- If you are in the market for a used graphics card,
should you consider buying a GTX 780 in 2020?
Well in today's video we're gonna go in more focus,
and depth, than we did in a previous video,
where we put this card up against a heap
of other used graphics cards,
and we found it to be a little bit lacking
at 1080p ultra settings in quite a few titles.
But just because it's lacking at ultra settings at 1080p,
it doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad buy.
I picked this card up here for 80 Aussie dollars,
and back in its day when it was released,
it was considered a higher-end graphics card,
and it had a price about tenfold to what I picked it up for.
Though just because something is cheap,
and believe me I love a good cheap price tag
on any product related to tech at "Tech YES City,"
it doesn't necessarily mean that it's good.
So let's put this GTX 780 Lightning here,
back on the test bench, overclock it, change some settings,
and see who it's really geared up for, in 2020.
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So going through the gaming benchmarks,
this card is not a 1440p gaming card,
if you want to play the latest titles in 2020.
However what it is,
is more a 1080p high settings game mode,
which high settings is pretty much
a sweet spot for me personally,
but I found it didn't make a whole lot of a difference,
compared to ultra,
at least in a few of the titles I tested it.
Take for instance "Strange Brigade,"
we did gain a few fps by changing it to high settings,
and even more so we got some overclocks in there,
and gained a little bit extra performance too.
However turning off asynchronous compute,
didn't really change the results at all in this title.
However moving over to "Shadow of the Tomb Raider,"
changing this to DX11 did net us a little bit
of an advantage here, and this is one thing about the 780,
it wasn't pretty much future-ready back in day.
The nine series changed that with the GTX970,
where NVIDIA added things like asynchronous support in,
as well as made it more DX12, and Vulkan friendly.
So DX12 on "Shadow of the Tomb Raider"
showing a worse performance on this 780,
just showed that the seventh series
wasn't really equipped for the future.
However, overclocking the card again,
we saw a slight boost in fps,
just like we did changing it over to high settings.
Though one thing I'm gonna stop,
and in the middle of these benchmarks I will say,
is that overclocking this card here,
unfortunately I couldn't get higher levels out of it.
The BIOS lock implemented on this particular card,
comes into the fact that I had problems
because it was an early revision, 80.10.
Basically that meant that I couldn't then flash this vBIOS,
with the very popular Skynet BIOS,
which saw very limited overclocking limits lifted,
and then you could get a lot more out of these cards.
Unfortunately on these current limits,
all's I could get was roughly an extra 10% performance,
and the good thing about that was, at least in that field,
was the power consumption didn't really go up much at all,
'cause the card was power-limited,
which was a common problem on the 780 and 780 Tis,
until you put on those custom biases.
Tough moving over now to some good news.
This card right here.
If you want to play "Fortnite" competitively,
on a 1080p monitor, with low settings in the epic distance,
which is the competitive settings,
this card did a really good job
scoring over 210 average fps,
and then when we overclocked it all the way up,
into the 220 fps region.
So that meant if you had a 244 hertz monitor,
this card at least that 100% screen resolution,
would go pretty well.
Though under "Far Cry," and here we were seeing
that the VRAM limit even at 1080p on high settings,
was almost being hit yet again.
So the performance uplift wasn't that big,
over ultra settings, but regardless,
it was still closer to that sweet spot of 60 fps.
Though dropping things down to high settings
in "For Honor," saw us get a big performance uplift,
and then yet again,
overclocking it saw us go into the 90 region,
which is quite impressive for a card
that only cost me 80 Aussie dollars.
Though, what about the last good news?
And that is, well I'd guess it's good, or bad news,
depending on how look at it.
I decided to boot it up in "Modern Warfare,"
and run a benchmark.
The 780 right here, was getting over 60 average fps
for a 13 minute benchmark,
that I did whilst playing this game,
and the 1% and point 1% lows were also pretty good too.
There was really no stuttering the whole time I played this,
which is good for someone on a budget,
and someone who wants to play "Call of Duty Modern Warzone."
Though that being said, the bad news with this,
is that everything here was set to 1080p,
the lowest settings possible.
So we couldn't really extract
any more fps out of this setup,
unless we lowered the resolution to say 720p,
and the bad thing I guess with that,
is that already at 1080p on these settings,
I already had a hard time seeing my enemies from a distance.
I do prefer some of the settings set to high,
and then of course other things turned off
to get the fps up,
but you're pretty much gonna be limited
to around 60 to 70 average fps,
unless you can get those custom biases,
and overclock this thing higher.
So summing things up for you guys with the 780, in 2020.
I think this card is good value for money,
if you can get it for around 50 USD,
or around 80 Aussie dollars and it is a card,
unfortunately that I do consider quite risky,
since it was a high power consuming card,
as we can see with those power consumption numbers,
this means that it's got a more likely chance,
in my opinion, of failing over that said period,
as opposed to something like a GTX 750 Ti,
which doesn't use much power at all,
hence creating less heat, hence longer life.
So, a bit of a risk, but that being said,
if you can get one in good condition,
like I did here with this lightning Edition,
then you can get "Fortnite" up to some really high fps,
you can play all those competitive multiplayer titles,
with the exception of "Call of Duty Warzone,"
going around 70 max,
and you can't really do a whole lot to get higher than that.
Though if you can get one of these cards
in really good condition,
and of course you have a good power supply,
and that's another thing that you have to consider
with this card, is that you will have to go and fork out,
or either already have, a pretty high powered power supply,
then this card here can represent some decent value.
Take for instance those "Fortnite" numbers,
if all you wanted to do
was get into competitive "Fortnite" gameplay,
then this card would be literally perfect for you,
if you're on a budget.
"Call of Duty Warzone" is good for 60 fps gaming,
so I guess if you know you good at that game,
and then you're on a budget, this card will suffice,
and then of course if you've got, I guess, the pro skills,
and you want to step it up higher,
and you know you're really good at the game,
then you can step it up to say a GTX 1070,
or something like that.
So there it is with the GTX 780, it can be a good buy,
just know that it does have its limitations,
and if you've watched this video this far,
and you've enjoyed this content,
then be sure to hit that like button for us,
also let us know in the comments section below,
what do you think about the 780 in 2020?
Love reading your thoughts and opinions, as always,
and speaking of thoughts and opinions,
we have the question of the day, he says, Rez1 is High,
"Hello Bryan, when will you drop the Xeon 2678 v3 video?
"Eagerly waiting for that!"
This is a good question
because I checked my Aliexpress account,
and I'm still waiting 50 days,
like there's a tracking number, it's apparently left China,
I still gotta wait for that CPU,
if you guys don't know what CPU it is,
it's a 12-core 24 threaded Xeon,
though can be pretty much unlocked
to go to 3.3 GHz all-core,
and it comes in at a really good price.
Unfortunately, some of my other orders,
I realize got canceled,
so the CPU will come through,
and another motherboard will come through,
but the motherboard roundup
is going to have to wait a little while,
due to these weird delays,
and I just hope you guys out there
are staying safe as well with that news being said,
and I'll catch you in another tech video very soon.
And if you stayed this far,
and you're enjoying that content,
then be sure to hit that sub button, ring that bell,
and I'll see you in the next one.
Peace out for now, bye.