Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review: GK110, Fully Unlocked

[logainofhades]

The price for performance of this card makes it a tough sell. Something much be wrong with the retail 290x cards in the lab. I would RMA them. Price/performance, and R9 290 is probably the best thing going right now in the high end segment. Hopefully better cooling will arrive soon for the R9 290x to truly flex its muscle consistently. The 780 should be priced closer to the 290. As far as the actual price the 780ti should be, that cannot really be determined till we get a better cooling solution on the 290x. I honestly don't know what AMD was thinking with those POS coolers.

 

[Mousemonkey]

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!

When things don't turn out as you predict and someone like me reminds you of this post I really hope you man up and take it on the chin. 😉

 

[nikoli707]

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?

both water-cooled will likely be within a couple of frames of each other across the board. the gk110 tech has already gotten its 10% boost from nvidia drivers. amd is yet to release a whql for its hawaii chips so if history for the last 3 generations of nvidia/amd cards is any indicator... amd will eventually boost the performance by about 10% within the next 6 months. I'm just looking forward to about a year down the road for an upgrade when you can buy the 780/290 for like $329 and all the kinks are woke out.

 

[shompa]

Are you sure its GK110? All evidence points towards its GK180.
Using GK110 would have been to expensive = why nvidia did a base layer respin and released GK180 about a month ago in their Tesla line.

 

[brenro]

I'm glad there are enough AMD fans to keep Nvidia on it's toes development-wise and pricing-wise. As for myself I prefer products that work 100% right out of the box.

 

[slyu9213]

Your right. The Price/Performance of the 780Ti kills the Titan, but not so much compared to AMD. The 290X loses by 1-3 frames in most cases yet it's $250ish cheaper. With custom coolers or even water cooling a 290X will be able to match the 780Ti. The 780Ti is still the #1 single card GPU but when you put Price/Performance into the equation I think the 290X wins hands down. If I upgrade from my 4850 any time soon I'll be getting a R9 290 or a R9 290X to get the most out of my $$$

I'm glad there are enough AMD fans to keep Nvidia on it's toes development-wise and pricing-wise. As for myself I prefer products that work 100% right out of the box.

I prefer video cards that will work well contesting the opposing side yet have a big space to improve through drivers and cooling. Plus if Mantle is successful its a plus. I also don't see justification of $250-400 on a performance difference of 1-5 frames per second

 

[Novuake]

Still such a beautiful shroud. Its a shame it can not keep as cool as I would like it to.

Anyway, now for the aftermarket cooler comparison and OC wars!!! Yay competition!!!!

Chris, will you guys be doing a direct comparison between the aftermarket coolers for both GTX780ti and R9 290x?

And maybe an overclocking competition with custom loops?

 

[Memnarchon]

Sites like Tom's Hardware should make a nice HUGE round up with custom card from R9 290 and R9 290X along with custom cards from 780 and 780ti. That would require around 20-25 test cards (lets say 5-6 from each GPU), which is a lot of time.
I would love to see one of those round up though!

Chris, will you guys be doing a direct comparison between the aftermarket coolers for both GTX780ti and R9 290x?

😀
My thoughts exactly. Since as it seems most people will buy non-reference cards, it would be nice to see a total view of the performance that the non-reference cards will have.

 

[-Fran-]

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:

I won't argue that the 7970 was long in the tooth, but I kind of liked that. Thanks to that, I was able to swap the ref-cooled GTX670 i got for a 7970 Toxic. The GTX670 held up its value very good, while the 7970 went down in a spiral over a year. After that whole year the drivers were good enough to justify the swap, haha.

In this case, no matter how late to the party the R9 290X came, the P/P ratio of it is great and can not be denied (given the current price landscape, of course). And if you consider the R9 290 is even harder to justify getting the GTX780ti and even the R9 290X. That's just nuts and great for us the consumers. Aftermarket coolers will make things close to even, I'd say.

And like someone said up there. I don't like burning my HARD EARNED money just because. This is a general point I'd say, but even if you're filthy rich and burn money just because, you're a stupid ass.

Also, like the article correctly points out. If you're willing to spend USD$700 for a video card, you want a long term investment, so 3GB sounds really cheap on nVidias part. They really need to put a 6GB version of it fast.

Like I said, it's a great card and all, but the price point is way off.

Cheers!

 

[guvnaguy]

Chris, I noticed that the frame rates for Crysis 3 are significantly lower (~24fps instead of a playable 32) for the 290X at 4K than the benchmarks you ran last week for the 290X review....is that because this test setup uses Sandy Bridge-E instead of Ivy Bridge?

 

[Glacier]

$700 is too much. The 290X is a better value.

 

[iatemyelf]

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!

nvidia's yearly revenue is around $4 billion with hundreds of millions in net income... AMD's revenue is about a billion and they are usually hemorrhaging money. i think nvidia is fine.

 

[RealBeast]

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!

nvidia's yearly revenue is around $4 billion with hundreds of millions in net income... AMD's revenue is about a billion and they are usually hemorrhaging money. i think nvidia is fine.

