Buyer's remorse

[jacktesterson]

Return one?

Why did you go SLI?

 

[blckgrffn]

Most people send me their old cards when they no longer want them. Do you need my address?

+1 rep for making me chuckle.

OP: Either return them and keep the 580's or... crap, I don't know. I wouldn't get a 2GB card right now to keep for any length of time.

The FS/FT forum here will swallow the 580's quick if you price them right - which is low.

Why not just one 780?

Or heck, a Titan for that price. Due its compute power, I would expect them to command a premium well into Maxwell's release. There is/was one in the FS/FT forum right now.

 

[thilanliyan]

I would return them and keep the 580s. Like you said, there are few instances (besides ultra high res) that need monstrous GPUs. I myself am gonna keep this setup for a while. The only thing that will push me to upgrade would be a substantial increase in performance in crypt coin mining from newer cards, nothing gaming related.

 

[JTsyo]

I would return one of the 770's, sell the 580's. And when you need the second 770, buy it then. Chances are it will have gone down in price a bit.

this gets my vote.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

$900 is chump change. Don't lose sleep over it.

 

[zlejedi]

Send one 770 back and sell 580 SLI ?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Buy them when you need them.

^^^This^^^^

 

[Carfax83]

I agree with this strategy overall but 770s are going to be the worst cards for this. They are barely faster than 680s/7970GE and are going for $450 for 4GB versions. A $450 Maxwell card will put the lights out on them and in 12 months you'll be lucky to sell them for $250 on the used market. Just look what GTX760 did at $249 price level vs. 7970/670/680 cards. Those 770s are 1.5 years+ into the 28nm generation and are barely better than 7970 OC / GTX680. That means they stand to lose a lot of resale value next year. If you play games with mods where you ran into VRAM bottlenecks, you can just sell the 580s and get 2x 760s to you over.

Remember, these are the 4GB models, so the resale should be higher.

760s OC is a great value upgrade from your 580s for the time being. If you sell those 580s for $120 each, your net upgrade will be about $260. That's very good.

Sell my 580s for 120 each? You mean 220 right? At any ate, the 760s are a compelling alternative, as they would be faster than my current rig and still pretty cheap.

I managed to sell my 580s for 435 to a local buyer. A couple of 760s on Newegg would cost me a little over 500 USD, which would as you say, be quite a substantial saving.

Honestly though, it's not about money. I would never have bought the 770s if I couldn't afford them. It's just that I don't really need them right now..

 

[Carfax83]

I just want to hit on this point for a moment; Bioshock infinite actually has preset textures and assets depending on the resolution and VRAM available. What this means is that the game actually looks different, especially at higher resolutions, if you have less VRAM - I wish I had screenshots but I have seen them. There are 1GB cards that actually run Bioshock just fine at 1080p, but there is a very big difference in how the game appears. Again, it has preset visual assets.

Preset textures? But wouldn't that mean the texture detail wasn't dependent on resolution and VRAM? When texture detail is dependent on resolution and VRAM, that's referred to as dynamic textures..

A few games are like that, namely Mass Effect 2 and 3 from the ones I've played. But I'm pretty sure B.I doesn't have that feature.

Let me hit on the re-sale issue again. As far as re-selling hardware, I never use craigslist, I sell them on various FS/T forums. HardOCP, OCN, here, EVGA forums, etc - there are many places with very good, very reliable buyers and sellers - Craigslist is an OKAY method for selling, but like you mentioned is prone to scammers. If you stick to well known forums, have a good traders rating (such as Heatware) and sell to well known people via verified paypal/amazon payments/etc you won't have an issue. Ebay is also another great resource for selling.

I managed to sell my 580s to a local buyer for 435. A fairly good price, considering that there are better alternatives out there. I prefer to deal locally whenever I can to avoid the hassle of shipping and what not.

I forgot about Anandtech FS/T forum though, so I'll keep that in mind for future reference.

This is all your choice of course, but if it were me in your position I would keep the 770s. But, if you were happy with the 580s that may be a reason to keep them...I don't think I would though. It's all your choice and money though, As an aside, I assume the non-performance factors aren't an issue to you? Such as heat, noise, power consumption, etc which would presumably favor the 770? Because I owned GTX 580s as well and one thing I remember is that in multi monitor mode, the cards did not manage power as well - power management was vastly improved in SLI with the GTX 600 and 700 series. Heck, in SLI, I wanna say that the 500s didn't downclock to idle modes as effectively as they did in single card, but a lot of changes were made with the kepler chip. In surround mode in particular, the kepler has a lot of power management features that did not work on the 500 and prior series, so you can actually idle at 324mhz instead of going near full speed as older generation cards did. I know this may be a non-issue to you, but it's a feature of the Kepler that i've grown to appreciate.

This is true. Using MSI Afterburner, I was surprised at how readily my cards would jump to their default clock speed, even when surfing the net!

For all that though, they still ran pretty cool..

 

[pcunite]

With computers, buy what you need, never to future proof. In the future something will meet that need much better.

