Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review: GK110, Fully Unlocked

[scottoOH]

Props to Nvidia! You have the crown....unfortunately for Nvidia though, not my money. That $700 price tag is way out of my price range. Even if it were not I'm a little miffed at putting 3Gb of RAM on this board....my guess is Nvidia will milk all it can from customers at that price point. Then when AMD counters Nvivdia with a price move or another re-bagde....Nvidia will drop the price $200 and re-badge this 780Ti to the GTX 790 with 5 Gb of RAM and sell it for $800.....

 

[Immaculate]

R9 290 is looking great!
780Ti averages only 2-5 frames more in most titles.
$300 for 2-5 frames?
Nvidia.. get real.

 

[FLanighan]

Good thing I can just buy a second GTX 670 for SLI to achieve better performance than the 780 TI

 

[-Fran-]

Let me get this straight... The R9 290X is (on average) 15% slower than the GTX780ti, but being 40% cheaper?

Taking aftermarket cooling into the equation, that 15% will be close to 5% on average and maybe will still be 30% cheaper ($500 -> $550).

Hell, take a look at the baby R9 290!

Good for nVidia to put up the GTX780ti, which is with no doubts a great card, but it loses so bad in price/performance I think they need to try harder =/

Cheers!

 

[Mousemonkey]

As this is the card we would have seen last year if the 7xxx series had been better its AMD that need to try harder, Nvidia have been sitting on this card for over a year now! :lol:

 

[technoholic]

Things can't stay this way price wise .... at a $100 price difference between the Ti and the 290x, I can't imagine anyone is going to say "Oh I'll spend up to $600 but I won't go $700" .... especially once it starts setting in peeps minds that the "overclocked to the wall" $500 780 beats the "overclocked to the wall" 290x by surprisingly significant margins ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djvZaHHU4I8 (benchies at 8:30)

Also, if water cooling, will there be an extra cost for the additional rad area / fans ya might need with two 2xx versus two 7xx....... I have not as yet seen how far either can go on water cooling but at stock speeds, we're talking +100 watts extra.

Again, I don't wanna focus on who's winning / who's losing but given what we have seen, I expect the 290x will have to now drop in price, pulling the 290 down to which nVidia will again have to respond with reductions in 770 / 780. Hang on to ya wallets folks .... methinks more price drops coming.

Again, while most of the reviews I have read have come down pretty hard on the heat and noise of the 2xx series, some even offering a "no buy" recommendation, I am very concerned about the willingness of many to accept these noise level as a trade off for increased performance. I don't know if it's more a matter of brand loyalty or a surrender of sorts to the increasing costs of GFX cards but I noticed above CF'd 290s was suggested as an alternative..... the performance of that machine is immaterial if I have to wear ear protection or be in the next room to use it comfortably ..... 2 x 59 dBA ? Why not hook a vacuum cleaner to ya PC to provide cooling.

This willingness to accept noise at this level, to my mind at least, is disturbing and a trend that started with the H100 (also at 60 dBA) and is one I hope soon gets nipped in the bud. Yes, it was important for AMD to put something competitive on the shelves for the holiday season but I wish they had waited a few more weeks and come up with a better / quieter cooling solution.

I still see a solid position for the 2xx cards in the 4k space at current proces but unfortunately nVidia still has two cards that outperform the 290x when all are overclocked to their limits at 1920 x 1080 and 2560 x 1600. As of yet I have not been asked to do a 4k build but would recommend that the user consider the 290x if that was their desired res. However, this holiday season , the predominant requests I have had have been for 144 Hz 1920 x 1080....and one for the new 240Hz Eizo. Personally, I don't see myself going to larger resolution screens until 120Hz gets there.

