06-11-2015, 01:16 AM
The main interest for me personally is it adds another dimension to card selection. Tho it seems nVidia is working to discourage the practice, two lesser cards in SLI has been a more attractive purchase than the top card.
(2) 560 Ti's beat the 680 by 40% while being $100 less
(2) 650 Ti's beat the 680 for less money
The mid level cards then were slowed down a bit and nVidia made it less cost effective
(2) 770's was faster than the 780 / 780 Ti
(2) 970s is faster than the 980 / 980 Ti and cheaper at least while the game promos was going on and you could sell off the 2nd game coupons
But today I see peeps arguing against the 980 Ti cause 6 GB is not enough at 4k. Personally, I don't think any card or pair of cards is adequate at 4k and I'm not really interested until the AAA games can all do 60 fps at 144 Hz. For whatever reason, the ability of a game to use more than X GB is somehow inferred as meaning there is an observable impact if it has less than X GB.
This was confirmed in the article here with the Max Payne test and in the Guru 3D article which concluded
"What is interesting to see is that the 4GB version utilized over 3GB memory here, the 2GB version obviously can only utilize 2GB. That has no effect on FPS or game rendering experience whatsoever though."
However, the GamersNexus thing does introduce a significant new wrinkle, tho game specific..... the effect seems to be very similar the RAM Speed / CAS ..... some games it means nothing ..... most games it's marginal .... and some games it can mean 10+% better performance.
(2) 560 Ti's beat the 680 by 40% while being $100 less
(2) 650 Ti's beat the 680 for less money
The mid level cards then were slowed down a bit and nVidia made it less cost effective
(2) 770's was faster than the 780 / 780 Ti
(2) 970s is faster than the 980 / 980 Ti and cheaper at least while the game promos was going on and you could sell off the 2nd game coupons
But today I see peeps arguing against the 980 Ti cause 6 GB is not enough at 4k. Personally, I don't think any card or pair of cards is adequate at 4k and I'm not really interested until the AAA games can all do 60 fps at 144 Hz. For whatever reason, the ability of a game to use more than X GB is somehow inferred as meaning there is an observable impact if it has less than X GB.
This was confirmed in the article here with the Max Payne test and in the Guru 3D article which concluded
"What is interesting to see is that the 4GB version utilized over 3GB memory here, the 2GB version obviously can only utilize 2GB. That has no effect on FPS or game rendering experience whatsoever though."
However, the GamersNexus thing does introduce a significant new wrinkle, tho game specific..... the effect seems to be very similar the RAM Speed / CAS ..... some games it means nothing ..... most games it's marginal .... and some games it can mean 10+% better performance.