Question: Are 3x GTX760's better than 1x GTX780 Ti?

[ThatOneGuy]

First, thanks for taking the time to read this. I'm in the process of designing a new build, and I was wondering if the GTX760 SuperClocked with 4GB DDR5 in 3-way SLI would be more powerful than a single GTX780 Ti. The 760's come out to about $700 USD, about the same as the 780 Ti.

As far as DDR5 goes, the 760's are more spacious with 4GB each, compared to the 3GB on the 780. When you total it up, there's 4x the memory in the 760 setup than the 780.

How much impact would this have on performance, if any? I know that Watchdogs runs about 3.5GB when running; would the 780 Ti suffer any performance degradation because of this?

Really, the GPUs are the only portion of the build that I'm concerned about bottlenecking. Below is the obligatory build specifications.

Case: NZXT Switch 630 Windowed Edition
Motherboard: ASUS Rampage IV Republic of Gamers - Black Edition
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-4930K Processor
RAM: Dominator® Platinum Series — 64GB 2400MHz
PSU: NZXT Hale90 V2 1200W
Storage: ADATA SP900 Premier Pro 256GB SSD (2x), Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 2TB (2x)
Optical Drive: Pioneer Blu-ray Burner

The system is cooled by a custom loop liquid cooler, featuring 1x XSPC 360mm Radiator and 1x XSPC 240mm Radiator, with the XSPC dual-bay reservoir / pump combo. This cooling system is residing in my current build, inside the NZXT Case. All of the internals I have currently are going to be replaced, so they don't bear mention here. I already have the money for this build saved and earmarked, so it's not a hypothetical build.

I plan to overclock this system once I get more familiar with how to do this safely (or as safely as can be done), hence the liquid cooling. The only thing I will be adding that is not on this list is the CPU/MB one-piece waterblock.

But, to bring this full circle, which GPU setup would offer the best performance in this rig? I personally think that with the three GPUs and abundance of DDR5 the 760s will reign, but I don't exactly know enough about the chips to make that call.

And yes, I realize that I am the worst kind of person, spending all of this money to buy stuff to overclock without knowing how to OC. That will come in time.

Any and all feedback is more than welcome! See something wrong with my planned build? Constructive criticism is always welcomed, as long as you offer a solution to any problem you point out.

 

[nepas]

So you have already got the 3 cards?

Sorry to say,but you have wasted money.


Tri-Sli has always been a bad idea,it never scales well,and using Wtachdogs as a benchmark is a really bad idea(seeing as it is a really bad port)

 

[NeverBackDown]

If you are so worried about vram and want to spend that much money get a 290/290x with the 4GB of vram. Yes 3 760s in SLI will be faster than any 290x/780ti but in games more than not they won't be that much faster because most engines are not fully optimized to run more than 2.

 

[WYP]

You are always better off going for the single best card you can buy. When it comes to crossfire and SLI you rely on the game supporting more than one card, which is common enough for two cards but barely any games support 3 cards.

 

[remember300]

3x 4Gb cards unfortunately still equals 4Gb when running Sli, if you look at Toms review of the ROG 760's in 2 way SLI on the benches they have performed quite well and might even bring budget down a little bit,

And do you really need 64Gb of RAM?

 

[Kaapstad]

3 way sli does work well in a lot of games but I would not want to use three GTX 760s.

If you are going to do it, go for the most powerful cards you can get. The reason for this is in some situations the minimums on 3 cards are sometimes the same as a single card and if you are using weak cards this can result in bad dips in fps.

Three GTX 780s or 780ti's work very well and the same can be said for the red team with three 290P or 290Xs. Having said that there are some games where the CF or SLI support is poor, another reason for using powerful cards as even on a single 290X or 780ti you should still get good performance.

One last thing, to use three cards you need a good CPU/motherboard and be prepared to oc the CPU a bit.

 

[iBeInspire]

Even 2x760's start pushing on 780ti scores in some games... that's a far better idea than the 3, which would be a nightmare. Or better still, get a 780 ti.