 

[Erenhardt]

Right now you are basically paying "insurance premium" upfront to try and future-proof with 770s for next gen games. If you were thinking insurance, then get 780 and upgrade to a 2nd one later. However, in your case there are no demanding games you are playing, which means you are paying this insurance premium for nothing.

And if you thing about it... you are trying to future-proof with rebadged 1,5yr old gtx680 SLI. Not the wisest move.

 

[AdamK47]

With computers, buy what you need, never to future proof. In the future something will meet that need much better.

That's my problem. I never buy based on need.

 

[Insomniator]

I'm not even upgrading my lowly 560TI because I'm waiting for next gen to come around.

I suppose if you sell the 580's for 400 bucks (what are they worth?) then your upgrade is only $500, and its not like 770's will be *bad* next year when new stuff comes out.

That's a never ending road of selling and buying though. The easiest would be to just keep the 580's until the game you want to play does not run the way you want it to. Buying something now for Witcher 3... not the best idea.

 

[moonbogg]

With next gen right around the corner, two 760's would be a good stop gap and for super cheap after selling the 580s as already mentioned. After selling the 580's, you'll have titan performance for about $250-$300 lol. Do it and feel great about getting a good deal every time you play a game.

 

[Carfax83]

With computers, buy what you need, never to future proof. In the future something will meet that need much better.

That's generally pretty good advice, unless you're made of money..

And if you thing about it... you are trying to future-proof with rebadged 1,5yr old gtx680 SLI. Not the wisest move.

The 680 is still a very robust card though that will last for years, especially the 4GB editions. The 770 addressed the main weakness of the 680, which was it's fairly low memory bandwidth.

That's my problem. I never buy based on need.

When you have 4 children like me, your wants sometimes have to take a backseat to the wants and needs of your family.

 

[Carfax83]

I'm not even upgrading my lowly 560TI because I'm waiting for next gen to come around.

I suppose if you sell the 580's for 400 bucks (what are they worth?) then your upgrade is only $500, and its not like 770's will be *bad* next year when new stuff comes out.

That's a never ending road of selling and buying though. The easiest would be to just keep the 580's until the game you want to play does not run the way you want it to. Buying something now for Witcher 3... not the best idea.

I sold the 580s for 435 USD.

And yeah, the 770s are great cards. I have no doubt that I will be able to max out the Witcher 3 on two 770 4GB models, particularly if they're overclocked to 1200..

 

[Carfax83]

With next gen right around the corner, two 760's would be a good stop gap and for super cheap after selling the 580s as already mentioned. After selling the 580's, you'll have titan performance for about $250-$300 lol. Do it and feel great about getting a good deal every time you play a game.

Getting a pair of 760s looks like the best option right now from a money stand point for sure.. Although like I mentioned earlier, I can definitely afford the 770s. I would never have bought them if I couldn't.

I just felt a bit uncertain because they are definitely more than I require right now, and with Maxwell around the corner, I wondered if I had made a bad decision.

 

[blastingcap]

To OP: if you are prone to buyer's remorse, consider getting a different hobby. Depreciation rates with electronics are crazy and you have this continual flood of new and improved products for cheaper.

What is buyer's remorse?

Your sig line never fails to impress....

 

[AustinInDallas]

sell one to me

 

[KingFatty]

That's generally pretty good advice, unless you're made of money..



The 680 is still a very robust card though that will last for years, especially the 4GB editions. The 770 addressed the main weakness of the 680, which was it's fairly low memory bandwidth.



When you have 4 children like me, your wants sometimes have to take a backseat to the wants and needs of your family.

Why did you buy so many kids, they have a huge upkeep...

But I agree, anytime you buy computer stuff for future software that is not even released, when you current setup is plenty good enough with current software, you pay way more than you need to.

However, with just-released cards, you can cross your fingers and hope they go out of stock so the price will shoot up and you can re-sell them new shrink-wrapped in box for more than you paid.

But there are better things to speculate on than $400 video cards...

 

[Carfax83]

Return one?

Why did you go SLI?

I've always had SLI, mostly because I tend to use high resolution monitors. My previous monitor was a 30 inch Samsung 305t plus 2560x1600, until it broke :'(

Now I have a Yamakasi Catleap 27 inch 2560x1440 LED monitor. Generally speaking, unless you're running a Titan or something, gaming above 1200p will usually require multigpu configs if you want all the eye candy turned on.

 

[KingFatty]

What did you think of the step down from 2560x1600 to 2560x1440? Did you miss the vertical resolution during productivity, or is 1440 vertical pixels plenty to work with? I understand that for games it would depend on the game, as some games might not take advantage of the taller aspect ratio of the 1600 vertical, and look better on 1440 (or vice versa).

 

[escrow4]

Never liked dual GPU cards, ergo why I bought Titan. I do hope that games will finally take advantage of it next gen, and not sloppy ports like Crysis 3 (look! Ropes, FPS drops 50%!), something like Last Light would be great.

 

[imaheadcase]

I gave my GTX 580 last week to the kid who cuts my grass. hehe

 

[Eureka]

I'm surprised you got that much for 580s. But yeah... might as well keep the 770s now.