I don't know if you are aware but ALL your conclusions and claims are based on only 1 fact: Bad cooler design by AMD. Tom's 290 review showed that heat, noise and some performance issues are all result of the bad reference cooler. I am not a fanboy at all BUT i am sick and tired of hearing the same propaganda all over the net All these issues will be solved by the after market designs, as we'll see soon. AMD's solution was silly and everyone accepts this. But the competition has just started and we will see a lot of products from partners. I think it is too early to draw any conclusion. GTX 780 Ti's power consumption is more or less at the same level as R9 290X's, the difference is that Nvidia's cooling design is much more superior. Once this is solved, 2x 290s will indeed be better than a single GTX 780 Ti

 

[PyjamasCat]

Hoping to get a response this time. I am wondering if AA has any place in the ultraHD gaming world. I suspect that it gets cranked to 16x on ultra settings and I wonder if this actually is discernable witht he pixel density being so high. It is not like many people can spot a jagged edged curve when the "jag" is microns big.

If it has a negligible impact on what it looks like I am wondering how performance is with single cards on ultraHD screens WITHOUT ANTI-ALIASING. Please could you investigate? or point me to somewhere that has. Cheers all!

Don't know if anyone has replied to you yet, but I see where your going with this and it is not only hugely dependant on the resolution, but the size of the screen too. (PPI)

On my nexus 4 (318 PPI screen), all I need is 4xMSAA to make every curve appear perfect, while I use much higher (usually 4x Transparent SSAA + 8x MSAA depending on the game) on my desktop screen (which I believe is around 110PPI). So with a 4K monitor like the ASUS PQ321Q (31.5" 140 PPI) I would have some AA but not alot.

It also depends on the individual. Some people don't mind a few jaggies here and there, while others can't stand them. Eventually AA might become more of a gimmick (maybe when we are gaming on 300PPI monitors at a crazy res) but for now, I think 4K would still look a little better with some AA.

 

[scook9]

Tom's, PLEASE PLEASE test the 780 Ti against the R9 290x and R9 290 with all of them watercooled at stock clocks. This will be the only real way to tell what card is better than the other with temperatures removed from the occasion as clearly temperature wildly influences the overall performance capabilities of these cards.

Thanks!

 

[slomo4sho]

Here are some interesting overclock results:

The EVGA GeForce GTX 780Ti Classified is already available for preorder! AMD really needs to step up and get non-reference designs out.

 

[Durandul]

If I had lot's of money, I'd be torn between water cooling a 290X, or buying a 780ti. Good thing I don't have a lot of money.

 

[littleleo]

After the Titian came out and people were saying $1000 for a VGA card is too much and it will never sell, but I sold more of those then 7970 GHz model I couldn't keep them on the shelf. Even thought it's a smaller company then AMD the Nvidia models just seem like a more elegant solution and yes the 780 Ti will sell and I wouldn't be surprised to see it out sell the 290x. I bet we'll see a new Titian Ti just before Xmas too.

 

[Rum]

Here are some interesting overclock results:

The EVGA GeForce GTX 780Ti Classified is already available for preorder! AMD really needs to step up and get non-reference designs out.

Wow R9 290 is a great performer and considering the price you can't beat that kind of value!

 

[Hard Line]

Has anyone thought that maybe AMD perposely nerfed the cards to catch nvidia off guard AFTER the release of the 780ti ( that they knew was gonna come out) ? This thought has been in my head since release. they know that aftermarket coolers are going to really allow the card to stretch it's legs and maybe they think nvidia won't be prepared for it? plus a beta driver is supposedly on it's way out for a performance boot.. hmmmm maybe they are smarter than we think? treat this as a game of chess and my thoughts make sense 😀

 

[ubercake]

amd has the reference water cooled version of the 290x coming out but its likely to be after the new year... we will see then if it can beat the 780ti

Pretty sure the 780ti is using a reference cooler too. Wonder what a 780ti on water would be like?

 

[sleepyman]

AMD should have just charged $50 more and added decent coolers to the R9-290x and the R9-290. What we're seeing in the retail R9-290x benchmarks is a heavily UNDERCLOCKED card. A proper cooling solution and more refined drivers (GCN 1.1 requires different drivers than GCN 1.0) will close the performance gap between the GTX 780ti and the R9-290x.

