Upgrade from 780 HOF to 970 EX OC Black or just get HOF replaced?

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mope54

Supreme [H]ardness
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Oct 2, 2004
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My 780 HOF needs to be RMA'd. I asked GALAX whether they would be willing to upgrade me to another card given that I've had to RMA my 780 a few times. Their response was that they only have the 970 EX OC Black in stock and that if I'd like that one they would exchange. I'm grateful they're even giving me an option between a different card or replacing the 780 HOF, but I'm wondering if I'd be better off selling the freshly RMA'd 780 HOF with water block and buying something else.

The main downside is I have a full block water cooler for my 780 that I can't use for anything else because of the HOF custom PCB. I'm also not sure how I would rate the 970 Black performance to the 780 HOF performance. It's difficult to find benches between a 780 (non-ti) and a 970 (oc'ed). I'm not sure how much I'd be able to get for the block by itself. It's only a few months old.

Here is the review for it:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/12/02/galax-geforce-gtx-970-exoc-black-edition-re/10

I game at 1440p but the most intense game I play is BF4.

Any advice?
 
Well, the 512MB of additional VRAM would come in handy if you upgrade to the 970.
 
I would get the 970 either way. They stay cool, dont use much power and you will get 512mb more of vram.

Then try and sell your 780 w/WB.

(Just letting you know, last i remember the zotac 970's did not overclock well at all, even the HOF did not since they were limited to 1.212v even when bios modded, but that could of changed now)

Just my 0.02c
 
Well I either sell the 780 and buy the 970 or do a straight exchange for no money.

I think you might be confusing a zotac and the GALAX HOF's. They're two different companies and the HOF cards are among the fastest cards out there. I think they regularly were taking world 1sts even with 1.212 voltage limits (and the skyn3t bios allowed for going beyond that although it wasn't necessary). Even "bad" overclocking 780s were hitting 1.3G on stock volts.

I think I'm going with the 970 and just eat the waterblock cost (actually I'm going to see if I can mod it to work on the 970 they send me). I'm waiting to hear back if they're willing to work with me on upgrading to a 980.
 
They have 970 HOF cards, would they be willing to give you one of those?
 
I'm not sure. I'm waiting to hear back from them. The 970 EXOC was offered because that was in stock but I'm seeing if they're offering that because they think it's comparable or to get my RMA resolved quickest. I also told them I'm willing to pay some extra if that's what it takes.
 
Yeah I just called in and they said that they have it in my RMA file to send me a 970 HOF :O
 
How's that Anny cpu from Intel your running. You find that your cpu limited at 4.4 or does everything fly like the wind? Sure I could read reviews and stuff, but I'd rather here it from the troops. lol.
 
It's great for gaming. The only time I thought it might be cpu limited is in BF4 but I won't know until later today when I get the 970 and put it in along with my new 4690. But even playing BF4 I was still able to maintain around 40-50 fps during heavy fights on 64 person servers. I have a G-sync monitor so it's not horrible when the frames drop that much (just running along or with not a lot of action going on I get around 85fps).

When I want to do something that would require multicore then it really shows its weakness. Trying to run a VM, for example, was painful. Now that I'm building a new system I have this one up for sale in the forums. If no one buys it then I'll just use it for an HTPC which was always my plan. I was waiting until next intel launch before upgrading and it would have suited me perfectly fine but I got caught up in the hype of a microcenter sale. I mainly play D3, Heroes of the Storm, Dota2, and BF4 (and truth be told BF4 not all that much anymore anyway). The G3258 was working awesome for the games I play regularly and is some of the best bang for buck I've had...since the early pentium days which I suppose is the point of the chip :D
 
It's in and blazing along. Less bandwidth than my 780 but seems like it has higher frames...not sure whether that was due to the upgrade from G3258 to 4690K. I should have checked it in the old setup but I didn't want to bother :)
 
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