MSI Geforce GTX 780 or wait?

k31ron · 19 Oct 2015 at 14:44

bit of a noob question

I had my heart set on a GTX970 but its above my £200 threshold

then I saw the MSI Geforce GTX 780 Gaming Edition OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card on sale for £179 which looked quite good. reckon the 970's will go down any time soon (want my card for Fallout 4 release :-)

) or go 780?

Ian Evey · 19 Oct 2015 at 14:53

k31ron said:
bit of a noob question

I had my heart set on a GTX970 but its above my £200 threshold

then I saw the MSI Geforce GTX 780 Gaming Edition OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card on sale for £179 which looked quite good. reckon the 970's will go down any time soon (want my card for Fallout 4 release ) or go 780?

780 is a great card for £180 , the 970 is better but not by a lot.

If you are only planning on 1080 res gaming then you wont see much difference and tbh who knows how the 780 or 970 will play fallout 4 and if the extra 1gb vram will come into play at all.

I personally think the 970 could be £20 cheaper in a daily deal but only you know if the extra cost is worth it to you for the 970 for similar performance.

RavenXXX2 · 19 Oct 2015 at 14:55

Ian Evey said:
If you are only planning on 1080 res gaming then you wont see much difference and tbh who knows how the 780 or 970 will play fallout 4 and if the extra 500mb vram will come into play at all.

Fixed

Ian Evey · 19 Oct 2015 at 15:09

RavenXXX2 said:
Fixed

I did not want to open that can of worms

ttaskmaster · 19 Oct 2015 at 15:15

I have the 780 Lightning and that handles everything just fine in 1080.
It can also overclock like a ************, so there is that...!

Gibbo · 19 Oct 2015 at 15:25

HI there

What I can tell you is the MSI 780's will probably be all gone this week, they are selling extremely fast.

strumpusplunket · 19 Oct 2015 at 15:29

Haven't found a game yet that can't be played at decent settings (usually max) at 1080p on my 780. Mine overclocks very nicely, but I usually don't even need to apply the overclocked profile at this res.

Hoping it does me proud for Witcher 3 over Xmas!

smsmasters · 19 Oct 2015 at 15:29

I prefer Maxwell cards since they sport MFAA.

2x MFAA (0x MSAA) is essentially free AA.

Aretak · 19 Oct 2015 at 15:30

I bought one last week and have been delighted with it. Extremely quiet, never even hits 70 during gaming and mine overclocks to 1200MHz on stock voltage (although the memory's a bust, since it's Elpida garbage and only reaches 6.2GHz). At those speeds it rivals a 970, although obviously uses a lot more power.

RavenXXX2 · 19 Oct 2015 at 16:01

Aretak said:
I bought one last week and have been delighted with it. Extremely quiet, never even hits 70 during gaming and mine overclocks to 1200MHz on stock voltage (although the memory's a bust, since it's Elpida garbage and only reaches 6.2GHz). At those speeds it rivals a 970, although obviously uses a lot more power.

Is that the 780 gaming? mine hits 80c at stock.

Aretak · 19 Oct 2015 at 16:24

RavenXXX2 said:
Is that the 780 gaming? mine hits 80c at stock.

Yes. Strange to have such a large discrepancy. I did luck out with a good ASIC at 85.5%, although that shouldn't result in a huge temperature difference. Even during multiple loops of Valley it only hits 70-71 and the fans don't really spin up much at all, getting to ~1350RPM compared to ~1050 at idle. Running in a Define R4 with the vent covers on and the case fans undervolted too, so not exactly incredible airflow.

Maybe a dodgy thermal paste job at the factory?

razorpakk · 19 Oct 2015 at 16:28

Aretak said:
Yes. Strange to have such a large discrepancy. I did luck out with a good ASIC at 85.5%, although that shouldn't result in a huge temperature difference. Even during multiple loops of Valley it only hits 70-71 and the fans don't really spin up much at all, getting to ~1350RPM compared to ~1050 at idle. Running in a Define R4 with the vent covers on and the case fans undervolted too, so not exactly incredible airflow.

Maybe a dodgy thermal paste job at the factory?

That kind of Asic Does make a big difference.
It lets your card operate at lower volts, that's "all" that matters for cooling.

ALXAndy · 19 Oct 2015 at 16:31

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-207-MS

k31ron · 19 Oct 2015 at 16:45

thanks, gaming or lightening ? £5 extra for lightening

I was about to press buy on Friday but the notice the gaming went up £10 from £169 and just made me pause...

still like the idea of 970 with its 3.5gb and potentially more future proof

I do 1080 currently but would like to go up to 1440 when i see a good deal on a monitor (and have spare cash)

razorpakk · 19 Oct 2015 at 16:51

You might regret buying the old 780, you won't regret buying the more power efficient, cooler and newer 970.
You don't buy gpus every few months right? So just go for 390 or 970

Just get what you want, money come and go!

Aretak · 19 Oct 2015 at 16:53

razorpakk said:
That kind of Asic Does make a big difference.
It lets your card operate at lower volts, that's "all" that matters for cooling.

I know it makes some difference in terms of heat and voltage, but 10+ degrees even with me running overclocked vs stock? I don't know.

k31ron said:
thanks, gaming or lightening ? £5 extra for lightening

The Lightning has a far fancier custom PCB with an insane number of power phases and such, but the reviews I read when deciding on that or the Gaming suggested that the tri-fan cooler is quite a bit louder. If noise isn't a concern (I'm incredibly obsessive about it), definetly go for the Lightning.

ttaskmaster · 19 Oct 2015 at 17:10

Aretak said:
the reviews I read when deciding on that or the Gaming suggested that the tri-fan cooler is quite a bit louder.

I never even heard my Lightning fans until I manually turned them up above 60% for some benchmarking and they never seemed to go above 45% in-game.

RavenXXX2 · 19 Oct 2015 at 17:20

Aretak said:
Yes. Strange to have such a large discrepancy. I did luck out with a good ASIC at 85.5%, although that shouldn't result in a huge temperature difference. Even during multiple loops of Valley it only hits 70-71 and the fans don't really spin up much at all, getting to ~1350RPM compared to ~1050 at idle. Running in a Define R4 with the vent covers on and the case fans undervolted too, so not exactly incredible airflow.

Maybe a dodgy thermal paste job at the factory?

I would replace it but they got a stick over the cooler screws.

My ASIC is 80%, what's your stock voltage when gaming.

Phixsator · 19 Oct 2015 at 17:25

780 lightning from MSI is a beast...ive had one and it was so ffing solid..it clocked 1300+ on air(older drivers, something went wrong after 347) and the overall build quality of the card is supreme. Its has nr 1 spot on my own Hall of Fame. Overclocked to 1200, or was it 1250? cant remember, it matched a stock 980 g1 gaming from gigabyte in firestryke getting 12000 gpu score. Ofcourse you can push the 980 further but thats pretty darn impressive. Only downside is the tesselation performance but so fare its only "the witcher 3" thats overusing that.

Aretak · 19 Oct 2015 at 18:03

RavenXXX2 said:
I would replace it but they got a stick over the cooler screws.

My ASIC is 80%, what's your stock voltage when gaming.

1.162V.