I left for Japan quickly, and though I thought I’d be coming home in about 70 days, it turns out to be about 8 months. As previously mentioned, I was lucky enough to have my father send over my PC, though not the complete setup. I was missing 2 monitors, and the speaker setup. So, though I have a decent rig, there’s (always) room to upgrade, as well as I just can’t stop thinking about the old surround setup. I need to get it back, and while I’m at it, I think I’ll take the chance to future-proof a little.
What I will keep: the Asus VE278Q monitor I shipped from Canada
16GB 1600 Patriot RAM
Maximus VI hero MB
i7 4770 CPU
What I will ditch: GTX 760 4gb
What I will bring over: In march, I will return to Canada as my sister is having a new child, and I want to meet them so very badly. While im there, I’ll bring back my denon receiver, 2x Bose 301, 2x bose 201, 1x paradigm 5th channel speaker (I cant remember the model).
So, I’m down a video card (by choice), and I need 2 more monitors. Let’s break it downnnnnn:
The monitors are an easy choice, I love my Asus VE278Q, and the price has come down a lot too. Now its only 255$ on newegg. DEEEEEECENT!
But what’s keeping me up at night, (literally, and yes, I’m a sad sad man) is what will I do for videocards????
Despite what some Rtards on reddit have said, a GTX 760 *4gb* is a totally viable surround monitor card. Really. You can get a consistent 45 FPS on ultra while playing Bioshock infinite. Yes. You can. I’m serious.
That being said, I really would prefer 60 fps, and games are only getting more intense. As well, I would love to perform this upgrade while I’m redoing PC stuff now anyways. My thought process has been scattered, as well as at time of writing not decided. I hope you guys can shed some light on what to do.
My first thought was, “Hey, just throw another 760 in there SLI style.” And this would work. Pretty well actually. Turns out 2 760s will actually beat a 780 ti. And the Asus Striker is a seriously sweet looking card. It also O/Cs very well (it comes factory O/Ced but can be pushed harder).
So for right now, this would kick some serious ass. But long term? Not so much. It doesn’t continue to scale, as 2×780 (not ti) beat 3×760. So suddenly I’m thinking what if I decide to go 4k in a few years, once they work out the kinks? What if games go more and more sleeping dogs style and take loads of power? (I will come back to this soon when talking about VRAM, however it is worth mentioning that Sleeping dogs is the *only* game to effectively break my 760 in surround. Worked great on ultra with 1 monitor but it couldn’t handle it with 3. *sad panda*)
So that’s how I came to decide that 760’s just were not the thing for me anymore. So I started looking at the 780s. I will say right now that I’d love the ti, however it’s outside my budget and I’m not trying to render the universe. As well, I really want this to be an SLI setup and I really think going with ti’s is just overkill.
So which 780’s are the 780’s for me? I see 3 options, first stock, 3gb 780s. I dont want this. It doesnt have that je ne sais quois. second, what I want, though I’ve become dubious that it’s the right choice, is a pair of the Asus Poseidon cards. And 3rd, which might be the correct choice, even if i dont want it to be, is the 6gb VRAM EVGA 780. Let’s compare the latter 2, shall we?
The Poseidon is a *seriously* cool card. I feel like it’s from the future. Not only is it stylish (like everything RoG), but it’s a hybrid cooled card. It is cooled by fans just fine by itself, however, it comes *out of the freaking box* ready to be liquid cooled!!! That means, if you have a liquid cooler, hook up the pipes and its done. And it also means, you can overclock it as hard as Nvidia limiters will let you. *all the way*. It’s incredible. And I think that it’s a fkn steal at $700. So Japes, you say. Why don’t you just get it, you say? Well, it’s because it is only offered with 3gb of VRAM. And this *could* pose problems.
Even my 760 has 4gb, though it rarely uses more than 2 (like any card). But VRAM becomes very important at higher resolutions (surround, 4k) and 3gb doesn’t feel sexy to me. In SLI, the whole frame needs to be held in all cards, so it’s very important then too. So, if i need more VRAM (and I really dont know if i actually do), then it’s the EVGA 6gb model for me.
The EVGA is a great card, it has the memory I need, as well as it can be found for $130 less than the Poseidon. It certainly will do the job I need, and save me cash. As well, it means that that super overclocking isnt a possibility, which again saves me money by making liquid cooling nothing worth getting. I was stoopid when I bought my i7 and saved 30$ by not getting the K model. So I can’t overclock my i7 even if i wanted to. Though those new 8 cores are looking fun, maybe i could get one of those in a K model and then liquid cooling could be viable. In the end, the EVGA is certainly the safe option. However, the speed, and looks of the card is lacking vs the Poseidon. If I don’t need that extra VRAM, and I’m not sure I do, it would be great to get the Poseidon and dream about a liquid cooled rig.
tl;dr for 3x1080p monitors, 2x asus poseidon 3gb or 2x evga 780 6gb?
If you have any advice on which card is the best, please let me know in the comments or @imthejapes on twitter! thanks!