 

[JR23]

How has nobody mentioned resolution yet? If it's just a 1080p rig who cares both solutions will smoke it, if it's 1440p then they will probably be just comfortable but if its 4k I don't think either would cut it. But hey that depends if you wanna play minesweeper at 4k or AAA's IDK :stickpoke: personally I wouldn't play watchdogs at all so the 3.5GB argument doesn't come into it.


I am with what you are saying that both solutions cost a similar amount but have you factored in that buying 3 cards means buying 3 blocks, an SLI fitting, probably an extra pump, an ass load more rad space, more fans, a bigger case and a bigger PSU? I would imagine that it would smack a fair premium onto the price of the rig and then you have cock blocked all possible upgrades that don't include selling your graphics setup. At least if you get a 780Ti you can pop in another.

I can't tell if this is supposed to be an e-peen rig or a workstation or infact a 'gaming' rig as you say but make your mind up before you throw all your cash down. Because if this truly is a gaming rig then there are a few adjustments I would make.

Firstly drop the Black Edition, 4930K and 64GB of ram as they are just stupidly expensive and bring no gains to the table, if anything they would probably hold you back as it looks like 4970k's will clock higher, and spend that all on GPU power and I would suggest a pair of 780/780Ti/290/290x's. Just a normal'ish motherboard, not an extreme something like a VII Hero or Formula when it comes and if you want to recover some of your e-peen drop some cash and skill on making it look the nuts. I'm sorry to judge if you were genuinely going to use this as a rendering/editing/intense workstation of some sort and in that case perhaps strike a sensible compromise between the two, perhaps just a cheaper X79 board, a 4930 and 32GB of ram? <- but still who needs that, i've never used more than 12GB of ram even when consciously trying to use it all.

JR

 

[ThatOneGuy]

3x 4Gb cards unfortunately still equals 4Gb when running Sli, if you look at Toms review of the ROG 760's in 2 way SLI on the benches they have performed quite well and might even bring budget down a little bit,

And do you really need 64Gb of RAM?

No, I don't think anybody really needs that much. I just found a good deal on it, and since the MB supports RAMDISK, I figured I could dedicate about 32GB to that and use the rest (Still a ridiculous amount) for the system.

How has nobody mentioned resolution yet? If it's just a 1080p rig who cares both solutions will smoke it, if it's 1440p then they will probably be just comfortable but if its 4k I don't think either would cut it. But hey that depends if you wanna play minesweeper at 4k or AAA's IDK :stickpoke: personally I wouldn't play watchdogs at all so the 3.5GB argument doesn't come into it.


I am with what you are saying that both solutions cost a similar amount but have you factored in that buying 3 cards means buying 3 blocks, an SLI fitting, probably an extra pump, an ass load more rad space, more fans, a bigger case and a bigger PSU? I would imagine that it would smack a fair premium onto the price of the rig and then you have cock blocked all possible upgrades that don't include selling your graphics setup. At least if you get a 780Ti you can pop in another.

I can't tell if this is supposed to be an e-peen rig or a workstation or infact a 'gaming' rig as you say but make your mind up before you throw all your cash down. Because if this truly is a gaming rig then there are a few adjustments I would make.

Firstly drop the Black Edition, 4930K and 64GB of ram as they are just stupidly expensive and bring no gains to the table, if anything they would probably hold you back as it looks like 4970k's will clock higher, and spend that all on GPU power and I would suggest a pair of 780/780Ti/290/290x's. Just a normal'ish motherboard, not an extreme something like a VII Hero or Formula when it comes and if you want to recover some of your e-peen drop some cash and skill on making it look the nuts. I'm sorry to judge if you were genuinely going to use this as a rendering/editing/intense workstation of some sort and in that case perhaps strike a sensible compromise between the two, perhaps just a cheaper X79 board, a 4930 and 32GB of ram? <- but still who needs that, i've never used more than 12GB of ram even when consciously trying to use it all.

JR

Okay, I appreciate the feedback.

My current setup is an AMD FX 8350 on an Asus Sabertooth 990FX, with 32GB of Kingston Hyper-X 1800MHz Ram.

Would my money be better spent dropping in a pair of the best GPUs I can get and tweaking the cooling setup?

