Hello,

I need your help regarding an upgrade to my rig, I am planning on getting a GTX 980Ti however I am still very hesitant,
My current rig:

CPU: Intel core i7 4770k @4.3Ghz
Motherboard: MSI z97 gaming 3
GPU: MSI GTX 770 2GB
HDD: 1TB WD black
PSU: Corsair CX 600
SSD: Samsung 240GB
Monitor: 1920x1080p

How big will the performance gain exactly be and is it worth the money?
Thank you.
EzikMezik wroteHello,

I need your help regarding an upgrade to my rig, I am planning on getting a GTX 980Ti however I am still very hesitant,
My current rig:

CPU: Intel core i7 4770k @4.3Ghz
Motherboard: MSI z97 gaming 3
GPU: MSI GTX 770 2GB
HDD: 1TB WD black
PSU: Corsair CX 600
SSD: Samsung 240GB
Monitor: 1920x1080p

How big will the performance gain exactly be and is it worth the money?
Thank you.
It is worth the money, although your video card is still very capable, if I were you I'd wait for Arctic Islands and Pascal as no current GPU is fully DX12-compatible which will he an issue in a year or two. Wait until Q3 2016 and pick up the best video card for the money at the resolution you intend to play at, there may be a card by then that can max out games at 4K or 1440p and get 60FPS or 144FPS respectively, without the need for CF/SLI.

EDIT: you should replace you PSU before upgrading, CX series are made and marketed for basic builds, get something like an EVGA SuperNova G2, P2, XFX XTR, Seasonic X series or Super Flower Leadex.
A single 980ti beats two 770s in SLI btw, so yeah, your performance will likely double.
980Ti all the way , change the PSU and upgrade
Anthony2000 wroteA single 980ti beats two 770s in SLI btw, so yeah, your performance will likely double.
That's wrong. A GTX 770 is better than a GTX 960 and SLI GTX 960s would beat a single 980 Ti at 1080p and 1440p, so GTX 770s will beat a 980 Ti by a bigger margin, except in The Witcher III and Project Cars, as they're overly tessellated which is an issue on Kepler.
Tech Guru wrote980Ti all the way , change the PSU and upgrade
Not in DX12 I suppose. He's better off waiting for the new generation of cards since his card can still play games at high settings and get 60FPS.
It is NOT worth it. The 980ti will offer a big improvement in RAW performance, but by no means justifies the ~900$ you'll pay on such an upgrade if you include a PSU upgrade as well.

I currently have a GTX 970 and I find it an overkill at 1080p, imagine the 980ti. When the 770 starts to suffer at 1080p just turn down the settings a bit, either way you'll get used to the graphics eventually.

I recommend you wait for the next line of graphics cards from Nvidia (GTX 10XX ?), then maybe it may be worth it. Also note that the GTX 970 and 980 were released less than a year after the 780ti where the 970 outperformed the 780ti by a little margin and was less than half the price.
mmk92 wroteIt is NOT worth it. The 980ti will offer a big improvement in RAW performance, but by no means justifies the ~900$ you'll pay on such an upgrade if you include a PSU upgrade as well.

I currently have a GTX 970 and I find it an overkill at 1080p, imagine the 980ti. When the 770 starts to suffer at 1080p just turn down the settings a bit, either way you'll get used to the graphics eventually.

I recommend you wait for the next line of graphics cards from Nvidia (GTX 10XX ?), then maybe it may be worth it. Also note that the GTX 970 and 980 were released less than a year after the 780ti where the 970 outperformed the 780ti by a little margin and was less than half the price.
I agree totally .. some patience will yield a better performance at a better price most of the time .. consider AMD also when going after the GPU hence most screens are going after "free sync" and not "g sync" .. i would like to also see the HBM memory wars and how things will finalize between AMD and Nvidia.
mmk92 wroteIt is NOT worth it. The 980ti will offer a big improvement in RAW performance, but by no means justifies the ~900$ you'll pay on such an upgrade if you include a PSU upgrade as well.

I currently have a GTX 970 and I find it an overkill at 1080p, imagine the 980ti. When the 770 starts to suffer at 1080p just turn down the settings a bit, either way you'll get used to the graphics eventually.

I recommend you wait for the next line of graphics cards from Nvidia (GTX 10XX ?), then maybe it may be worth it. Also note that the GTX 970 and 980 were released less than a year after the 780ti where the 970 outperformed the 780ti by a little margin and was less than half the price.
He'll still have to upgrade the PSU when he upgrades his video card, I wouldn't trust CX series PSUs in any build, EVGA's 500 and 600B are the same price and are way better.

A GTX 970 isn't overkill for 1080p, nothing is actually, overkill is when you spend a whole lot of money for something that makes no sense, so a Titan X, but anything other than a Titan X isn't overkill especially if you want your PC to be future-compatible.

