760 now, or wait for 860?

[lazereagle]

I'm happy enough with my rig that it wouldn't kill me to wait a bit, but I'd love to get myself a new card fairly soon.

I know it's all speculation, but what do y'all think? How much improvement will we see with the 800 series, and how long will we have to wait to see it? Would you buy now, or wait it out?

 

[Novuake]

 

[DarkSable]

^+1

That being said... the 800 series is Maxwell, not Kepler. And we're already starting to see peeks of maxwell in the 750ti.

A new architecture is always going to make a difference, and this should be making a pretty decent one.

Considering that maxwell shouldn't be more than a few months out from the lower end cards (they'll probably launch with the 860 if they follow typical patterns, then move up to the 880, fill in the low-end, then hit the extreme cards once the manufacturing process is fully refined)* not counting oem parts.

...I would personally wait. I'd definitely consider it worth it, for a couple reasons:

1) the performance increase and power efficiency of Maxwell over Kepler. It would not surprise me to see the 850ti if not the 860 be a 60w card - i.e. taking all the power it needs from the PCIe bus.

2) The price because of freaking bitcoin. It's caused AMD cards to skyrocket, which is thus having a second shockwave increasing the price of nvidia cards as gamers buck at the overpriced Radeon cards. Hopefully the bitcoin bubble will have burst by the time Maxwell comes around... or will have steadied out enough that the prices are reasonable and we can all stop hearing our coworkers talk about this cool new money that goverments can't control that's soooo trendy right now.

 

[Novuake]

In all seriousness, for now we are looking at an amazing improvement per watt coming with Maxwell.

Whether that is going to actual improve the performance that will be gotten in each stacked product or just whether the power will be reduced greatly is hard to say.

Be sure that there WILL be an improvement, but how much? Hell knows.

How the prices will be is also a mystery. Personally I would buy now since the market is pretty volatile thanks to LiteCoin miners. Even Nvidia cards are getting low on stock.

Again, buy now, don't wait.

 

[DarkSable]

How the prices will be is also a mystery. Personally I would buy now since the market is pretty volatile thanks to LiteCoin miners. Even Nvidia cards are getting low on stock.

Again, buy now, don't wait.

Out of curiosity, why are you saying to buy now when, as you say, even nvidia cards are getting low on stock and prices are skyrocketing all over the place?

I would think by far the better move would to be to duck into the bomb shelter for a while, keep your head down, and wait for prices to get back to sane levels again. (Well, relatively sane - $600 for a flagship is still kinda ridiculous.)

 

[Deuce65]

I'm going to tell you the exact same thing I tell everyone else who asks "should I buy now or wait until the next new card comes out". If you're ready to buy, then buy. If you're not ready to buy, then wait. No matter what you buy or when, there will ALWAYS be a better card coming out in "just a few months". At least with Kepler we had a pretty good idea what you would get if you waited (for example, we all knew the 780ti would have all cores unlocked and could thus extrapolate approximately how it would perform); with Maxwell we have no idea really. I'm sure there will be a performance increase but my feeling is it won't be nearly what people seem to expect, just going by Nvidia's marketing strategy so far. Notice how they arent telling us how these cards will crush current and future games and instead keep beating us over the head with how much less power they would use? On that note, not to get off topic here but who cares? Don't get me wrong I want to save 2 bucks a month on my power bill as much as the next guy but when was the last time you said to yourself "wow, that new card looks great I better get...oh wait no never mind, 250 watts is too much. If only they would some day come out with a card that used less power...

 

[Deuce65]

How the prices will be is also a mystery. Personally I would buy now since the market is pretty volatile thanks to LiteCoin miners. Even Nvidia cards are getting low on stock.

Again, buy now, don't wait.

Out of curiosity, why are you saying to buy now when, as you say, even nvidia cards are getting low on stock and prices are skyrocketing all over the place?

I would think by far the better move would to be to duck into the bomb shelter for a while, keep your head down, and wait for prices to get back to sane levels again. (Well, relatively sane - $600 for a flagship is still kinda ridiculous.)

Nvidia cards are not getting low on stock, what are you talking about? With maybe the possible exception of the limited run cards, they are at full stock everywhere. Their prices haven't gone up at all and the only movement in any price on anything in their lineup is down.

 

[Novuake]

If the LiteCoin trend continues, Nvidia will ALSO get low on stock because gamers are not buying AMD card anymore.

 

[Deuce65]

If the LiteCoin trend continues, Nvidia will ALSO get low on stock because gamers are not buying AMD card anymore.

Maybe that will happen, maybe it won't. Either way though, he didn't say "if games don't buy AMD cards stock *might* get low on Nvidia cards and they *might* go up in cost too.

He said that Nvidia cards are *already* low on stock, and that prices are, quote, "skyrocketing all over the place". This is demonstrably false. Nvidia cards are not low on stock, they haven't gone up in price at all let alone "skyrocketed", and in fact newegg has virtually every card in Nvidia's lineup for LESS than they cost just a few months ago. Basically pretty much the opposite of what you and he say is happening.

 

[Novuake]

If the LiteCoin trend continues, Nvidia will ALSO get low on stock because gamers are not buying AMD card anymore.

Maybe that will happen, maybe it won't. Either way though, he didn't say "if games don't buy AMD cards stock *might* get low on Nvidia cards and they *might* go up in cost too.

He said that Nvidia cards are *already* low on stock, and that prices are, quote, "skyrocketing all over the place". This is demonstrably false. Nvidia cards are not low on stock, they haven't gone up in price at all let alone "skyrocketed", and in fact newegg has virtually every card in Nvidia's lineup for LESS than they cost just a few months ago. Basically pretty much the opposite of what you and he say is happening.

Semantics.

 

[RobCrezz]

With recent updates to cuda miner nvidia cards are also competitive, moreso with the maxwell cards.


I would wait for the "860" if you arent desperate for more performance, the 760 is still using the gk104 which has been around for quite a while now.

 

[Deuce65]

If the LiteCoin trend continues, Nvidia will ALSO get low on stock because gamers are not buying AMD card anymore.

Maybe that will happen, maybe it won't. Either way though, he didn't say "if games don't buy AMD cards stock *might* get low on Nvidia cards and they *might* go up in cost too.

He said that Nvidia cards are *already* low on stock, and that prices are, quote, "skyrocketing all over the place". This is demonstrably false. Nvidia cards are not low on stock, they haven't gone up in price at all let alone "skyrocketed", and in fact newegg has virtually every card in Nvidia's lineup for LESS than they cost just a few months ago. Basically pretty much the opposite of what you and he say is happening.

Semantics.

Saying something is going up in price when it is in fact going down in price is not semantics. It is wrong

 

[Novuake]

Saying something is going up in price when it is in fact going down in price is not semantics. It is wrong

haha fair enough. But I think he meant it will be doing so most likely.
But you are RIGHT...

 

[DarkSable]

^This, I apologize, and I phrased it poorly.

Oh, and at Deuce...

Power consumption isn't just how much it pulls from your graphics card, man. Just look at the 290x. It's HUGE, it runs so hot that it throttles itself to death, it's a throwback to the old days when graphics cards sounded like hair blowers...

Power efficiency means less heat, less noise, less stress on the rest of the system. It also is a requirement before you build up huge performance increases, otherwise you end up with miserable things like the 290x.