GTX 760 SLI (upgrade by time) vs 770

Hello fellow TekSyndicate-ers (I should never say that again),

I'm building a new rig hopefully soon, and I have to choose between a 760 and then SLI it in the future, or wait longer to collect moar money and purchase the 770. My future rig will consist of the 4670k, a 600-750w psu, 8GB RAM, and the (currently bought) Asrock Z87m Pro4 (rare MoBo though o-o). Now here's the question, is it worth it to buy the  760 now and SLI it in the future, or should I get the 770 and not SLI them in the future? Note, after the build is complete, I will not be upgrading anything for 3-5 years (except, of course, if I go to the 760 route, but it will be the only upgrade). Dual graphics card problems aside, I just want to know if it's worth it. :P Also, I heard back when in the GTX 200 series era, you can hack a non-SLI (but crossfire) compatible motherboard, into an SLI-able one, is this hack still applicable to nowadays motherboard/graphics card? I also heard from Logan to stay away from dual/more  graphics cards configuration, but is it really that bad? And don't suggest me any other cards besides these >.< I'll be going with brands you've probably never heard of, it's either Palit, Leadtek, Zotac, or Gainward, I'm leaning towards more to the Palit ones though. Oh oh, one last thing, I will be playing games like BF4 and Planetside 2 in 1080p. Sorry for my bad English, and thanks for your time!~ >u<

Unless I'm much mistaken, there aren't really SLI or crossfire compatible motherboards anymore. Either they have PCI-E slots required and it works, or there are not sufficient slots and it does not work. I might be completely wrong, especially since I don't have an SLI/Crossfire setup.

Personally, I'd go with the 770 and just stick with it. For 760 SLI, you'd probably end up spending $400-500 dollars total versus a ~$300 770, but in a few years when the 760s are quite weak, you might end up getting horrible microstutter.

I would go with the dual GTX 760s, your going to see better performance, and you would have a card you can dedicate to physx in games like hawken. I have a SLI setup and have 0 complaints.  I'm pretty sure all Intel boards have both sli and crossfire.

I'd get the 760's in SLI. If the game is well optimized for SLI the 2 760's will get better performance than a Titan for half the price. As for the problems with SLI my last rig had 2 680's in SLI and I never ran into any problems but if a game does not have an SLI profile you will have to disable SLI and just get the performance from one 760. However Nvidia is usually pretty good with driver updates and they constantly add new SLI profiles and optimize old ones so I wouldn't worry about it.

I would go the with 770. I know you said you are not going to upgrade for 3-5 years, but in 3 years or so the GTX 770 will be a lot cheaper than it is now. So you would be able to upgrade to SLI then and have dual 770's. 

There are motherboards that support crossfire but not SLI, so make sure you get a SLI MB if you decide to go that route. I didn't realize it when I bought my MB, but my MB supports crossfireX, but not SLI, and I cannot use SLI, which was a bit of a bummer since I started with a 650 Ti BOOST in this rig, I upgraded to a 770, which is equal to two 650 Ti cards.

I suggest you get the 770, because the two 760s will run hotter, make more noise, and have a higher chance of incompatibility. Most games support SLI, but the ones that don't you will wish it did. The 770 crushes Planetside 2 at 1080p, max settings. Trust me I play it alot.

2 760's in good conditions can provide the performance of a GTX780 or better, but thats if the game fully supports SLI, and if there is a good SLI profile.

When you move to SLI, then you are more prone to driver issues where the majority of them are related to SLI Overall it is a tradeoff. you are trading stability, and consistency, for better performance.

 

Most modern motherboards, AMD 990fx chipset or newer, and pretty much all of the second gen core i series intel based systems should support both, though it never hurts to simply google your motherboard model and pull up the specs.

 

PS, avoid overclocking any CPU on that board.

I'd go with the 770 if for no other reason than the fact that many games do not support sli. If you need another, sli means more headache when trying to troubleshoot graphical problems 

2gb vram is already low. 780 is more likely a good choice.

My motherboard only supports Crossfire, and here comes the stupid question, can you really 'hack' a motherboard to make it SLI supported nowadays? With the power of Google's search engine, I can only find older posts about hacking a Crossfire board into SLI-able, but it was like in the GTX 200 years. >.< Here's my motherboard: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z87M%20Pro4/

That hack doesn't really work on newer motherboards. In fact it is likely to cause major issues if you attempt it. I looked into it for my motherboard since I have the same setup,  crossfire ready but no SLI capability. You would have to run windows XP and have a really old motherboard and run legacy software and it is just crazy, and not worth attempting.

Personally if you have not bought it yet rather than getting either, ide save up that extra bit of cash an get the Asus GTX 760 Mars, its £440 don't know how much in dollars but its just 2 760's in one card, so in the future if you have the money you could go on to get another one and sli them and essentially have 4 760's which is going to be a lot more powerful for what ever your needs are. i currently have 1 760 because i didn't have enough for the Mars or 2 760 and was in desperate need of a new computer since my old one practically blew up after the 7-8 year, and im on a games animation course at uni so it gave me the opportunity to build a nice new pc that can game and handle the rendering loads ext i needed for my work. but the 1 760 does the job for me as it is at the moment and im running 3 monitors of it.

Awwh, bummer... I guess I'd rather go with AMD if I wanna go to the "dual graphics in the future" route, but, as a newbie video editor (just as a hobby, nothing too serious), I want to use Adobe AE (or something similar), so will Nvidia cards perform better than AMD in that aspect? Or does both of them have the same performance? I heard Adobe products use more CUDA than OpenCL/GL, and my current PC (an 'entry-level' AMD machine back in 2011) lags so much in Adobe AE during playback preview, while Sony Vegas just runs fine.

The Mars would hold me back longer on completing my build! x.x How well does the 760 perform in gaming?

i run everything i play on full graphics and runs nice and smooth, rarely any problems unless your in a raid with tons of stuff going on, even then there such minor things you barely notice.

Wait so you can't SLi with you current motherboard so why even think about the GTX 760? Just go with a 770. It will be another chunk of cash later to buy a motherboard that supports SLi. So if you go GTX 760 now it will be the price of another 760 later and a new motherboard. So save the hassle and go 770 now.

Gotcha!~

Thanks for the help guys!~ I guess I'm going 770. ^-^