With the release of the new Maxwell cards comes an opportunity for those with a smaller budget to still get a decent upgrade for their systems. Early adopters will often sell their previous GPUs once they've upgraded allowing you to get a better card than your budget would usually allow, though with a risk of ending up with a bum card. The ASUS ROG GTX 780 Ti MATRIX Platinum is a good example with a DirectCU II air cooler for general usage but the LN2 switch will also allow more extreme cooling methods for those looking for something a little more impressive. The factory overclock is not bad at 1006/1072MHz core and 7GHz effective memory but the overclock [H]ard|OCP managed at 1155/1220MHz and 7.05GHz pushes the performance above that of the R9 290X of the same family. If you can find this card used at a decent price it could give you more of an upgrade than you thought you could afford.
"In today's evaluation we are breaking down the ASUS ROG GTX 780 Ti MATRIX Platinum video card. We put this head-to-head with the ASUS ROG R9 290X MATRIX Platinum. Which provides a better gaming experience, best overclocking performance, and power and temperature? Which one provides the best value? "
Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:
- MSI GTX 980 OC @ HardwareHeaven
- Taking It To The Limit: Overclocking NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 970 & 980 @ Techgage
- Gigabyte G1 Gaming Geforce GTX 980 Review @ HiTech Legion
- Palit GTX 970 JetStream 4 GB @ techPowerUp
- ASUS Strix Edition GeForce GTX 970 Graphics Card Review @ Techgage
- ASUS GTX 970 STRIX OC Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Palit GTX970 JetStream OC @ Kitguru
- Testing Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 980 4GB Graphics Cards In SLI @ eTeknix
- Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 980 4GB @ eTeknix
- ASUS STRIX GTX 970 DirectCU II OC 4GB Review @HiTech Legion
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 4GB @ eTeknix
- MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G Review @HiTech Legion
- Nvidia Quadro K5200, K4200 and K2200 Professional Graphics Cards @ X-bit Labs
- Gigabyte R7 250X OC Performance Review @ Neoseeker
- Sapphire R9 285 ITX Compact v MSI GTX760 Gaming Mini ITX @ Kitguru
Just sold my EVGA GTX780 SC
Just sold my EVGA GTX780 SC ACX for $320 on craigslist.
picked up a EVGA GTX 980 for $549 at fry’s. That was easy!
SO, you paid $229 for a
SO, you paid $229 for a minimal upgrade. You’re the kind of guy who keeps the new GPUs flowing. Thank you.
well the upgrade as is raw
well the upgrade as is raw power is minimal yes, but as tom explained the power savings/heat difference is HUGE.
Somebody’s got to be first at
Somebody’s got to be first at paying those prices, it helps amortize the engineering costs. Now its AMDs turn to produce a GPU with more processing power at a lower cost, and hopefully get Nvidia’s prices to drop in 6 months, after the new bleeding edge customers pay for Nvidia’s engineering costs. I’m sure AMD has some Binned high end product, that did not make the grade, just waiting in the wings, bad units fused off, to get back in at that performance level, until its real new stuff hits. Nvidia is at an advantage in the low power using/cooler running GPUs, for HTPC, and such, but at a price premium, while AMD can provide the same gaming power at a lower cost, Hopefully AMD can get some liquid cooling into tight spaces, for the thermally constrained HTPC market, while it works on its lower power using engineering problems. AMD is the expert at the price/performance sweet spot, while Nvidia has the R&D funds to push the low energy consumption metrics further along. AMD just keeps going, and could use a breakout product, or maybe the console makers will do an APU refresh, and give AMD the revenues to hire more engineering and R&D folks. That AMD custom K12 ARMv8 ISA based APU needs to give Nvidia some competition for the K1 Denver market, The AMD K12 expected in 2016, Nvidia has the jump on that market(tablet, chromebook), AMD’s Sky Bridge motherboard socket pin compatible ARM and x86 SKUs will be a big hit with cost conscious device OEMs, and hopefully system builders, wanting to save money on system board development costs for the ARM, and x86 devices market. AMD may be struggling, but they sure continue to innovate with the meager resources that they have.
2015 and the next few years afterwards are going to be very interesting. I’m definitely a trailing edge/last years technology buyer, and for sure the gaming companies have analysts, and quants, to tell the what level/version of gaming API has the largest market share, year on year, and are developing mostly for that market share, while developing and testing for the future APIs, once the new API/s reaches mainstream levels, it always takes a few years, and last years hardware games just fine.
Well, Probably not gonna buy
Well, Probably not gonna buy a used card anyways but a card used for gaming, even heavy gaming is probably more reliable than a card used for mining 24/7
These CU 2 cards have
These CU 2 cards have terrible vram cooling. I would rather opt for MSI or any other vendor that has a frontplate.
Already seeing 780ti ‘s at
Already seeing 780ti ‘s at $430!
Personally thinking of
Personally thinking of putting my MSI 290x Gaming up for sale. I know the performance increase is only around 10-15% but in terms of power usage it would be a nice upgrade.
I have waited for an upgrade
I have waited for an upgrade for a while, I still run my Sapphire HD 6950 2 GB. Newegg had a GTX 780 ti for less than $400. Should I buy that or the new Gtx 980.