Hi everyone

As of right now my PC has a EVGA 015-P3-1580-AR GeForce GTX 580.

The processor I have is a Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge Quad-Core 3.4GHz.

I built my PC in 2011 and I have to say, I can still run a lot of games on high and I have more then gotten my money out of this card (It really is an amazing card).

Yet at the same time I am looking to upgrade, but really have no idea where to begin. I know about PC part picker, but I trust the opinion of my fellow duders. The reason I bring this up now is because this bad boy is on sale: GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB for $440. Yet the GTX 980 is only $580 and is 4gb. I honestly am not sure which is better or what the difference is. On top of that, should I just wait for a new gen series to come out?

Any and all advice is appreciated. Thank you

I have 780 Ti and it is quite a good gpu. 980 is better and looking and games benchmarks about 15% more powerful. You can wait for new gpu ofc, but we do not know anything. Amds 290x is also a possibility. Also newer gpus will get better driver support. 780 ti is a bit old . Personally I won't buy new gpu unless it will bring 50%+ performance than my previous card. Considering you have 580, both cards are great. I would buy the 780ti =D But I am biased.

At the prices both are about the same value. I would say you're better off buying a 970 though, even with it's 3.5GB of vram it's still a beast and and substantially cheaper than the 980 and a decent amount cheaper than the 780 ti at about $330ish for good aftermarket cooler one. The 970 will be pretty neck and neck vs the 780 ti with them trading blows depending on scenarios but it will be less power hungry for less. The vram stuff going on doesn't affect too too many folks unless they're going for SLI for 4k/mods so the 970 so it's still a beast.

My suggestion would be this EVGA 970 @330 with a nice cooler if you're fine with a full sized card or if you need a small form factor this GB 970 @329 with it's chibi design.Either card will be fine and they will have at least 500megs more vram than the 780 ti at blazing speeds.

Oh and if you need to check some beanchmarks for the cards here's a Techpowerup link for the cards to comapre them across many games.

I'm pretty sure the GTX 970 is a better pick than the 780 ti, and for a better price. I don't know if it matters to you but it's power consumption is insanely better as well.

I picked up a 970 a few months back and it is great. I think the performance is just a little worse than a 780ti, so I had a hard time justifying paying the extra for the 780ti.

970. It's straight up the best value you can get.

Think the same as everyone else really, when it comes to price-to-performance-ratio the 970 has everything beat. The GTX 980 is however better than a 780ti but not by a whole lot, if you coming from an old generation card then it probably is much more practical to go with either a 970 or 980. Just comes down to if you have the cash for a 980 or not really.... otherwise a 970 with the DX12 compatability for future proofing will most likely be better than a 780ti.

Yeah, a 970 is what you want, for sure. It has almost equivalent performance to the 780ti, and is much cheaper, uses less power, and has more VRAM (1GB technically speaking, 512MB practically speaking).

I'd recommend the MSI Gaming 4G or the Asus Strix. Both of them have great performance, and their fans idle at 0rpm, which is neat if you like a quiet PC.

I also think that 970 is the best option because 980 will be competing with this year mid range lineup. So yeah 970 won't be that much of a big loss since it's already decently priced.

Either the GTX 970 or the R9 290X would be a great choice, both being around the $300-$350 dollar range and both being only slightly slower than a 780 Ti. If you're willing to wait a little bit, AMD is about to release their 390 series of cards, so that could be a potential option as well.

I'm gonna echo the 970 love here, if you're into Nvidia. I don't really think there is any point in buying a 780ti. Price for performance, a 970 just makes more sense for single card performance.

If you're brand agnostic or think you might eventually be interested in running multiple GPUs then I'd probably go for two 290s xfired.

Ultimately, it kind of depends what resolution you're going to be gaming at and what your long term plans are. I probably wouldn't hold my breath for next generation cards from Nvidia because they're still a good ways out.

The question is: What resolution are you playing at?

