GTX 760 Upgrade

[CaptainPrivate]

Hey guys!

I have a bit of a problem with not being able to decide what to do. I'm doing a system rebuild, and have everything decided but this.

Right now, I run a 1920x1080p screen on one GTX 760, and am fairly happy with it, though there are a few things that don't run as fast as I'd like them to. My power supply is a Seasonic M12II 600W.

The first option I came up with is to buy a new power supply (would be an EVGA SuperNova 750W) and a second 760. This would bring me to a net total of around $350, maybe a bit less if I managed to sell my Seasonic. This only leaves me with 2GB of effective VRAM.

My second option was to find and buy a GTX 980 - I could pick one up for around $550. We'll call that $450 after I sell off my 760, maybe a bit less. Would be a lot more efficient and net me 4GB of VRAM.

I need an nVidia card to work with GPU rendering in Blender, specifically with the Cycles engine. I do a lot of 3D rendering, and so this is also something worth keeping in mind.

After the rest of this rebuild is paid for, I can muster just that $450 for the graphics/power department, but would like to do as little selling of current hardware as possible. What would you do in this situation, that would be a worthwhile upgrade?

 

[fkr]

gtx 980 all the way (or honestly a gtx 970). no need for a new power supply and more than ample power for a 1080p monitor.

gtx 760 really do no scale well because of lack of memory and the bus they are traveling across is limited.

if you had a 7950 then it would be different (just went from CF 7950/r9 280 to a single gtx 970)

also CF SLI do not usually work when games first come out just look at some oof the issues with borderlands and middle earth shadow of mordor they were not working with multi GPU at release.

I loved my CF setup and will SLI this gtx 970 in time but it will never be as ideal as a single powerful GPU.

I do want to add that maybe for the first time ever the gtx 970 SLI is better than a gtx 980 but you will still run into occasional issue with new games and I really do not know about software conflicts.

 

[fkr]

I cannot look up the material right now but i remember reading in reviews that the compute is substantially better in these new nvidia cards

 

[CaptainPrivate]

I think that's a plan... the extra money will definitely be worth it for the VRAM alone, let alone power consumption and the occasional SLI-related issue.

I might wait a paycheck and pick up a new PSU anyway and then call it a year; I have a 1080p monitor right now, but I'll be upgrading it to 4K or higher hopefully in the spring, and I'd rather get everything paid for and over with sooner than later.

------------------< Derailing my own thread >---------------------------

I believe Tom's had an article on this particular monitor earlier, but I can't seem to find it:
http://techgage.com/news/dells-ultrasharp-27-ultra-hd-5k-monitor-tries-to-render-your-4k-useless-by-giving-you-77-more-pixels/
I'm wondering exactly how much horsepower that thing would take to be usable for moderate gaming. That purchase would be absolutely beautiful for my work in Blender, AE, and the likes, but I can't shake the feeling that it would be hell to get at least 30FPS (generally my cutoff, and I'm questioning the refresh rate on that) in something like Skyrim at its native resolution.

Surely in a year and a half, they won't have already trumped a dual 980 setup with a single card; I'm looking at benchmarks for the 980 in SLI, specifically at 4K - that's nearly double the pixel count of 4K, so I'm getting a very rudimentary estimation of my FPS by cutting that number in half. I'm aware that's not how things work, and I don't think 4GB of VRAM would even push that, but thing's aren't looking particularly pretty regardless. Any thoughts? You'll probably see me again in a couple months looking for a 4K monitor at 27" or under. This right here is a more likely candidate. Quite frankly, the things that are important to a lot of balls-to-the-wall gamers like GTG response and the likes all fall pretty low on the list, and honestly I'm not all that bothered by a low refresh rate regardless. Guess I'm lucky.

It should be obvious at this point I was trying to hold back a bit with the mini-ITX build I'm upgrading (read: replacing), but all attempts at that are currently failing.

 

[fkr]

best answer

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/10/30/4_weeks_nvidia_geforce_gtx_980_sli/1

this is a good run down above and below are some stats at 4k. gtx 970 SLI would be fine and one gttx 980 would do 4k. here are some more good links for you to ease your decision.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/10/27/nvidia_geforce_gtx_980_sli_4k_video_card_review/6

as you can see one gtx980 will do 4k and 2 of them just kill it