Graphics Card Upgrade Advise

[LordOfTime94]

Brace yourselves for another "X Vs X" question.

 

I'm looking at upgrading my graphics card in the next few months, and am currently stuck as to which option would be best. Since this is a long term purchase, budget is not an issue as I don't mind waiting another month or 2 to get a higher end card if that is the better decision. 

 

The hardware I am looking to power with my next card(s) is 3x1080p monitor, with potential upgrade to 4K down the road, though I will not be running a single game on all 3 of these; I tend to run my games in Windowed mode so I can do other things alongside gaming, so I would only be gaming on 1 at a time.

I had thought about upgrading to 1440p at some point, but 1080p is more than enough for me right now, so I shall be waiting for 4K to become cheaper and make a major upgrade to that eventually instead.

I've chosen to go with MSI as I've had multiple parts from them before and they've served me very well, plus I'd prefer to keep the red/black colour scheme.

 

For the card model I will be going with nVidia, though I'm a little stuck as to which one. 

I initially planned to go all out and get the GTX 980 Ti, though after looking at a few more reviews, I'm not as certain.

Most of the benchmarks I have seen place the 980 Ti roughly on par with 2 970's, which while it might have some compatibility issues with SLI, would make upgrading easier in the future as it can be incremental.

While debating between the prefer 2 ideas, I thought about my future upgrade to 4K. Right now it seems that the most cost-effective solution to running 4K would be 2-way SLI 980's.

Choosing the middle ground with these appears to be one of the better options for the moment as a single card would allow me to run most if not all of my games at max, and gives me some potential in 4K with a single card, let alone 2 of them.

Another possibility is that I could wait for the next generation of cards to come out, though at that point, it would probably be better to stick with the 900 series anyway as they would be cheaper.

 

As always, any and all opinions are welcome.

 

Regards,

 

LoT /)

[ThatOneRussian]

980ti. A single more powerful gpu is better than 2 weaker ones. Because sli brings problems and not all games support sli and other problems

[JebKerman]

what do you have currently? if it's got the power of at least something like a 960 or 280, it might be worth a wait, see what HBM2 brings to the table.

 

If it's much worse than that, I'd take the 980 ti.

[LordOfTime94]

what do you have currently? if it's got the power of at least something like a 960 or 280, it might be worth a wait, see what HBM2 brings to the table.

 

If it's much worse than that, I'd take the 980 ti.

I currently have a GTX 760. It has served me very well and still does OK on most games, but I plan to retire it to my backup rig (when I have it) and upgrade to something a little more powerful.

[astranger200]

i would go 980 ti but only if you are not wiling to go amd. 2x 390 would be sooo good

[LordOfTime94]

i would go 980 ti but only if you are not wiling to go amd. 2x 390 would be sooo good

Had some bad experiences with AMD so I'd prefer to stay away for now. Plus, I'm willing to pay that little bit more for a smoother/better experience with nVidia.

[astranger200]

Had some bad experiences with AMD so I'd prefer to stay away for now. Plus, I'm willing to pay that little bit more for a smoother/better experience with nVidia.

fair enough...

[Typing.....]

From ur options 980Ti( 1 Strong GPU better than 2 Weaker Gpus)

But people say nvidia wont do good with dx12, as u said this is a long term purchase and games in the future will have dx12....so..... I would say wait for pascal

 

Reasons:

1) Better with dx12

2) Nvidia said it would be 10x faster than maxwell cards

3) Its like 3-5 months away and price range for top pascal cards would be around 980ti range

[LordOfTime94]

From ur options 980Ti( 1 Strong GPU better than 2 Weaker Gpus)

But people say nvidia wont do good with dx12, as u said this is a long term purchase and games in the future will have dx12....so..... I would say wait for pascal

 

Reasons:

1) Better with dx12

2) Nvidia said it would be 10x faster than maxwell cards

3) Its like 3-5 months away and price range for top pascal cards would be around 980ti range

That is something I had considered.

By the time I have the spare funds for this purchase, the Pascal series will likely either be out or close to it.

I will need to see what kind of performance boost Pascal gives and whether it is worth the wait.

If the difference is not great enough, then of course I'll go with the 980 Ti, as by that point they should hopefully be cheaper as well.