780ti vs Titan

[Aangeliceus]

Replacing my 2nd machine today:

NVIDIA 780 TI vs TITAN....

I see reviews saying the 780 has some performance advantage over the TITAN, but double the RAM difference between the two...

 

[Aangeliceus]

Went with the 780TI this time around.
It was just cheaper the reviews were fairly consistent.

I almost convinced myself to buy a AMD/RADEON card... just not enough there to sway me from NIVIDA.

This is a secondary machine after all, small micro-atx form factor and silent were the key points.

 

[furax]

The 780Ti is a better gaming GPU than the Titan when you consider price/performance. I will say there is a HUGE reason you and everyone else should consider purchasing an Nvidia card. It's actually the most long overdue advancement in the history of gaming.

G-Sync.

This little device synchronizes the refresh rate of your monitor to the GPU, rather than your GPU conforming with your monitor's controller. Nvidia is the only GPU manufacturer with access to this technology right now. They may decide to license it in the future, but for now it remains an Nvidia exclusive feature supported by 650Ti and higher Kepler GPUs. I have a pair of GTX660 cards in SLI and I cannot WAIT to get a g-sync monitor. Right now, since FFXIV doesn't play well with adaptive v-sync, my FPS usually goes something like 60, 30, or 20 fps (double-buffered). The reason it drops in those increments is just the inherent nature of synchronizing the GPU to the monitor controller's refresh rate. The GPU will do everything it can to eliminate screen tear. Everything you need to know about vsync is here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=928593. More info on G-Sync is here: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/g-sync/faq.

This is the killer app that Nvidia needed. As intriguing as AMD's Mantle API is, it needs to be actively utilized by developers in order for games to capitalize on the rendering benefits it provides. Nvidia's new tech is passive and its effects are immediately realized with no additional effort required by developers.

 

[Aangeliceus]

The 780Ti is a better gaming GPU than the Titan when you consider price/performance. I will say there is a HUGE reason you and everyone else should consider purchasing an Nvidia card. It's actually the most long overdue advancement in the history of gaming.

G-Sync.

This little device synchronizes the refresh rate of your monitor to the GPU, rather than your GPU conforming with your monitor's controller. Nvidia is the only GPU manufacturer with access to this technology right now. They may decide to license it in the future, but for now it remains an Nvidia exclusive feature supported by 650Ti and higher Kepler GPUs. I have a pair of GTX660 cards in SLI and I cannot WAIT to get a g-sync monitor. Right now, since FFXIV doesn't play well with adaptive v-sync, my FPS usually goes something like 60, 30, or 20 fps. The reason it drops in those increments is just the inherent nature of synchronizing the GPU to the monitor controller's refresh rate. The GPU will do everything it can to eliminate screen tear. Everything you need to know about vsync is here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=928593. More info on G-Sync is here: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/g-sync/faq.

This is the killer app that Nvidia needed. As intriguing as AMD's Mantle API is, it needs to be actively utilized by developers in order for games to capitalize on the rendering benefits it provides. Nvidia's new tech is passive and its effects are immediately realized with no additional effort required by developers.

Thanks Furax. I've been doing some reading since I got this card installed and running. Didn't actually read about the G-Sync feature until you pointed it out just now. Seems like there is only one monitor that supports it right now, so I guess I'll wait and watch. Both of my current monitors are fairly new, so I may be waiting awhile for this benefit.

The local shop had a TITAN card going for $1,100 and the 780Ti at just under $700.

I've not put the new card through the paces yet, but I'm sure it will equal or best my 690.

Archain has put his faith in AMD/RADEON it seems.

I went the AMD route since I've been watching the stock so much lately. I used an ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z motherboard, an AMD FX-9590 (@5 Ghz) processor, two AMD R9 290X cards in Crossfire as my graphics cards, a Corsair 1200AX power supply (the 2 graphics cards and processor have a little power draw; I think the processor has a 220 watt TDP, lol), 32GB of AMD DDR3 1866 (PC-14900) memory (because I wanted to fill the slots for once), a Corsair H100i closed liquid cooling loop for the processor and two additional fans so I could push/pull over the radiator, a Corsair Obsidian 900D case (this thing is huge), and I closed it all off with two red LED strips since the color scheme inside the case was red/black.

And...

I'm interested in seeing what happens next quarter. I can barely find the R9 290s or any of the high end graphics cards lately because people are buying them to mine Litecoins (Hell, I'll do it too). I still can't find a PS4 or XBox1 at the moment unless it was spoken for earlier (AMD makes the APUs for both); AMD seems to have both Global Foundries and TSMC pounding on production of the processors for both of them.

I want to see them keep pushing forward on heterogeneous system architecture. If anyone can do it, I think it's a company that deals in both CPUs and GPUs.

While his vision is probably good for all, I think AMD lacks the engineering to pull it off.

I talked to Aqua, he's an AMD guy too. (because of a little fire it seems...)

I'm sticking with Intel/NVIDIA for the foreseeable future. I went cheap on on the RAM for this second machine, need to do some research of where the memory makers stand. I can't believer we're still on the DDR3 platform after all this time.

 

[furax]

If *coin mining is considered then AMD wins that hands down. They are several orders of magnitude better than anything Nvidia or Intel can offer. However, AMD's fastest APU/CPU is still slower than Intel's mid-tier SKUs (the i5 offerings) in many gaming applications.

I make it a habit never to purchase a card with the reference cooler. My two Nvidia cards are MSI TwinFrozr 3 cards with an included dual-fan heatsink. In conjunction with my positive-pressure case fan configuration I've never seen my cards or my CPU (Ivy-Bridge) get warmer than 65 C on air-cooling. This is with an OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 sitting right under my second gpu, too. Those PCI-E RAM disks can get pretty warm, but the cards are unaffected thanks to the enhanced heatsink. No matter the card, I always recommend installing a third-party heatsink on a graphics card in place of the reference cooler. You will always get reduced noise levels and cooler operation.

The G-Sync module will also be coming as a kit for retrofitting to monitors. It is possible that your current monitor will support installation of the monitor. My old Dell G2410 probably won't; but I wouldn't want to upgrade it to G-Sync anyway. A new monitor with a 144Hz refresh rate is too appealing to pass up.