Is a GTX970 an upgrade to a GTX780 in E:D?

[tommywright]

I have a render machine with 4 780s and an older workstation with a single 970. I know that a singe 780 renders much much faster than a 970 but the 970 might be better at VR and gaming all around.

Has anyone "upgraded" a 780 to a 970 and if so, is it something I should mess with or just stick to the 780?

Back in the day, I had great results running 2x SLIed 780s but I'm finding that game companies just aren't supporting SLI (including Frontier... at least it seems that way).

I am waiting out the next nvidia awesomeness because even the 980 is not that powerful.. a 980ti however is very tempting but I don't want to buy a $700 card and then nvidia announce something that is 5 times faster in a few months.

It was much easier to wait it out when VR wasn't working for my rig (before the SteamVR fix).

 

[LordZoltan]

I have a render machine with 4 780s and an older workstation with a single 970. I know that a singe 780 renders much much faster than a 970 but the 970 might be better at VR and gaming all around.

Has anyone "upgraded" a 780 to a 970 and if so, is it something I should mess with or just stick to the 780?

Back in the day, I had great results running 2x SLIed 780s but I'm finding that game companies just aren't supporting SLI (including Frontier... at least it seems that way).

I am waiting out the next nvidia awesomeness because even the 980 is not that powerful.. a 980ti however is very tempting but I don't want to buy a $700 card and then nvidia announce something that is 5 times faster in a few months.

It was much easier to wait it out when VR wasn't working for my rig (before the SteamVR fix).

I just went from 2x780tis to 2x980tis (MSI O/C Gaming edition) and the performance increase is noticeable. Very noticeable in fact.

And while I have 2 cards, Sli is disabled anyway because it actually slows it down using 0.5 and extended mode.

Like you, I initally held off upgrading from 7xx to 9xx in anticipation of Nvidia's next release; however I seriously doubt the next gen will be so much better (not potentially, but *actually*, based on what NVidia release) as to make 980tis redundant - so IMHO you can't go far wrong with a single 980ti.

Got mine running on 6770k and 32gb G.Skill Ddr4 3000 and Elite is silky smooth on the DK2 apart from some very occasional judderiness that's crept in with the latest NVidia drivers, which I expect will disappear in a future driver release (and not enough to ruin it for me).

Plus, once FD and Oculus finally get their SDK rubbish sorted out, I expect performance to be even better. I tried the Vive demo at EGX (running on a Titan I believe) and it was flawless; so I doubt a 980ti is going to break a sweat.

 

[V3teran]

Stick with your 780 and wait for midrange pascal coming in q1 in 2016 ie jan to march.

 

[tommywright]

I got 3 of my 780s to work. They each run about 85% but the game still looks bad imo. Maybe I'm too picky but I want as close to monitor experience as possible in VR. Currently, I can run on Medium with no AO and no AA. The AO is no biggie but there is a ton of aliasing in this game and it's way too hard to look at in the Rift.

I feel like those 780's were built more to see how many CUDA cores they could get in a gaming card than anything else. Those things are monsters at rendering and I'll definitely keep 3 of them in that machine just for that but I do believe LordZoltan that the newest cards aren't going to be as fast as they are claiming. They are like 10x faster on paper but we'll see soon enough what they do in real life.

I have a Slick Deals alert for a 980ti but I'll probably still wait until the VIVE get's released. It's hard to spend that kind of money on one game... I'm hoping it will serve me well with other VR stuff.

 

[Nebula109]

I did the upgrade from a single 780 to a 970 due to the 780 burning out and not having the cash for anything better. Yes there is better performance but its only slightly better. Graphic improvements are the odd tweak here and there nothing substantial but the 970 runs cooler with less power draw. Your rig with 4 x 780's must have heated the whole room and sent the electric meter into a spinning frenzy.
I do think the final CV1/Vive will help quite a bit with the visual side of things.

 

[tommywright]

I did the upgrade from a single 780 to a 970 due to the 780 burning out and not having the cash for anything better. Yes there is better performance but its only slightly better. Graphic improvements are the odd tweak here and there nothing substantial but the 970 runs cooler with less power draw. Your rig with 4 x 780's must have heated the whole room and sent the electric meter into a spinning frenzy.
I do think the final CV1/Vive will help quite a bit with the visual side of things.

It does in fact heat the entire room for sure. I'm even wondering if my power consumption is not costing me a fortune when I render... like more than sending it to a commercial render farm. The thing is, it's absolutely amazing for tweaks in realtime. I'm hoping that 2x980tis are faster than my 4 780s which will actually save me money. There is supposed to be a 980ti with over 3000 cuda cores. That would be great for me.

 

[shambles1980]

a 970 should be about the same as a 780ti "for gaming" A 780gtx if overclocked and you dissable thermal protection in the bios and cool it properly (dont need to volt mod) will be able to perform at the same level.
Dunno if that answers any questions that were asked but thought id chime in with it.

(i have a 780gtx water cooled and modded the bios btw, comparitive bench scores are a bit higher than a stock 970. but you do have less ram so it could be a factor at higer resolutions..)

 

[KRONFROMGALVATRON]

Stick with your 780 and wait for midrange pascal coming in q1 in 2016 ie jan to march.

I thought Pascal release was expected to be no sooner than Q2 2016 at the earliest?

 

[V3teran]

I thought Pascal release was expected to be no sooner than Q2 2016 at the earliest?

Its rumoured for q1 midrange and high end Titan and Ti versions coming in late 2016 q3 - 4. Also the low end pascal will also come before or after the Titan and Ti range pascal.