About to buy my computer, I was pressing the confirm button just about and though...do I really need that 780? I plan on playing games coming out later this/early next year at 1080p on the highest settings (think the division and Destiny when it comes out on PC.)
I'm just not quiet suer if it'll be worth to run with the 780 over the 770. Either way I play on SLI the cards when they start to not cut it.
Opinions?
Worth it. A 780 won't need to be replaced for a long long time and has excellent ebay value when you want to upgrade 5 years from now.
If you're determined to play on max, I think you will need the 780. A 770 will most likely still be able to manage everything on high though, and overclocking might help bump up the frame rate a bit.
Looking at benchmarks, the difference between the two seems to be usually about 10 fps, though in some scenarios it will be more or less than that. When looking at a comparison between SLI for both cards, the differences are about the same, and it appears the 770 scales better with SLI than the 780. That might be expected, though, since the 770 is a rebadged 680 and as such the drivers have had a longer period of time to mature for that card.
Based off the fact that 770s scale better in SLI and there isn't a huge difference between the two in SLI, I'd go for a 770.
(I will admit that most of the benches for SLI configurations were at higher resolutions than 1080p, so perhaps at 1080p the 780s will be significantly more powerful. The 770, both single card and SLI, provides much better performance for cost that it's still the better choice in my opinion.)
If there's anything else in your rig that could be improved, dropping to a 770 will help with that. Plus, considering the 770 is ~$150 cheaper than the 780, you'd already be about half way to your second 770.
Well I have a 1200 dollar budget and I'm at that on the head so saving 200 bucks to go towards my custom water loop would be nice, but I'd like to have the extra horsepower and I don't mind paying for it.
Catch 22.
In that case, I'd just go with a 780. It's not as cost efficient, but it is a bit more powerful.