Which 770?

[Werewolf]

Hi

Younger brother has been bugging me about upgrading his videocard, and we're looking at an Nvidia 770 (seems to be the sweet spot for performance/price), to replace his current 580 which has been playing up, apparently it doesn't seem to have enough ram* for his high res texture packs for silly block game erm java does lego Minecraft, along with the odd crash at other times

I was wondering if anyone had any opinions on the likes of the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 WindForce 3x OC 4096MB?


It's to go with an
Intel I7 4770
Gigabyte Z87 UD3H
32gb of ram
assorted drives (2tb boot, 480gb SSD for games, and a couple of others).

His main display is a 1920x1080 with a secondary display that is (from memory) either 720p or 1920x1080.

The big possible issue I can see is that he may need to replace his current PSU at the same time, as it's an Antec Trupower 550, and the recommended supply for the 770's seems to be 600watts.



*At only 1280mb he is apparently getting messages in minecraft about it.

 

[Qitarah]

32gbs of ram?! That's a lot!

Anyways I guess he has the 1.5GB version of the 580?

Would be good looking into how much VRAM he really needs. Because a 4gb 770 is quite a lot of money, and is close to the 780 in price. The 780 being 3gb of VRAM and a lot faster. I don't think anyone would advise taking a 4gb 770 over a 780.

It's also Worth while looking at what AMD has on offer as well.

The 280x (770 equivalent) it's as fast as the 770, cheaper and comes with 3gb VRAM.

The 290 is equivalent to a 780 and has 4GB of VRAM!

Edit just saw he does have the 1.5 gb version. Defiantly don't consider the 770 4gb, please!!

Nvidia: 780
AMD: 280x or 290x

I would get one of the 290s for him, with one of the fancy non reference cooler. Check this one out, fantastic price and FAR better than the 770!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-239-MS

As for power supply I'd recommend a good 650w brand for peace of mind, could get away with lower but meh may cause some issues but I'm not 100% sure! I'll leave that to the pros to tell you if it's ok.

 

[Werewolf]

Cheers, I'll point him to this, although he's very much an Nvidia guy when it comes to videocards (I'm the opposite as an Ati/AMD guy).

 

[nicnik]

yeh the 290 is better. Unless the 770 with 4GB VRAM is considerably cheaper it's no contest.

 

[ndaar]

If it NVidia it comes down to basically:

A 770 4gig or a 780 3gig.

Unless he really needs the extra Vram on the 770 the 780 is obviously a much better card for not a lot of extra over the 770 4gig.

Or there are obviously cheaper ati options if he wanted to consider them.