Nvidia Maxwell

It seems more like a sidegrade than an upgrade. You could probably do it for very little money. The main advantages would be more VRAM, a newer architecture (Kepler is from early 2012 and is almost 3 years old at this point), and a card that runs cooler, quieter, and uses less energy.

There are also some very nice versions of the 970 and 980, such as the ASUS Strix. The Strix apparently runs so cool that the fans almost never come on, even when gaming.

Edit: I sold my 780 Ti and bought an Asus 980 Strix. I'll let you know how it is. The Strix is semi-passive and is supposed to be dead silent even when gaming. My power supply is already semi-passive, so the result should be a rig that's dead silent even when running very intensive games. The 780 Ti has plummeted in price to around $400, but mine was a gift, so I wasn't that worried about that when I sold it. Also, the Strix is a really rare card right now that's almost never in stock, especially the 970 version. From what I've read everything about the Strix other than the GPU is custom, and Asus is having issues producing enough of them.

 

I have the 780, but I probably wouldn’t replace it with the 970. You’re looking at around 10% increase in performance at 1440p and an extra gig of vram. The 970 is basically neck-and-neck with the 290X. It would be an upgrade but the difference is too small to warrant it, imo. The 980 would make a lot more sense for any meaningful difference, but that’s a big step up in price; so not exactly the value option.

 

I got a free copy of Far Cry 4 with my Asus Strix. That's good because I was going to buy it eventually anyway.

 

I got $370 for my 780 Ti. I was worried that with 8GB cards and a possible new architecture on the way from AMD that if I waited too long it would go from a card that's lost a lot of its value to a card that's not worth much of anything. Also there's the fact that it was a gift, so anything I would get for it is money in my pocket. Free Far Cry 4 with the Asus Strix sealed the deal. You actually get the choice between Assassin's Creed Unity, Far Cry 4, and one other game I can't remember. I had no interest in the new AC game. The Strix is getting great reviews, so if you can sell your old card and actually find one in stock I would go for it.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/11/03/asus_gtx_970_strix_directcu_ii_video_card_review/10#.VFk9PvnF9ig

 

First impressions of the ASUS 980 Strix:

-The card makes no noticeable noise of any kind, even when running an intensive game on maximum settings. It idles at 40C with no fan running, and only gets into the 60s even when gaming. I don't think the fans are even coming on in most cases. That's how cool it runs. It also has no coil whine. I had problems with coil whine on two of the EVGA 780 Ti cards. I have to say that the combination of dead silence and extreme performance on this card is very impressive.
-My 3dmark11 score went from 13500 to 15500. The card made no noise when running the benchmark.
-Shadow of Mordor runs totally smooth on Ultra settings. In this game at least it's a very noticeable upgrade over the 780Ti.
-The build quality is the best I've ever seen on a video card. It has a nice brushed black metal backplate and a custom PCB with all top shelf components, including Samsung GDDR5.
-Nice I/O. I'm glad that they're finally regarding DVI as a legacy connector and giving you more displayports for high res monitors.

Overall I would say it's kind of like one of those passively cooled cards people use in HTPCs, except it also mops the floor with everything out now in terms of performance. When you stop to think about that it actually makes the 780 and especially the noisy 290 cards seem a bit dated by comparison. AMD had better have something impressive up their sleeves and it had better be whisper quiet and sip power or they're finished.

 

AMD has just announced an 8GB version of the 290X. So I imagine Nvidia will soon follow suit with their own 8GB flavors of the 970/980.

Will probably come in handy, especially at 4k. I know that the HD texture pack for Shadow of Mordor requires 6GB alone. I didn't see any discernible difference between High settings and the Ultra pack, other than some stuttering with Ultra. That was with a 6GB 780. These latest games are really starting to whore on that vram tho.

 

Yes. Runs smooth with ultra textures downloaded and enabled, but it's using almost all of the 4GB VRAM according to GPU-Z, which is worrying. It seems like it's going to take both more VRAM and faster GPUs that can effectively utilize that VRAM to run these badly optimized games that are coming out.

Also, the difference with the texture pack is not very noticeable, and it was a huge download (~3.7GB IIRC). Seems kind of pointless unless you're running at a really high resolution.

 

Tom's hardware reviewed the 8GB version of the 290X. It doesn't look like the added VRAM helps it much. In Watch Dogs, the 970 is just flat out faster than the 8GB 290X. In Shadow of Mordor with ultra textures, it performs almost identically to the 970 at 1080p and only pulls ahead by a few frames at 3840x2160.

Overall the 8GB 290X looks like a big meh. The 4GB 970 is cheaper and overall faster in more games.

I get the impression just adding more VRAM isn't the solution for this generation of badly optimized games. The GPUs also need to get faster.

 

The STRIX has a look that's all business. Looks good with my Sabertooth board.