Not so fast, AMD! GTX 790 on the way?

[Captain_Tom]

disolitude said:

Captain_Tom said:

ultima said:

 

Wait a minute, these double cards work pretty much the same way as SLI? As in the memory pool isn't shared, but rather mirrored? Very lame if true...

I agree.  And that is why I will not buy a dual card until they make sense.  The VRAM isn't even the problem though:  They suffer from same scailing and compatibility problems using two cards have.  That makes no sense to me and it should be a harware level forced SLI/Crossfire that scails in every game by at least 80%.

Otherwise I would feel like a beta tester who is out $1000....

While this is still somewhat correct, the driver/scaling issues for these cards are not as big of a problem anymore. Very few games don't have an SLI profile ready even before release and the ones that don't, usually don't need to use SLI.

Last game I played that had scalling issues in SLI was Batman Arkham City, but on a GTX 680/690 it already ran 90+ fps so it was not even necessary.

Even 3 cards make a lot of sense, as long as you have a multimonitor or a 4K setup...the issue with that is VRAM.

Here is a nice breakdown of most current PC games and how many cards are needed to play smoothly and at what resolution.

http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/4632/36/geforce-gtx-700-series-sli-review-geforce-gtx-760770780-in-sli-and-3-way-sli-how-many-cards-do-you-need

I personally would have no issues paying 1200 bucks today and going 3 way SLi with a GTX 770 4GB... I would however have major issues paying 2000 bucks for 3X GTX 780 and having only 3 GB of VRAM.

Oh believe me man I know all about PC hardware lol!  I have built MANY PC's.  But I look at it this way:

-2x680's cost $800

-1x690 cost $1000

-2x680's overclock and thus perform better than a 690

So for $200 extra dollars I better not just be trading a little less power use for extra space.  If they are going to sell it as a single card, it better work as a single card.  Until that happens  (And they are VERY close), there will always be a better solution...