Also, would it be worth it to upgrade to the FX 9590 CPU?

 

[barnsley]

Okay, I appreciate the feedback.

My current setup is an AMD FX 8350 on an Asus Sabertooth 990FX, with 32GB of Kingston Hyper-X 1800MHz Ram.

Would my money be better spent dropping in a pair of the best GPUs I can get and tweaking the cooling setup?

Also, would it be worth it to upgrade to the FX 9590 CPU?

Have you overclocked it?

 

[Kaapstad]

No, I don't think anybody really needs that much. I just found a good deal on it, and since the MB supports RAMDISK, I figured I could dedicate about 32GB to that and use the rest (Still a ridiculous amount) for the system.


Okay, I appreciate the feedback.

My current setup is an AMD FX 8350 on an Asus Sabertooth 990FX, with 32GB of Kingston Hyper-X 1800MHz Ram.

Would my money be better spent dropping in a pair of the best GPUs I can get and tweaking the cooling setup?

Also, would it be worth it to upgrade to the FX 9590 CPU?

You need to sort out your priorities.

If you want a highend setup forget all about AMD CPUs.

If you are into overclocking a RIVE BE + 4930k + 16gb fast memory with tight timings is the way to go. Any more than 16gb hits performance and your wallet.

If you are into gaming a 4790k + a couple of fast GPUs.

You need to list your priorities so the guys can recommend a suitable system.

Also what resolution do you intend to use ?

 

[Master&Puppet]

A lot of good advice here but I think we need some things clarifying before you make any final decisions.

1: What are you planning on doing with the new build? Gaming (what resolution) or something more?
2: What is your budget?
3: What have you already got that you plan on reusing?

Regarding your current setup - your AMD CPU is perfectly fine for a single GPU rig and depending on the game and resolution it will be ok for 2 GPUs. Upgrading to the 9590 is definitely not the way to go as you won't see much more performance for the 250$ or however much it is for you over there.

Regarding the original question. Going for 3 cheaper GPUs is not going to be worth it. There are always games where multiple card setups just don't work or work poorly although this is getting less common but even pretty modern titles, like far cry 3 for example, took 6 months+ to support more than 1 card which would leave you running on just one 760. Having said that you can often get good performance scaling in games from the other cards but it is not guaranteed (certainly at launch) and the more cards you add into the equation the more likely you are to come up with some of these problems. Personally I would never recommend going for more than 2 GPUs.

Bearing in mind that you are water cooling too the blocks will add a lot to your costs I can't actually see the 760s being worth the money but I do understand what you are considering. Whilst the general phrase "get the best card you can afford" is a great sweeping statement you do end up paying a hell of a lot for those two letters in the 780ti. For your price range arguably getting 2 x 4GB 770s could be a pretty good option except for one thing - they are last generation's re-badged 680s with some new memory and I absolutely loathe to encourage someone to buy new GPUs which are really over 2 years old.

With that in mind I think that there are only 2 or three options for the sensible, but deadly serious, enthusiast gamer. Equally appealing for different reasons are...
1: GTX 780 for good performance to price ratio, great driver support and small PSU/power requirement.
or
290X which has balls out huge performance and a great price. Furthermore these go hand in hand with water cooling for a silent build.

2: If you want to shave off a few more $$ then the R9 290 would be next on my list.

If you are going to go for 4k gaming then there isn't really much we can advise you on because the tech world really isn't ready for it. 4K gaming monitors are only just appearing at sensible prices (and personally I'd like to wait for free-sync and 120Hz to start combining before I'd drop huge lumps of money on a new monitor) and this current generation of GPUs really aren't capable of gaming at those resolutions and for me that means that sensible 4K gaming is still over a year away. If you are determined to go 4K (not sure if you are) then you can really only go expensive and that means 780ti with the 290x in second place.

Lastly don't forget that the Nvidia cards will overclock further than the AMD cards so that adds to the confusion too for when you want to play with them

 

[barnsley]

Lastly don't forget that the Nvidia cards will overclock further than the AMD cards so that adds to the confusion too for when you want to play with them

Surely thats dependent on the cards themselves in question and not a brand thing?

