Ermmmm There is a bottleneck and with a pair of 780's and I guess the OP is looking for more than 60fps.
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780 x 2 possible with this PC?
- Thread starter deth502
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Ermmmm There is a bottleneck and with a pair of 780's and I guess the OP is looking for more than 60fps.
Yet he states he has a 60fps monitor....
And like i said the bottleneck is only above 60fps below that there isnt one as the cpu is not restricting gpu usage.
I was in a similar situation but with a i7 960, went with a 4770k bundle over a second card with the intention of adding a second later on down the line.
I could have easily lived quite happily with my old setup, but just wanted updated bits and I was going to do it sooner or later.
Everyone has different views on whats acceptable but you have some good options ahead of you, gregster gave a good example of bottlenecks, that wouldn't actually bother some people if they had something middle of the road - so you could add a second 780 and see what its like then just return if it doesn't work out as much as you had hoped, or upgrade the whole pc and add a second later.
I could have easily lived quite happily with my old setup, but just wanted updated bits and I was going to do it sooner or later.
Everyone has different views on whats acceptable but you have some good options ahead of you, gregster gave a good example of bottlenecks, that wouldn't actually bother some people if they had something middle of the road - so you could add a second 780 and see what its like then just return if it doesn't work out as much as you had hoped, or upgrade the whole pc and add a second later.
It will do that fine.
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Sorry to hijack but I have an almost idenntical setup and was curious if I would need to change my CPU to acheive this.
2 differences are -
16GB GeIL Veloce 2400MHz RAM
i7-3820 (Sandybridge-E)
Thanks in advance!
2 differences are -
16GB GeIL Veloce 2400MHz RAM
i7-3820 (Sandybridge-E)
Thanks in advance!
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- 23 Nov 2009
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- 290
I assume anything much above 60fps would need a beefier CPU?
Depending on the game yes, however most games will be fine above 60fps bar battlefield, crysis 3 and metro etc.
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OK, great - appreciate the advice 
OP grab the 4770k
The old i7 9xx CPUs are still good (I still own 2 of them) but they have their limitations. You are running yours at 3.8 which really is not enough. If you want to play multiplayer games a good overclock will help a lot.
Also if you put a second GTX 780 on your 920 system you may find the fps a lot more erratic than when using a 4770k. The minimums will also probably be lower too on the 920. Using a 4770k should be a bit smoother as it is more efficient, powerful, faster, better overclocker than a 920.
The 4770k also gives you the option to use PCI-E 3.0 although at 2560 x 1440 it won't make much difference.
OP what you could do is get the second GTX 780 and put it into your 920 system and run some benches and then compare it to other setups using a 4770k and 780sli, then decide whether to go for the 4770k upgrade.
Here is some links to benches you can use for comparison
Links to useful benches.
3dmark11
3dmark11 Extreme
3dmark Firestrike
3dmark Firestrike Extreme
3dmark Vantage
Unigine Valley
Unigine Heaven 4
Unigine Heaven 3
Catzilla 1.0 Benchmark Scores
Sleeping Dogs
Tomb Raider Benchmark
Sniper Elite V2 Benchmark
The old i7 9xx CPUs are still good (I still own 2 of them) but they have their limitations. You are running yours at 3.8 which really is not enough. If you want to play multiplayer games a good overclock will help a lot.
Also if you put a second GTX 780 on your 920 system you may find the fps a lot more erratic than when using a 4770k. The minimums will also probably be lower too on the 920. Using a 4770k should be a bit smoother as it is more efficient, powerful, faster, better overclocker than a 920.
The 4770k also gives you the option to use PCI-E 3.0 although at 2560 x 1440 it won't make much difference.
OP what you could do is get the second GTX 780 and put it into your 920 system and run some benches and then compare it to other setups using a 4770k and 780sli, then decide whether to go for the 4770k upgrade.
Here is some links to benches you can use for comparison
Links to useful benches.
3dmark11
3dmark11 Extreme
3dmark Firestrike
3dmark Firestrike Extreme
3dmark Vantage
Unigine Valley
Unigine Heaven 4
Unigine Heaven 3
Catzilla 1.0 Benchmark Scores
Sleeping Dogs
Tomb Raider Benchmark
Sniper Elite V2 Benchmark
According to the benchmarks on the last page a stock 930 gets minimums of 62 on bf4 so at 3.8 it will be plenty for 60hz gaming. And again the fps will only be more eratic if on a 120hz monitor. Everyone seems to be ignoring this fact.
I don't always get 62fps min in BF4 using 4 Titans or 290Xs and intel Hexcores. There are a lot of thing that can effect this.
Yes but the extra cards dont effect cpu performance and that is down to shoddy bf4 programming/drivers and not worth recomending the op update his cpu for this one game for this rare dip.
I have recommended the OP to test it for himself by trying 780sli on his old system first.
The CPU has quite an effect on game performance too. If I play BF4 as a single player or on an empty server I can get away with running my CPU at 4.0ghz even with 4 cards, if it is a busy server I need to overclock my CPU quite a bit higher to avoid a performance drop.
I know you did but all this talk of bottlenecks and bf4 is not relevant and confusing to the op considering he never mentioned bf4.
I wouldn't advise the OP to buy another 780 if he feels that 60fps is all he needs. He should stay with what he has however, sometimes we like to upgrade and I wouldn't want to spend money that will not be beneficial. You make some good points but a bottleneck isn't good and I would hate to choke a couple of 780's.
It was you who mentioned BF4 but the above is still relevant to other games.
Have you ever tried running two or more modern GPUs on an X58 system ?