nvidia video card upgrade

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sto_

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Sep 7, 2014
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was up toms hardware

well i want to upgrade my video card and was wondering if i could get some help.

should i go with a gtx 780 6GB or with the gtx 980 4GB

i love to crank up the all the settings in the games that i play and i also run 3 monitors at 5670x1080 . i have my current gpu oc @ 1242 mhz but i get a little bit of tearing sometimes usually i would restart the game and it goes away. would getting a new card take care of this.

thanks for the help


my specs
cpu- i5 3570k @ 4.2ghz
gpu- gtx 660 sc @1242 mhz
motherboard- asus p8z77 v-lx
ram- 16gb corsair xms3 1333mhz
powersupply- corsair rm850
 
Solution
You practically don't need to watercool the cards, they're very cool with the stock af coolers actually. Seeing you already have the rads, I'd still avoid EVGA right now, 900 series has kind of lost my trust, only 2 of the 3 heatpipes touch the chip on the card, I know liquid cooling would eliminate that issue, but I'd still go with MSI, its thinner and a better OCer.
The first slot runs at a constant bandwidth of X16

Gigabyte States - 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)

Bracketed figure is the configuration when slot is shared.

Slot 2 is : 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)

Also - The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. Noting shares X16 slot, which is slot number 1.
 
majority of boards run in X8/X8, others run in X16/X8. One Gigabyte Board can run in X16/X16 not LGA 2011. I know it is slightly confusing but that board's first slot stays neutral when shared, hard to believe with 16 lanes I know. It may appear to be better when running in X16/X8 but it's pretty much the same as X8/X8 due to the PCI-E lanes of the processor as you have stated.
 




which board wil run x16/x16
 



so there is no reason to get a board that is x16/x16
 


Exactly, it has the potential to but it can't.

X16/X16 motherboard (Haswell not ivy/sandy bridge platform, same 16 PCI-E lanes however)

"so there is no reason to get a board that is x16/x16"

Not exactly, there is a difference, not huge though.
 


With the current CPU, no. Even i7 3770k doesn't support 32 lanes, I don't know why it has x16/x16, no use with LGA1155.
 
Just for a little fun - To be slightly technical, X8/X8 caps out some graphics cards to a point, especially when overclocked

X16/X16 allows full optimum bandwidth, regardless of the processor and lanes. when X16 lanes are shared, it's still using 16 PCI-E lanes, as when they are 'shared', they don't tend to be added. As for X8/X8, only 8 lanes tend to be used as the X8 lane is shared, however it does utilise the 16 lanes of the processor, but it isn't really taken advantage of as well as dual X16 bandwidth.
 


and will they still oc high?
 


do you kno who sells the 970 waterblock ive looked everywhere i can think of