Upgrade dilema, what would you do?

Grandmaster Fap! · 12 May 2015 at 12:49

Ok guys, im planning on getting myself a ROG swift or 'something' that does 1440 and G-sync. My system is getting long in the tooth but ive not needed to upgrade as its been a champ playing everything ive thrown at it playing at 1080p. Core i5 2300(yeah this has been ace believe it or not!), GTX 780 3gb, 8gig ram and nice SSD.

So question is, moving up to 1440, do i SLI another 780 which means a new mobo and new chip, beefier psu, or just use the money and go GTX980 but stand to have a bottleneck by the 2300? Getting the 980 will cost more than an entire system upgrade.....grrrr i r stumped, halp!

stulid · 12 May 2015 at 12:50

How about get the monitor and see how things play on it.

Scurra · 12 May 2015 at 12:58

stulid said:
How about get the monitor and see how things play on it.

I'd do this too, I recently upgraded to a Dell 2715H 1440p monitor and I have to say I was a little concerned that my rig wouldn't cope but it's actually doing a really good job.

For reference my system is an AMD FX6300 OC'd to 4GHz and SLI Windforce 770s and I can run pretty much everything at a satisfactory level. Even GTA V with all the extra graphics settings on and everything ramped up to very high/ultra runs at a pretty consistent 40-50 fps.

Grandmaster Fap! · 12 May 2015 at 14:51

Seems like the obvious course of action, with luck i'll be surprised at how well the 780 holds up

stulid · 12 May 2015 at 15:01

Got a ssd? They are a worthwhile purchase.

Grandmaster Fap! · 12 May 2015 at 16:41

Do indeed, MX100, best upgrade ive made in years, felt like a new computer after i installed it!

Jinxter · 12 May 2015 at 23:16

Your 780's RAM becomes more of an achilles heel the further up the resolution scale you go as textures tend to place more demands from it. And with games getting ever more sophisticated and demanding even today's cards will eventually succumb IMO. But that's progress for you.

A GTX980 would be able to handle 1440p pretty well whereas a 970 would probably be more hit and miss depending on title with its gimped memory allocation where only 3.5GB is available at full speed. Not to say a 970 is bad as I bought one recently but I'm only expecting great results at 1080p.

I would only consider another 780 if it is finally confirmed that DX12 in Windows 10 can indeed utilise a full 6GB combined from two cards instead of the conventional SLI'd 3GB.

I'd suspect an additional 780 card or even a GTX980 would be bottlenecked by your CPU however again, DX12 may negate this scenario somewhat if more work load can be assigned to the GPU.