I'm ordering parts for a new PC after work tonight, and I am now doubting my choice of graphics card. I'm really out of the graphics card world, and I ended up going with a GeForce 780 (this one). I was happy with it until I started looking a little more. I found out about the 970/80 series, and now I'm thinking of going for a 970 (this one). I'm now doubting myself, and I am going back and forth on which to order tonight. What do you all think?

http://www.hwcompare.com/18046/geforce-gtx-970-vs-geforce-gtx-780/

Speaks for itself.

I would try and see if any benchmarks are available for both the GTX 780 and the GTX 970. Here is a fairly comprehensive look at the 970 including benchmarks of the 980, 970, 780 and even some of AMD's offerings.

@asilentprotagonist: hmmmm based on that I'm thinking 780, but the 970 benchmarks are better on the gamespot review.

Get the most expensive one. That means it's the best, right?

@soldierg654342: My knowledge of modern graphics cards is so bad, that I actually think that. No idea if that's real.

With prices that similar, I'd definitely go with the 970, as it's the step-down version of Nvidia's latest card. If it was a price issue, I'd say there isn't a fantastic reason to spring for the 970, but since your alternative pick is so close in price I'd say there's no reason not to get the newer card.

970, hands down.

There's nothing that touches its price/performance ratio right now. Even if it's slower than the 780, it keeps pace pretty well. To top it off, I'm pretty sure 4 gigs vram is standard on the 970. Just glimpsing at Anandtech's benchmarks shows the 970 as a bit faster than the 780.

It pushes out considerably less heat and uses considerably less power; it probably overclocks like a beast.

Where does Nvidia go after this? They did the 00's (8800, 9600) back 10 years ago, so now we're at 1000 again.

In terms of your post, the 970 is untouchable right now, but who knows for how long.

Go with the 970. There is more to the card than just performance upgrades.

@neezie: The 970 is absolutely the one you should get. The VRAM alone means it will actually be more capable, even if in some games it currently scores (SLIGHTLY) lower than the 780. Games that are entirely next gen and are ported from current consoles are going to use more than 3GB of VRAM more and more often. 4GB of memory is a big advantage and it's standard on all 900 series cards.

But there's more to love about the 970. First of all, the 780 you got, if I had to guess, wasn't a reference model. The 970 numbers you saw were almost certainly from a reference model though, which is unfavorable for the 970. In other words, if you get the 970 you SHOULD get (the ASUS is what I'd recommend), in other words any non-reference 970, you'll get better performance and overclocking potential (already significant). It does that all with much lower noise and power usage.

It's so easy to overclock these cards now, you just use included software (ASUS has great software with their cards for OCing) and it overclocks practically all on it's own. And you can overclock 970s to match starting 980 numbers, which will easily beat a 780. It'll be closer to a 780ti if you get a good unit.

The 970 will also have a few hardware advantages that give it an extra feature or two. For example, the 900 series has special hardware features that enable it to do the global illumination lighting stuff so efficiently.

The price is around the same too. Lower, depending on the 780 you went for.

My guess is they'll do a "ti" run in 6 months, and maybe a new Titan. But Pascal is coming next year some time and when that comes, and because it's such a drastic change (won't even use the same PCI slots anymore) I bet they do a completely different scheme.

Go for the 970, I'm going to upgrade to one from a 560ti & I wouldn't bother with a 780.

I'll go with the 970, thanks everyone! Here are the other parts I'm ordering if anyone is interested:

The GTX 970 has made the GTX780, GTX770, R9 290, R9 285 and the R9 280X video cards obsolete at their current price point. The 780 and 770 are even being straight up discontinued.

970. It's better priced, has a similar amount of power, and consumes less electricity. There are no drawbacks.

Listen to Paul....always listen to Paul

Eurogamer (Digital Foundry) were about as gushing as you can get for a graphics card with their 970 review:

"Meet the GPU that nukes almost the entire high-end graphics market from orbit."

It is much more power efficient than other cards and takes a load off your PSU. I want one!

@neezie: You should really consider going for windows 8, with 8.1 there aren't many drawbacks & there's a performance increase over 7 especially for gaming. There are rumours out about windows 9 being free for people with 8 too.

Go with the 970. Look into overclocking it by getting a card with a good cooler, I like the EVGA designs. And you will save yourself some money and headaches since the card uses way less power than the 780. They really did something special with these new cards on the power consumption area which make overclocking them so much better.

@sjqpersonal: Just start over at single digits like the air force did after the century series. Maybe the 980 will be the Delta Dart of graphics cards.

Those are just theoreticals calculated from the specifications of the cards.
I would advise from using stuff like that when not comparing cards from the same family.

@reverendk: Haha, I got that joke.. Nice

@hone_mcbone: I'll look into it. I'm mostly worried that it might act weird with Adobe CC stuff, since I'm also buying this to work from home some days