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disolitude on 08 January 2014
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fallen said:

You must be rich.

Personally, I really have an issue with how Nvidia cheaps out on RAM the last few generations. There are a lot of people with GTX 580's out there right now that are still fast enough, but being choked by 1.5 GB RAM.

Which is to say you're paying $700 for than 780 Ti, and only getting 3GB RAM. For a card that expensive, I really dont like it, it could limit you in the future.

I'd at least get a 6GB version if they sell one and you must stay with Nvidia (I realize most Nvidia users wont accept any other product, no matter how inferior in quality and performance and overpriced the Nvidia option may be).

So yeah that's my issue with the built, get a video card with at least 4GB RAM for better future proofing, if you are spending such a massive amount of money.

 

I'll give you a personal example, back in 2009 I was looking at a HD4890, either 512MB or 1GB. People on forums told me 1GB was overkill, not worth it, etc. I went with the 1GB for future proofing. Well that 1GB 4890 served me well until 2013 when my brother gave my a HD6970. If it only had 512MB, it would have suffered much sooner.

Personally I'd probably go with a aftermarket R9 290X, it will be almost as fast, quite and cool, and comes standard with 4GB of RAM, all for $300 less than the 780 Ti. But then again I dont know if aftermarket 290x's are out yet, I think they're close anyway. Also AMD video card prices are currently high because of litecoin mining, so it might be $500 right this second.

PC parts, I'll say it ten billion times, are all about the sweet spot, unless you're just rich, buying a $700 gfx card or CPU is just a bad idea. Think how all those people who bought $1,000 Titans just a few months ago feel, now they are beaten by a $400 290X. You want to buy in that $200-$400 sweet spot. You dont want to go lower OR higher.

I appreciate good value as much as anyone but there are some points about pricing, specs and value are just off.

Price:

290X MSRP is $549 in north america, but due to bitcoin nonsence it is going for $100-150 more for reference. (649-699)

780Ti MSRP is $749 but it is easily found for $699 and even as low as $649 if you don't mind Zotac or PNY.

Until this gets resolved you are paying similar amount of money for less performance with the 290X

 

Performance:

Out of the box both cards are fairly similar with Ti edging out 290X by 5-10%, however once overclocked 290X can't keep up with 780Ti overclocks. Even with water involved and temps low, 290X will only give you ~150 mhz more where the 780Ti can hit 1400 Mhz (500 Mhz more) with water invoved.

Also heat and power draw for 290x is substantially higher than 780Ti, even if non reference coolers keep the temps and noise down. Refernce coolers on a 290x are unusable.

 

VRAM issue:

It is a concern for sure as no one knows how crazy future games may get but not a single benchmark at the moment, benchmarking at the most demanding games @ 4K has hit the VRAM limit with the 780Ti. There are many reviews discussing this all over the tech blogosphere... Also, just because the card is utilizing 2.8 GB in a game at a given time doesn't mean it needs 2.8 GB. Games these days are programmed to preload and cache as much data as possible but don't necessarily need this to render a frame smoothly.

 

 

I do want to say that god bless AMD and 290X for coming out and lowering the prices on the Nvidia side. For me the Nvidia extra features (like upcoming Gsync) are hard to ignore. I do think that there is a use case for both 780Ti and 290x and that someone should think about what matters more to them, but it is not a one sided conclusion as your post makes it out to be.