I've read a few of the post asking whether to get 2 GTX 760 or a single 780, and everyone says get the 780 due to the 760's not having enough ram.
What I would like to know is this still true with EVGA's 760 Superclocked ACX with 4GBs of ram.
What type of setup are you running monitor wise?
well personally its a head-scratcher, to be honest people that argue, "oh no one needs 4GBs on a Card for 1080p gaming or 4GBs on a 760 or 770 is useless and doesn't do anything" it helps if you are running a game that is very texture heavy. Like Heavily Modded Skyrim or Crysis 3. that is the benefit of running a 4GB card. and to be honest as time goes on 4GBs is very helpful (in my opinion) but on a 760 not so much cause performance is good but not Good Enough, and it won't use the 4GBS very well. if that makes sense. in reality you shouldn't really be running an SLI setup to game at 1080p. maybe 1440p, or 1600p. however in your situation if you are want performance for the money than maybe an R9-290 would be much more suitable for you. if you are in America they have dropped to reasonable prices now FINALLY (Ranging from 400 to 500 bucks now) its 4GBs and its awesome for 1080p gaming and its very capable 1440p gaming capable card also very capable to run a multi-monitor setup as well :)
You can get a sapphire R9 290 with the tri-x cooler and 3 free games for 429. Its a much better deal then 500 for 2 760s or a 780
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?gclid=CK2msNbf_L0CFa_m7AodcRkAVA&Item=N82E16814202080&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-Desktop+Graphics+Cards-_-N82E16814202080&ef_id=U09lPAAAAXTESVUu:20140425230354:s
Everyone I know was against my dual gtx 660 setup until it destroyed their setups with GTX 770s, then it was all "well you have two gpu so its not really fair"
But enough about that, to get two 4gb 760s you are looking at around 579.98, to get a GTX 780 you are looking at around $500. So its going to be cheaper to get a GTX 780. It is important to mention tho that in some games where the SLI profiles really shine you could be seeing performance you would see in the highend 800 series GPUs, but in games such as Metro Last Light you may only see the performance of a single 760.
So its kind of a head scratcher, on one had the single 780 is always going to deliver the performance of a 780, but two 4gb 760s COULD give performance anywhere from a single 760 all the way up to GTX 880 level of performance depending on the game.
So to answer your question with 4gb GTX 760s memory becomes a non issue and it comes back down to the old SLI arguments, can you stand on some games only having the performance of a 760 and high end 800 series in others? Can you deal with the extra heat? The extra power being pulled?
I like the R9 290 option, but if you are set on nVidia I would go with the straight GTX 780. SLI setups are iffy, some games take them great and a SLI set up will outstrip just about everything but some games will just straight refuse to acknowledge the other card exists and you performance will dive.
This is not such a huge issue but if you get used to a game that offers buttery smooth SLI performance and then find another game you like that cannot use SLi you will really see the difference and it will probably annoy you.
All that in mind is why I say the GTX 780. Personally it would be an R9 290 with option of a second later but whatever you like yourself.
The honest truth is that you may get a bit more bang for buck in terms of raw fps with the SLI 760's, but it just isn't worth the headache. I can't really speak for nvidia, but when I had a crossfire setup I constantly had driver issues. I would say that about half all new releases ran faster with crossfire disabled until AMD released a hotfix for me. Not to mention microstutter was a huge issue for me. Fraps would tell me I was getting 60+ fps and some games just wouldn't look smooth no matter what I tried. IMO a second GPU really only makes since if you are looking double up on what you already have. If you start out with two you are basically eliminating your upgradeability for the future. On the other hand if you start out with the GTX 780 now, you will have 90% of the performance of two 760's with fewer headaches, plus in a year or two if you feel newer games require more power to run at the settings you want you can find a second 780 for pennies on the dollar from ebay and out perform whatever the current flagship single gpu card is.
Samsung U28D590D for the time being. Plan on 3 way surround Once the price comes down.
Speaking of problems the most recent one I ran into was ESO, BF4 however had no problem go figure. At least on the Nvidia side. I have also never had a problem with microstutter.
One of the nice things about Nvidia is that in the control panel you can set specific games to use single gpu rendering and you don't have to keep enable and disableing your sli when you want to play that specific game that it doesn't work with.
AMD has a setting on Catalyst that does the same thing. AMD Crossfire with Skyrim is the Worst with ENB Settings.
Honestly, a single 780 will beat out 2 760s. Especially if you overclock. Also, SLI is gonna take much more power and produce more heat so if you're willing to spend more money on a bigger PSU and if your case has good air flow, 2 770's would be the way to go if anything because that will crush a 780 and for $100 that ain't a bad deal.
two GTX 660 keep up and in some cases beat a GTX 780 keeping pace with the GTX Titan, in places where the scaling between the two gpus is good of course. two 760s would have no problem stomping on the Titan Black let alone the top end 800 series gpus.
The whole 1 gpu is better than two thing comes from the fact that it puts out more heat and uses more power and does not always perform better. They aren't saying that the 1 gpu is going to out perform 2 gpus. I once saw someone say that sli was stupid because 2 780s in sli didn't perform as well as his single 780. I asked him what he meant and he said he saw online that single cards perform better than two cards. Which simply is not the case, and we really need to stop simply saying that 1 gpu is better than 2 because its confusing to the new people.