With the release of the new Maxwell cards comes an opportunity for those with a smaller budget to still get a decent upgrade for their systems.  Early adopters will often sell their previous GPUs once they've upgraded allowing you to get a better card than your budget would usually allow, though with a risk of ending up with a bum card.  The ASUS ROG GTX 780 Ti MATRIX Platinum is a good example with a DirectCU II air cooler for general usage but the LN2 switch will also allow more extreme cooling methods for those looking for something a little more impressive.  The factory overclock is not bad at 1006/1072MHz core and 7GHz effective memory but the overclock [H]ard|OCP managed at 1155/1220MHz and 7.05GHz pushes the performance above that of the R9 290X of the same family.  If you can find this card used at a decent price it could give you more of an upgrade than you thought you could afford.

"In today's evaluation we are breaking down the ASUS ROG GTX 780 Ti MATRIX Platinum video card. We put this head-to-head with the ASUS ROG R9 290X MATRIX Platinum. Which provides a better gaming experience, best overclocking performance, and power and temperature? Which one provides the best value? "

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