Yeah, but AMD has the advantage of getting a billion or two from Intel every now and then since Intel grinds the piss poor AMD CPUs into paste and still somehow feels the need to compete unfairly by paying off OEMs.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Yeah, but AMD has the advantage of getting a billion or two from Intel every now and then since Intel grinds the piss poor AMD CPUs into paste and still somehow feels the need to compete unfairly by paying off OEMs.

That's a pisspoor business plan though.

 

[RealBeast]

Yeah, but AMD has the advantage of getting a billion or two from Intel every now and then since Intel grinds the piss poor AMD CPUs into paste and still somehow feels the need to compete unfairly by paying off OEMs.

That's a pisspoor business plan though.

Sure it is, but otherwise AMD would probably be gone or close to it.

 

[Mousemonkey]

:lol:

 

[Rum]

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!

nvidia's yearly revenue is around $4 billion with hundreds of millions in net income... AMD's revenue is about a billion and they are usually hemorrhaging money. i think nvidia is fine.

Yeah, but AMD has the advantage of getting a billion or two from Intel every now and then since Intel grinds the piss poor AMD CPUs into paste and still somehow feels the need to compete unfairly by paying off OEMs.

Intel was doing this when AMD was destroying them and their crappy netburst with the Athlon/ FX series back in the day... Intel probably still do to an extent because they are greedy tools, but there really is no need at this point for them to use those kind of shady tactics when you outpace the competition!

As for Gaming Market share, Nvidia could lose a good chunk but still be fine because the real money maker in the professional arena aka Quadro still has a fat foothold!

 

[animalosity]

@ Memnarchon

"I read 9 review sites. Noone has the 290X as better performer of or on par with GTX780ti and all agree with Tom's Hardware review.
Anandtech
Guru3D
Hardware Canucks
HardwareHeaven
PCPerspective
TechpowerUp
Bit-Tech
Vortez
Tom's Hardware
And when I am saying noone, I mean noone.... 780ti is a faster GPU and not by 1%. Most of the reviews go around 10% more than the jetloud uber mode."

You sir are quite mistaken. Every single game benched here is within less than 10% with the exception of Bioshock and ARMA. First and foremost, obviously AMD is still sorting out heat issues, so therefore the cards auto down clock. I agree that a 780TI is faster, but only so marginally. I am willing to bet with Manufacturers cooling solutions such as Gigabyte's Windforce, or ASUS's DCUII units, a 780 TI will basically become obsolete at its price point. I'm sorry, $150 bucks more for literally a variance of 5-10 frames is completely not worth it. Especially when 90% of the gaming population uses 1080p of which anything over 60 FPS is essentially pointless on native 60hz LED monitors anyway. You sir, are a fan boy.

 

[ferooxidan]

None of this matter if none of game devs develop games exclusively for PC. They prioritize console first then to PC. I miss the old days when there are different games on PC and consoles. Now pretty much all AAA titles will come to all platform (except the exclusive one). With consoles getting top priority nowadays, I can just play them on console w/o having to wait for PC. Then when the PC version come out, yes I can play on better res and better graphic, but nowadays games don't have good replay value. Such a waste if I have a rig over $1k just to play the same game with better graphic but no replay value from console. Please game devs, go back to what it used to be before PS3 and Xbox 360 came. Then I will buy GTX780 Ti or whatever beast of a card that in store later.

 

[technoholic]

After reading through so many reviews, i see even greater value in 290 lol I hope we can get custom cards before the new year

 

[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 😀

 

[somebodyspecial]

Excluding the possibility of bias, it's important to note the various performance results from one site to another. Tom's has the 780Ti winning the majority of benches while others have the 290x on top for the same applications. I believe this is representative of real world end user scenarios. Individual cards and total system variances IMO will result in the 780ti and 290x performing pretty much on par at higher resolutions. Therefore it really comes down to prices or preference but I don't know too many smart people who choose to waste $s ever even 1%'s. Win for AMD.

I read 9 review sites. Noone has the 290X as better performer of or on par with GTX780ti and all agree with Tom's Hardware review.
Anandtech
Guru3D
Hardware Canucks
HardwareHeaven
PCPerspective
TechpowerUp
Bit-Tech
Vortez
Tom's Hardware
And when I am saying noone, I mean noone.... 780ti is a faster GPU and not by 1%. Most of the reviews go around 10% more than the jetloud uber mode.

edit: By the way Chris, is there any chance you would test R9 290 (non-X) retail too?
edit2: Great review as always
edit3: Any news on 780ti Black editions? (1ghz + 6 or 12GB VRAM)

