head a lot but the longer we wait, the more i start believing that the situation wont drastically change when AMD launches. I am thinking, titan X performance for about 800$ now. But I used to think things would change a lot more.
 

Headfoot

Diamond Member
Feb 28, 2008
4,444
641
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Wait for the new cards to drop. AMD's competition will lower prices on NV's stuff even if you choose to go NV. Your 680 SLI will definitely be fast enough to hold you over until then.

It will be worth seeing how 2x390 stacks up vs 390x and Titan X both price and performance wise.