Been contemplating to buy a GTX770 for a while now, but with Maxwell around the corner, i'm not sure whether to buy one now, and possibly upgrade when they come out. My current rig specs are as follows: Corsair Obsidian 750D Asus Maximus VI Formula Corsair Vengeance Pro CL10 2400 16Gb Intel i7 4770K Corsair AX760i 6x Intel 520 series 240Gb SSD Only CPU is watercooled for the moment, until i make the decision to buy a graphics card, where everything will be watercooled using acrylic tubing. Currently using an old Radeon 5850 which came out of my old rig back when i was an active builder a few years ago. What would you suggest?
The question is, do you need a new GPU currently. If not, then there's no reason not to wait for the next generation.
the rig will be purely for fiddling with overclocking and gaming, with the occasianal photoshopping, if my mac can't handle it. So, to answer your question, it would be nice to have a new graphics card which can handle max settings on higher than 1680 resolutions. The reason for hesitancy is due to the Maxwell where cards which have been brought out are much more efficient than the cards already out now, while displaying better performance. The question in my mind, is to either hold out for that, or no point, and upgrade now
The waiting game is always a dangerous one, because there's always something better round the corner. The R290 from the marketplace is a great deal, especially if you intend to watercool it. Even if you waited for maxwell, i doubt there'd be anything with that kind of performance for the price.
I think Maxwell is going to blow us completely away! Based on the performance and efficiency that is on offer by my evga gtx 750ti I can't wait to see the full potential of Maxwell!
And if Nvidia have the same luck they got with Keplar, then expect them to do the same dirty trick with Maxwell! (Rename the GTX660Ti to a GTX680 so they make a shed load of revenune! - Then bring out the real GTX680 and name it the GTX Titan and put a stupid price tag on it. Then they piss off all the GTX Titan owners with the GTX780Ti by making that faster and cheaper than a Titan...) So if they continue to fool play, then I won't be spending my money with them.
After recently setting up a 2ghz hex cored PC with a GTX 480 and finding it had more than enough balls to run the latest games maxed out (1440x900, though) I'm finding it hard to get excited by new gen GPUs. All it means is that my 5ghz AMD 8 core PC with a overclocked 7990 will be able to smash anything for the foreseeable into submission so it's just the GPU manus knocking out more niche cards to a niche market (4k, how ridiculous...) for the sake of it. I dunno, maybe I'm just getting old or something. I just see 4k as I saw 3d and triple screen gaming. Something that will never catch on and become mainstream as it's pretty silly. As of now I'm on a Youview box which has about four HD channels. I can't see how all of a sudden every TV studio out there is going to switch to camera equipment that can broadcast regular HD, let alone 4k. PCs of late seem so discombobulated. Ugh, how do I explain that without going terribly long winded? Well, everything just seems so messy. We've now got up to 8 desktop cores but don't have the software to run on them. We've got 3d monitors, with a small handful of games to run on them. We were sold 1600x1200 CRT monitors, yet, the replacement for them came by the way of 1080p, meaning we lost 120 pixels in height and that was seen as an upgrade. I know there were 1920 x 1200 monitors out there but they did not become the mainstream. It just all feels so fragmented right now. Like there are all of these technologies floating around yet all they do is create small groups of people. Now we're being sold 4k (and they are pushing it in our faces) yet so far all we know is that we're going to need at least a thousand pound's worth of graphics cards to push games at this resolution. What's more, these are the games we already have. So hey, roll up roll up ! spend two thousand pounds to play the games you're already playing, only at a higher resolution ! It doesn't change the games. They're still the same games.
My rule of thumb regarding upgrades is if a game I am playing and enjoying starts to suffer low FPS, I consider more power. I recently bought the excellent Metro Last Light for a fiver and though my GTX 760 would be ok but it struggled at medium to high settings and I really wanted to see it at its best as it is an amazing looking game. So I upgraded and added another GTX 760 in there and I should be ok for a while now. As regards 4K gaming etc, I just ignore it. Massive outlay for the screen and the cards to see it in its glory to play a £30 game. No. I have spent enough. Metro on my recently acquired 27" Acer £150 VA screen looks fantastic. This arrangement is not only 'good enough' for me but is about my limit in terms of how much I want to spend to enjoy playing games. Unless I win the lotto, it is going to be a good few years until I have the money/inclination to go 4K. It's getting ridiculous.
I was considering this as well, all though I came to the conclusion that if I didn't need a new card right now there was no point wasting money when I'd probably be able to get a cheap used 770/780 later in the year when I actually have the time to use it. If you need a new card now, buy it. If not it might be a better idea to wait. Is Maxwell close to coming out anyway? I haven't heard much about a release date for it.
