qubit
Overclocked quantum bit
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2007
- Messages
- 17,865 (2.98/day)
- Location
- Quantum Well UK
System Name | Quantumville™ |
---|---|
Processor | Intel Core i7-2700K @ 4GHz |
Motherboard | Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 |
Cooling | Noctua NH-D14 |
Memory | 16GB (2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance Black DDR3 PC3-12800 C9 1600MHz) |
Video Card(s) | MSI RTX 2080 SUPER Gaming X Trio |
Storage | Samsung 850 Pro 256GB | WD Black 4TB | WD Blue 6TB |
Display(s) | ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR (4K, 144Hz, G-SYNC compatible) | Asus MG28UQ (4K, 60Hz, FreeSync compatible) |
Case | Cooler Master HAF 922 |
Audio Device(s) | Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty PCIe |
Power Supply | Corsair AX1600i |
Mouse | Microsoft Intellimouse Pro - Black Shadow |
Keyboard | Yes |
Software | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit |
My gut is telling me to return it, but my heart wants to keep it, so I hope you good people can help me decide what to do with it.
In January 2014 I bought an MSI GTX 780 Ti Gaming off the back of TPU's review and it's a fantastic card, just like in that review. Performed really well then and still great now, especially the low noise performance.
This model is of course discontinued now, but a few days ago I saw Scan selling brand new ones for £340 including shipping, which is a good price. It's a one-time deal and I figured a performance boost via SLI would be nice, so I snapped it up. Now I've had it a few days, I've been thinking about it and I'm not sure whether I should keep or return it, though. I'm still within the no-questions-asked return period, so it wouldn't be a problem.
Pros
- Significantly better framerate performance, 50-80% usually. Valuable for both 2K and 4K video modes (have a 2K monitor right now, but will get 4K in time) and for 3D Vision, which I have and still use sometimes
- Still quiet, even with two cards, especially if not being pushed really hard
- I like having them in my rig and playing around with SLI in different scenarios
Cons
- Inevitable SLI issues at times. Usually solvable, but not with Unreal Tournament 2004, see below*
- Top card runs predictably hot, causing the fans to spin up a lot and make significant noise depending on the game or stress test, although not irritating. Complete stability with Furmark although GPU at 90c (didn't keep it running like that though)
- SLI performance improvement not always very great, or nothing at all. I think there's significant CPU bottlenecking from my 2700K at times eg CPU hog Far Cry 4, which is holding back the performance improvements that two of these cards are capable of
Open questions / uncertainty
- How much will the cheaper GTX version of the Titan X cost? I don't want it to top £500, but I suspect it will, knowing NVIDIA
- How soon will it be released?
- DX12 offers big framerate improvements, but this card doesn't support it. How soon until we see some games use it? Likely 6-12 months I think
- Do these current top end Maxwell cards really support it fully anyway despite the hype? Standard not even finalized yet
- Should I just skip Maxwell and wait until NVIDIA's next gen Pascal top end GTX is released and therefore stay with this card?
So you see, with all this spinning around in my head, especially the uncertainties, I'm not sure what to do!
Relevant system specs
Intel i7-2700K (not currently overclocked due to lingering slight stability issues at times)
Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mobo
Corsair 16GB RAM
Windows 7
See specs in my profile for complete system details
*UT2004: very heavy microstutter in SLI mode prevents smooth animation, making it look very rough and unplayable, even though the game is rendering at 120 or 144Hz with no dropped frames according to Fraps. Fiddled with lots of driver settings, but I can't make it go away other than single card mode. Annoyingly, SLI used to work perfectly with UT2004 using older graphics cards and older drivers (GTX 580 SLI and GTX 590 in SLI mode). Will try again with the GTX 590 using the latest drivers and see if it works properly.
However, GTX 780 Ti SLI works perfectly well with ancient games Unreal Tournament from 1999 and Half-Life from 1998 as well as various modern games, so it's odd how it so royally screws up on UT2004.
Game still works with hardly any dropped frames with quality maxed out and with one card though, so not a major problem. It's just that it's my favourite game of all time and I still play it quite a lot so I would prefer it to work properly. That operative word is hardly. I'd like the framerate to never drop from its 120 or 144fps vsync locked target, which SLI would deliver.
In January 2014 I bought an MSI GTX 780 Ti Gaming off the back of TPU's review and it's a fantastic card, just like in that review. Performed really well then and still great now, especially the low noise performance.
This model is of course discontinued now, but a few days ago I saw Scan selling brand new ones for £340 including shipping, which is a good price. It's a one-time deal and I figured a performance boost via SLI would be nice, so I snapped it up. Now I've had it a few days, I've been thinking about it and I'm not sure whether I should keep or return it, though. I'm still within the no-questions-asked return period, so it wouldn't be a problem.
Pros
- Significantly better framerate performance, 50-80% usually. Valuable for both 2K and 4K video modes (have a 2K monitor right now, but will get 4K in time) and for 3D Vision, which I have and still use sometimes
- Still quiet, even with two cards, especially if not being pushed really hard
- I like having them in my rig and playing around with SLI in different scenarios
Cons
- Inevitable SLI issues at times. Usually solvable, but not with Unreal Tournament 2004, see below*
- Top card runs predictably hot, causing the fans to spin up a lot and make significant noise depending on the game or stress test, although not irritating. Complete stability with Furmark although GPU at 90c (didn't keep it running like that though)
- SLI performance improvement not always very great, or nothing at all. I think there's significant CPU bottlenecking from my 2700K at times eg CPU hog Far Cry 4, which is holding back the performance improvements that two of these cards are capable of
Open questions / uncertainty
- How much will the cheaper GTX version of the Titan X cost? I don't want it to top £500, but I suspect it will, knowing NVIDIA
- How soon will it be released?
- DX12 offers big framerate improvements, but this card doesn't support it. How soon until we see some games use it? Likely 6-12 months I think
- Do these current top end Maxwell cards really support it fully anyway despite the hype? Standard not even finalized yet
- Should I just skip Maxwell and wait until NVIDIA's next gen Pascal top end GTX is released and therefore stay with this card?
So you see, with all this spinning around in my head, especially the uncertainties, I'm not sure what to do!
Relevant system specs
Intel i7-2700K (not currently overclocked due to lingering slight stability issues at times)
Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mobo
Corsair 16GB RAM
Windows 7
See specs in my profile for complete system details
*UT2004: very heavy microstutter in SLI mode prevents smooth animation, making it look very rough and unplayable, even though the game is rendering at 120 or 144Hz with no dropped frames according to Fraps. Fiddled with lots of driver settings, but I can't make it go away other than single card mode. Annoyingly, SLI used to work perfectly with UT2004 using older graphics cards and older drivers (GTX 580 SLI and GTX 590 in SLI mode). Will try again with the GTX 590 using the latest drivers and see if it works properly.
However, GTX 780 Ti SLI works perfectly well with ancient games Unreal Tournament from 1999 and Half-Life from 1998 as well as various modern games, so it's odd how it so royally screws up on UT2004.
Game still works with hardly any dropped frames with quality maxed out and with one card though, so not a major problem. It's just that it's my favourite game of all time and I still play it quite a lot so I would prefer it to work properly. That operative word is hardly. I'd like the framerate to never drop from its 120 or 144fps vsync locked target, which SLI would deliver.