Gtx 780 vs Gtx 680 SLI

[gaming4life891]

Hello everybody!

I will build a gaming PC soon, and I am having trouble on deciding which graphics card to use. I will play Battlefield 3, Minecraft, Team Fortress 2, and Planetside 2 on nvidia surround. My system will sport a 4770K, a Sabertooth z87, 16 gigs of GSkill Triden Ram, and a 1000 watt psu. I am having trouble on what to do for my graphics! Should I get a gtx 780 or a pair of Gtx 680's? Please help! Thanks to everyone.

 

[vmem]

do you play on a single monitor? if so get a 780 as that should be fine for whatever you need (Unless you have a 4K monitor 😛). this will give you an easy upgrade path later on, and you won't be spending unnecessary money now

 

[firo40]

If your using nvidia surround get dual 680's it will help alot in the long run

 

[maestro0428]

The 680s would be faster in games that support SLI, which is most games. Like vmem said, the 780 would give you an upgrade path, but then you could go with three way SLI later, but then again, you would have to change your motherboard choice to something that supports it.

 

[gaming4life891]

Thanks for the help! Are there any problems with SLI? Or is running it the same as running a single GPU? Also it is more expensive to get 2 680's. Do they provide about the same amount of performance, or is there a small margin dealing with an increase of FPS? Thanks!

 

[vmem]

Thanks for the help! Are there any problems with SLI? Or is running it the same as running a single GPU? Also it is more expensive to get 2 680's. Do they provide about the same amount of performance, or is there a small margin dealing with an increase of FPS? Thanks!

ahh problems with running SLI... that is a huge can of worms. there used to be ton of problems such as microstutter, poor scaling, or lack of driver support. but with recent generations things have gotten a lot better. especially on the Nvidia side. all in all I would say there isn't a problem, but expect slightly less (5%) performance when compared to simply adding the numbers from two 680s together. this scaling gets worse as you go to three GPUs, and if you want to do four, well, sometimes it can even run SLOWER.

Tom's ran a nice review when they reviewed the gtx 780. here you'll see performance of 680 SLI, a single 690 (680 SLI on one card), and 780 SLI.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-780-performance-review,3516-14.html

 

[sourodip]

micro-stutter is more in radeon cards(unfortunately) whilst that for nvidia they give better performence when in SLI as now they have got good fixes for that and yeah a gtx680 would be more powerful than one gtx780,but if u have a single monitor then go with the gtx780

 

[Mousemonkey]

Wouldn't two 770's be cheaper than two 680's whilst essentially being the same cards?

 

[sourodip]

yeah Mousemonkey has the point,why don;t u go for the new fen. and faster card i.e.,like a gtx770 but would be recommending it only if u have one or more monitors,otherwise,the gtx780 will be powerful enough

 

[supersonic977]

get 2 x gtx 770 better than 2 x gtx 680 and one gtx 780

 

[Dhampire01]

1 titan

 

[sourodip]

now here we are from two gtx680's to two gtx770's-approvable and now 1 titan,pls guys...

 

[Reanor]

I run two 680s, they are very good for games that have SLI support, goes from 50 to 80 FPS in some games while in others using single GPU is actually better. I'd recommend to actually run the search for SLI support for specific games and decide based on that. Most of the games today though will run highest settings on a single 680 without problems, it's a powerful GPU even a single one.