I also have a 2011 PC with an i7 2600K CPU. My GPU is far weaker than your GTX580 as well.

If you are using a 1080p monitor like most people those GPUs you listed are very close to overkill for 1080p. In which case you should probably go with a lower end GPU and upgrade it sooner. You'll come out on top money wise.

Kind of a bad time for an GPU upgrade, especially such an minor one.
Like previously mentioned: AMD is gonna release new cards soon, this usually means a pretty heavy price shift on the market, many people selling their old cards to buy a new one.
If you are still looking for an upgrade i'd go the cheapest route possible, that'd probably be an 970.
Just make sure not to buy a new one, check ebay/craiglist for used ones, as many people have been selling their 970 over that whole 3,5 GB Vram debacle.

The GTX 970 is a great value for it's performance. Just don't ever go above the 3.5GB mark or the performance takes a huge dive.

People are reporting massive stuttering and huge performance hits if you go past that mark because Nvidia basically lied about how much VRAM is in the card.

"In a recent post concerning the actual specs of the GTX 970, we found that even though the memory is split in two segments of 3.5 GB and 512 MB, with a memory bandwidth of 196 GB/s and 28 GB/s, respectively, it still contains the 4 GB of memory as advertised. However, the ROP count is actually 56 as opposed to the advertised 64, and the L2 cache has a capacity of 1.75 MB despite Nvidia claiming it was 2 MB."

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lawsuit-filed-against-nvidia-gtx970,28609.html

What's really messed up is this wouldn't have been a problem if Nvidia had just put in 3.5GBs of VRAM and just said so.

The card seems really good if you don't use too much VRAM, though. So buy away as long as sketchy business practices don't turn you off.

AMD's hot new banger should be on the way if you can wait, but who knows if it will be good or not. They also tend to wait a bit to release their mid-ranged cards.

I just picked up a 970, this one. I'm very happy with it. Runs very quiet even when the fans kick on (fans only run if it hits 60C, so light gaming is silent). I've been able to max out every game over 60fps at 1920x1080. Battlefield 4 (on Ultra) hangs out around 100FPS in most maps while in combat. It'll be a few more years before I decide to run a higher resolution, so I'm not worried about the 3.5GB thing.

The only game that gives me problems is ARMA3, and that is just because I have an AMD CPU and that game extremely CPU intensive. Even then, I'm at 30FPS with max view distance and all.

I picked up the evga sc 970 with the ax cooler 2.0 late last year and it's been great so far. The fans don't give off any real noise unless it's under heavy load (which I've only noticed while playing Crysis 3, Wolfenstein TNO, and Rage which all run maxed at 60). For the price, performance, and DX 12 it's a steal.

Though it probably wouldn't be too long until AMD release a new batch (as long as you've got a good psu since AMD cards always use more power than nvidia ones) which will then be followed shortly by a new set of nvidia cards. It's already been half a year since the gtx 900 series came out, sans the 960.

Funny that you mention buying a new card and then Nvidia announces this.

Right now you probably want a 970 or a 980. Those two are just a bit better than all other cards in their pricerange.

Just heard that AMD's 300 series is close to it's reveal , so you might wait for that , although there's always something new to wait for.

If you're still undecided, I just bought a Geforce 970 GTX (MSI Gaming) after spending several hours looking at benchmarks. The 970 falls right between the GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti, the only time the 970 falls a little behind the 780 is on 4k resolutions. Thw biggest difference I saw on benchmarks was on Crysis: Warhead, where the 780 were as much as 10 for faster(83 vs 73 fps), while the 970 actually outperformed the 780 Ti in Rome 2: Total War and GRID 2. Note that these were reference models, so you'll get better performance with some GPUs because of higher clock speed.

The overall performance of the 780 Ti should be higher than the GTX 970, but not noticeably so. If you're gonna spend $100 extra for a 780 Ti, then you should consider a GTX 980 for around $550.

I built a new rig a few weeks ago. Using this bad boy and couldn't be happier. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127832