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780m vs 775m....worth $450 to upgrade?

S

sushicary

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 8, 2014
7
0
Hey guys,

I just ordered a refurb new model iMac from the Apple Store to be my new home rig that was on sale for 1800 after tax. I want something that will last at least 3 years and be able to handle games at decent settings for a while (though not a hardcore gamer, still like to play new single player games when they come out, like Walking Dead).

I felt great about the purchase until I read a bunch of opinions online saying it's 780M or bust if one will do any gaming. Thing is, they don't offer the 780M refurbished, so I would be forced to buy new which would come to about 2250 after tax.

My question is, is it worth the extra $450 to get the 780M over the 775M? If it was a few hundred, I'd probably jump on it, but for $450......kind of on the fence.

Thanks all!
 
sushicary said:
Hey guys,

I just ordered a refurb new model iMac from the Apple Store to be my new home rig that was on sale for 1800 after tax. I want something that will last at least 3 years and be able to handle games at decent settings for a while (though not a hardcore gamer, still like to play new single player games when they come out, like Walking Dead).

I felt great about the purchase until I read a bunch of opinions online saying it's 780M or bust if one will do any gaming. Thing is, they don't offer the 780M refurbished, so I would be forced to buy new which would come to about 2250 after tax.

My question is, is it worth the extra $450 to get the 780M over the 775M? If it was a few hundred, I'd probably jump on it, but for $450......kind of on the fence.

Thanks all!
Click to expand...

They do have a 780 refurb for $2289 - you just have to catch it when it's on the site.
 
I always buy my stuff maxed out BTO and new so I don't think I'm the best example here.

I'll just tell anyone considering buying something like an iMac where they can't easily upgrade the CPU and GPU is to just max it out at the time of purchase so they are not worrying about it down the road. If we were talking about the Mac Pro, I would say to just buy the base model and do your own upgrades but it's a different conversation with an integrated system like the iMac.

Believe me, I always run into people who needed a little more power in their iMac after a couple years of ownership.
 
Bump......just looking for more opinions from anyone who has either cards..
 
sushicary said:
Bump......just looking for more opinions from anyone who has either cards..
Click to expand...

I also think that the refurb iMac with 780M had a 3TB Fusion drive (and maybe 16GB RAM)? In either case, its more than just the GPU in that refurb model for that $450 difference (and yes, I have seen the i7 780M in the refurb section in the past).

That said, I grabbed the previous generation iMac with the 680MX and that has been working quite well for me. If gaming is your only concern, maybe consider jumping to that model? The Haswell benefits are small in the iMac from a CPU perspective, and the GPU is better than the 775M from what I read. I have no experience with the 780M or 775M unfortunately.
 
As I posted yesterday (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1705226/), I am suspicious that the 775 may be inadequate in driving multiple displays for some applications. This may be a consideration of you as well. I have ordered a new BTO machine with the 780 to compare side by side. I will let you know what I find out.
 
sushicary said:
Yeah, I saw that. I just can't justify the 700 dollar difference. Way too steep for what seems like a marginal upgrade.

Any thoughts that 680MX one from last year I posted? Only 100 dollar difference so more in my range.
Click to expand...

I actually went with the 680MX and its been great for my gaming needs so far. I'm playing Tomb Raider and Batman AC (at least these are the most GPU intensive games I'm playing) and the 680MX is running them very well. I think I have Batman fully maxed with no issues, and Tomb Raider I had to dial back a little to have it play the way I wanted. I'm mostly playing these on the Mac side, so that's probably not the best representation of what the card can do, but I also have these on Bootcamp that I should probably test (I just got the machine a few weeks ago and haven't had that much time to put in yet).

I think this is a good way to go for now (and even better for me as I grabbed my iMac used locally for $1700). I didn't need the wifi AC updates, or BT 4.0. The faster PCIe based SSD would be nice, but I run Windows on a separate thunderbolt SSD and the Fusion drive is fast enough for now.
 
I would buy a Xbox One or a PlayStation 4 for this amount of money... 15% extra performance isn't worth $450,- dollars, is it? ;)
 
sushicary said:
Thanks for that link.


Interesting.....in the tests where 775M was included, it only seems to be about 10% below the 780M. That can't be right....can it? For $450 more?
Click to expand...

The min/maxers of the gaming world will tell you that the highest option is the only option and anything less is just terrible. This of course isn't true and yes that benchmark does not surprise me.

It does help improve longevity to buy the best you can afford at any given point in time but the difference here isn't huge.

I do not believe Apple is charging 450 for just the card upgrade. If I recall correctly the last one I looked at which might have been previous generation, it was 200 bucks to go from standard to top end. Even that is steep for the performance increase you get but again some folks have to have that and couldn't sleep well if they bought anything less.

No matter what you buy at any given point in time, within a year (max) or less it will become the previous generation, yesterday's news, etc. so I wouldn't sweat this too much. Just get the one you wanted and were happy with. It'll be just fine.
 
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