NVidia has better drivers mainly because they have a much greater percentage of the discrete GPU market share. I hate the fact that something non-technical like negative PR can actually take market share away from AMD and thus negatively effect the quality of their drivers. I'm not an AMD fanboy. I have bought NVidia products and am willing to buy NVidia products again. I'm simply aware of the fact that consumers have AMD by the balls and therefore AMD acts according to the interests of their costumers. On the other hand, NVidia has an Apple-like loyalty from their costumers and all GPU consumers suffer because of it (NVidia users pay more and AMD users get worse drivers). I'm sorry about this badly written paragraph. I just want to get the point across that the real battle is between GPU consumers and GPU manufacturers. The price/performance difference between what NVidia has to offer and what AMD has to offer does not justify NVidia having around 65% of the dGPU market share. AMD will have better drivers and NVidia will have cheaper prices if the market share of the two companies is more even...DON'T LET THEM BEAT US!!!!!

 

[ed d]

AMD has a more real world card, that is also a gaming card... trouble is it runs very hot , why custom coolers are going to be difficult.

Nvidia are purely for gaming and it shows... but at a cost, whether its £100 better is the question

 

[silverblue]

As this is the card we would have seen last year if the 7xxx series had been better its AMD that need to try harder, Nvidia have been sitting on this card for over a year now! :lol:

You're assuming yields were good enough to release such a card without charging an astronomical amount of money for it.

The 780Ti is an exceptional card at a premium price. Customised versions of the 780Ti, 290X and 290 will undoubtedly cost more than reference designs but from the looks of things, it's the AMD camp that has the most performance to gain from a better cooling solution - the performance is there, IF temperatures are kept under control. It's a crying shame that AMD didn't consider a stronger cooling solution. I don't know, perhaps that's what AMD meant by not competing directly with the top card NVIDIA has to offer, and consequently they can charge a fair bit less for it on top of the fact they have a smaller GPU.

 

[jasonpwns]

Look at it this way. Even with the new releases AMD has made they haven't forced nvidia to play all their cards. the 780ti is still the same Kepler. Nvidia hasn't even needed to try. People seem to forget how quickly Nvidia made AMD lower their prices drastically when Kepler first came onto the market.

 

[redeemer]

overall %11 more performance for $200 more?

 

[cmi86]

Important thing to remember is the 290X is only running at roughly 75% throttle and costs $200 less. I have a feeling that $200 is going to be awfully hard to justify when aftermarket coolers drop for the 290X. Of course this is Nvidia doing what they have always done and that is offer a highly price/high performance card for those who just have to have the best just because its the best regardless of price, all the while they are getting mopped in the practical arena of high performance.

 

[redeemer]

clock for clock the Hawaii is faster than Kepler GK110, need to see the 290x with better cooling!

 

[Mousemonkey]

Important thing to remember is the 290X is only running at roughly 75% throttle and costs $200 less. I have a feeling that $200 is going to be awfully hard to justify when aftermarket coolers drop for the 290X. Of course this is Nvidia doing what they have always done and that is offer a highly price/high performance card for those who just have to have the best just because its the best regardless of price, all the while they are getting mopped in the practical arena of high performance.

If you don't want one then don't buy one, simple really. You guys carry on like someone is holding a gun to your heads, sheesh!

 

[redeemer]

My heart broke a little bit for AMD. Unless AMD's got something up their sleeve, it's up to the board manufacturers now to get the 290X in a better competitive stance than the 780 ti.

I feel bad for Nvidia tbh, they are becoming more and more irrelevant. No console deal, Tegra is a flop, Shield, PhysX. They are losing market in the most important place of all " Mobile".

Hopefully PC gaming survives, eitherway Nvidia has tons of cash!

 

[redeemer]

My heart broke a little bit for AMD. Unless AMD's got something up their sleeve, it's up to the board manufacturers now to get the 290X in a better competitive stance than the 780 ti.

The 290XT?? The reference cooler is crap and their drivers are very very immature right now, the 780TI gains will be short lived.

Kepler has gone as far as its going to go, unless Nvidia brings us Maxwell on a 28nm which would be a disaster back to big die strategy again.

AMD is sitting pretty right now their Hawaii architecture is faster clock for clock

 

[redeemer]

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/1098036