Now I bet you'll be able to get 980 Ti/Fury X performance, or slightly better performance, with more VRAM, HBM and a new 16nm architecture, for $300-$350 by this time next year.
To sum it up:

- 980ti still doing a good job in Direct X 12 , the recent Legend of Fables Benchmark , it is faster than Fury X which is "supposedly" has the edge in Direct x 12 , due to the Async Compute




For Nvidia & Aysnc Compute (Update)-"So Async is still on, and NVIDIA’s driver is aware if it, it’s just not scheduling it as would be proper. What might be happening is that some kind of other, still efficient method of dealing with those specific types of requests is being used instead".

Read more: http://wccftech.com/asynchronous-compute-investigated-in-fable-legends-dx12-benchmark/2/#ixzz3nfyrg6AV

-Still a real AAA Directx12 title is not released, to compare more objectively , still NVidia is working on new Drivers , but over all 980Ti is one of the fastest cards a person can obtain therefore to me its ROI is positive.
I'd wait. It's an expensive upgrade. Don't think you will get your money's worth.
I can still manage new releases like TW3, MGS5, GTAV on high settings so that's not too bad I guess.

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I don't know how true this is but according to it Pascal will increase performance tenfold. So I decided I am going to hold off and wait for Pascal gpus to release. Thanks everyone for the help.
Pascal microarchitecture.
DirectX 12 feature level 12_1 or higher.
Successor to the GM200 GPU found in the GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti.
Built on the 16FF+ manufacturing process from TSMC.
Allegedly has a total of 17 billion transistors, more than twice that of GM200.
Taped out in June 2015.
Will feature four 4-Hi HBM2 stacks, for a total of 16GB of VRAM for the consumer variant and 32GB for the professional variant.
Features a 4096bit memory interface.
Features NVLink and support for Mixed Precision FP16 compute tasks at twice the rate of FP32 and full FP64 support.


Read more: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-nvlink-200-gbs-interconnect-hbm2-stacked-memory-1-tbs-bandwidth-powering-hpc-2016/#ixzz3nhrPXZRz


10X Faster - Sure No : it's only 10x faster on hyperspecific metrics. But not on general real-world, gaming, or compute performance.

I expect Pascal-vs-Maxwell to be similar (in terms of real performance comparisons) to Maxwell-vs-Kepler. Meaning that most of the engineering refinements are about power efficiency rather than raw performance gains. At least initially, until the "entry-level" Pascal GPUs stage upwards through better silicon yields, tweaked/debugged ASIC revisions, and effective driver support.

HBM 1.0 vs GDDR5 , 980Ti is faster than Fury X with GDDR5 , but remember Pascal raw performance will be on its high end cards and I suspect Nvidia will pullout there GDDR5 variants , it will be a similar situation to what AMD did. For Now Until June 2016 , around 8 Months - Still the 980Ti is a great upgrade I recommend to do.
EzikMezik wroteI can still manage new releases like TW3, MGS5, GTAV on high settings so that's not too bad I guess.

http://tech4gamers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/NVIDIA-Pascal.png

I don't know how true this is but according to it Pascal will increase performance tenfold. So I decided I am going to hold off and wait for Pascal gpus to release. Thanks everyone for the help.
It's increased tenfold in some very specific metrics, not gaming performance, personally, I think you should wait until both AMD and Nvidia release their new generation of cards and see which is the best card for the resolution you want to game at, don't just blindly say 'wait for Pascal'.
Tech Guru wrotePascal microarchitecture.
DirectX 12 feature level 12_1 or higher.
Successor to the GM200 GPU found in the GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti.
Built on the 16FF+ manufacturing process from TSMC.
Allegedly has a total of 17 billion transistors, more than twice that of GM200.
Taped out in June 2015.
Will feature four 4-Hi HBM2 stacks, for a total of 16GB of VRAM for the consumer variant and 32GB for the professional variant.
Features a 4096bit memory interface.
Features NVLink and support for Mixed Precision FP16 compute tasks at twice the rate of FP32 and full FP64 support.


Read more: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-nvlink-200-gbs-interconnect-hbm2-stacked-memory-1-tbs-bandwidth-powering-hpc-2016/#ixzz3nhrPXZRz


10X Faster - Sure No : it's only 10x faster on hyperspecific metrics. But not on general real-world, gaming, or compute performance.

I expect Pascal-vs-Maxwell to be similar (in terms of real performance comparisons) to Maxwell-vs-Kepler. Meaning that most of the engineering refinements are about power efficiency rather than raw performance gains. At least initially, until the "entry-level" Pascal GPUs stage upwards through better silicon yields, tweaked/debugged ASIC revisions, and effective driver support.

I don't expect Pascal to be revolutionary, it's merely evolutionary. Arctic Islands is the [slightly] more revolutionary architecture of the two as AMD are planning to lower power usage and increase performance-per-watt up to 4 times that of the 290X.

HBM 1.0 vs GDDR5 , 980Ti is faster than Fury X with GDDR5 , but remember Pascal raw performance will be on its high end cards and I suspect Nvidia will pullout there GDDR5 variants , it will be a similar situation to what AMD did. For Now Until June 2016 , around 8 Months - Still the 980Ti is a great upgrade I recommend to do.
NVLink won't feature on consumer products, it's strictly for server purposes as consumer GPUs still aren't fully saturating PCIe 2.0 x16.