 

[Kaapstad]

Surely thats dependent on the cards themselves in question and not a brand thing?

It is

There are so many things to take into account that it is impossible to say which overclock the most. With all the swings and roundabouts I would say it is about even.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Surely thats dependent on the cards themselves in question and not a brand thing?

It is

There are so many things to take into account that it is impossible to say which overclock the most. With all the swings and roundabouts I would say it is about even.

Also some cards have lower baseclocks than others so a big OC on that might look better than a higher base clock card that has a small OC. Really both sides OC like crazy and both will give you big gains.

Anything you need further help on OP?

 

[ThatOneGuy]

Yes, I've gotten it up to 4.4GHz, but I don't know enough to try and push it any further.

-------------

I mostly want it for gaming, but I also do a bit of rendering. Though I must admit there is a definite "E-Peen" factor in it as well. Having heard that 3-way SLI isn't worth it and being recommended to get the single best card I can, I immediately hit the reviews section and narrowed it down to about 2 cards: The GTX780 and the 290x.

My understanding of this is that they offer similar performance at stock, and with proper cooling they can be OC'd to serious numbers.

Though, to be entirely honest, I think I'd really like to use 2 cards. There's just something sexy about a pair of liquid-cooled GPUs. I know that there are many games that don't support this, but since I'm still playing the heck out of Fallout 3 and NV, It shouldn't be an issue, right?

And as far as the extra cost of the waterblocks goes, the original build I was going to drop this into was running about $3.5k USD. People have made some very good points, and that's shaved the build down to a third of its' former cost. So, there's a bit of wiggle room for blocks and what have you.

Would these be better cards for my use, or do you have a suggestion for better cards? Or really, anything else that you think might add performance...

 

[NeverBackDown]

290x and 780? In that case a 290x is a better performer. If you want a reference block then choose a card with a reference pcb. If you want certain blocks that are made for only one kind of card then the only option worth investing in is the 290x Lightning.

Any card higher than a 290/780 is easily capable of rendering just about anything provided a solid cpu is present(which you have).

A ramdisk while quite useful isn't exactly ideal. Sure its faster but SSDs are more than enough. If you really want to invest in a 64GB kit then by all means do it but what you have now(32GB iirc?) is way more than enough. A good way to judge if you need more is when doing very resource demanding tasks is to look in task manager and see if you are even near hitting the limit on your ram. At that point its your judgement if you want/need more.

 

[ThatOneGuy]

Okay, thanks for that. I was looking at the 290x Lightning, and based on TTL's review it's the one I'm most likely to get. The only issue is the massive power requirement. 2x 8-pin and 1x 6-pin is hefty, more so when you consider that I'd be running 2 of them.

Your memory serves you well, I do in fact have 32GB RAM.

Yeah, I've never come close to using even a quarter of my RAM so far. I momentarily considered upgrading my RAM to something like 2133MHz, but since my CPU can only go up to 1600, it'd be a waste.

 

[NeverBackDown]

It does indeed have 2 8pins and 1 6pins for power but you can run the card without the single 6 pin(as tom said in the review). The extra slot is for OC'ing to the limit.

Your CPU can go higher than 1600mhz. You just have to OC it and enter the info into the bios.

 

[Kushiro]

1. Why 2 256GB SSD's?
2. If you just want this for gaming, dont go for anything above z series. Not worth it.
3. why dont you just get a 780ti? for what your spending with the 760, might as well. Also if ya dont mind second hand GTX 670's are awesome. memory doesnt stack on GPU's
4. the PSU is kinda overkill, are you getting a good deal on that PSU or something?

6. you have to take into account the fact that you will need good sli profiles to get the performance that you are thinking you will get, Nvidia is usually prompt with this but...
7. Ditch the dual bay res combo, its not very good, try the photon combo maybe? or a separate D5 pump with aftermarket pump top and res.
8. Are you going to game at 4k or something? where did yo get the 3.5GB figure from? Watchdogs is a horribly coded game! They are supposedly working on a patch to help out though.