said by Ghastlyone:Hypothetically, let's just say for example you purchased a 680 @ $600.00 and on average most people use their GPUs for 2 years at least, we're talking like 6 dollars a week that GPU will cost you.
I've heard of some people getting 3-4 years before upgrading again.
I just don't see it as a huge cost, when you factor in the amount of time you'll use it for.
Fair point. But like many, spending that much up front, without knowing for sure how long it would last you, can seem rather hap-hazard.
I know per my experience, buying a GPU that had more VRAM usually ended up remaining useful longer, so I didn't have to upgrade as often.
When I first got my 8800GTS, it was still a $4*0 USD part. Sure, there was the 320MB part for less, but it wasn't less enough to justify getting that over the 640MB part for me. That card has been my primary up until the GTX 285, which I got in the 1GB flavor for about the same price; I'd since relegated the 8800GTS to handle PhysX for the time being, not sure how frequently I'd be playing PhysX-enabled games.
Forward to the present, this combination has been pretty effective. The fact that I can still play something like Metro 2033 fluidly (albeit not at the absolute highest), is stunning for me, and even a game like Far Cry 2, which its in-game framerate reporting was reading about 25fps still did very well. A lot of PC games I grew to enjoy came around to using PhysX, such as Borderlands.
So between the 6GB of RAM and the rather... obscene performance boost, the 780 certainly seems to be a winner. The only object to getting one then would just be the sticker shock.
But if it ends up being another 8800GTX, well... you'll very likely be well covered until such time that both a new version of OpenGL/DirectX and some 'killer app/games' finally come out to justify an upgrade.