To add more fuel to the fire - Games from my post at anandtech that are favoring 780ti at 2560 among other res where mentioned, and did the math on most where there was bigger wins (surely missed a few):
"While Anandtech still uses very few games and a useless warhead game:
Games 780 wins or dominates in 2560 ALL vs. UBER 290x (of course all worse for quiet mode, note bit-tech only does 1080p and 5760):
Skyrim (bit-tech w/hires texture packs, techpowerup without)
Assassins Creed 3 (techpowerup, 5.3%)
SplinterCell Blacklist (techpowerup, blows away 690, crushes UBER 36%, also same shown at overclockersclub even 5760)
Battlefield 3 (techpowerup, legitreviews, overclockersclub 1080/5760)
Battlefield 4 (bit-tech, but barely, same 1080p, tweaktown shows big loss? But guru3d shows big win@2xMSAA…LOL – guru3d shows losses below)
Batman Arkham City (overclockersclub at both 1080/5760)
Tombraider (legitreviews, techpowerup, tweaktown etc)
WOW Mysts of Pandaria (techpowerup, over 25% faster, over 20% 5760)
StarCraft 2 HOS (techpowerup, over 15%, beat 690 too)
Diablo 3 (techpowerup, over 15%, 20% in 1080p also)
COD Black Ops 2 (techpowerup 17%, again over 22% in 1080p also)
Sleeping Dogs (techpowerup)
Crysis 3 (techpowerup, bit-tech)
Bioshock Infinite (Techpowerup, bit-tech etc – everyone I guess)
Phantasy Star online 2 (tweaktown, 17%+, even beats 1065mhz OC 290x)
Lost Planet 2 (tweaktown, over 34%! Same vs. 1065mhz 290x, same 1080p)
F1 2012 (tweaktown, beats 1065mhz 290x also, all resolutions)
Dirt Showdown (tweaktown tie 2560, but wins 1200p/1680x1050)
Far Cry2 (tweaktown, anyone play this? Still they show it over 10% NV)
Guild Wars 2 (techreport, dominated by old 780, so 780ti will be better)
Medal of Honor Warfighter (guru3d 17%).

Maybe there's a reason anandtech has chosen their games? Still waiting for the NVIDIA PORTAL.

The point here? Gsync, GeforceExp, Physx, Cuda, streaming, shadowplay, lower noise, power, heat, 3 AAA games, massive OCing and all the games above with some major victories (BEFORE and overclock). This is without mentioning all the driver issues, including AMD admitting they have a current problem with “VARIANCE” with 290/290x and will fix that with a driver supposedly in response to Tomshardware article, Techreport etc about retails perf being lower than press cards. For anyone thinking $700 is a rip-off, I suggest you look at the numbers/features above. On top you need a new fan or wait for better models before I'd even touch 290x/290 due to noise."


Will go read a few of the links missing (forgot canucks, vortex, hardwareheaven etc...but most games are listed above minus a few everyone uses). You could add the ones missing from anandtech also (total war rome2 etc). Some of the wins above are very bad for AMD. With the features/3 AAA games I say it easily justifies the cost. And when you OC the crap out of both 290x/780ti the 780ti smokes it - linustechtips unboxing vid below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1JOhT015ww
FF to 8:35 for the benchmarks showing what I mean. OC to max=290x smoked. New fans won't change this (maybe water...but not many do this). People seem to forget you can OC the 780ti without adding water 😉

 

[technoholic]

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 😀

I think this would be a bad excuse for this sh*t cooler design, taking into consideration how much bad PR they caused and how many fans/possible consumers they pissed off. If they hide some rabbits in their hats, i think they have very limited options. I doubt it could be anything like last years GHZ edition "surprise"

 

[somebodyspecial]

Anandtedh seems to be unaware of the tech in 780ti that allows better OCing – power balancing (unbalancing?). Here's some Ocing results for anyone caring, noticed while collecting the game data previously posted.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2013/11/07/nvidia-gtx-780-ti-3gb-review/1?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bit-tech%2Fall+%28bit-tech.net+feed%29
“A new power management feature for the GTX 780 Ti related to clock speeds and overclocking in particular is called Power Balancing. A card like the GTX 780 Ti draws power across three rails: the PCI-Express lane and the two additional PCI-E power connections. Power is balanced between the three but can become unbalanced when overclocking and possibly limit your overclocks if you max out one rail while having headroom elsewhere. Power Balancing simply allows the balance to be maintained when overclocking, potentially allowing for higher overclocks than previous GK110 cards, on top of the already higher clock speeds.”
They only hit 1152, but in practice saw it hitting 1230. Mem hit 1950!
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_780_ti_review,4.html
More on power balancing. They hit 1276 boost 7948mem.


http://www.legitreviews.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-780-ti-video-card-review_128012/13
1289 OC/1900 mem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1JOhT015ww
Linustechtips, as always both cards Oc’ed to the wall. He mentions Over 1200 core (not sure if that’s base or boost). But as you can see when both 780ti/290x are clocked to max 780ti dominates everything. Benchmarks at 8:35 or so. Also note Luke says 1080p will still be tough in upcoming games like star citizen etc as he shows. Pretty much a landslide by 15-25% “crushing everything” Luke says. He actually discusses 1080p and shows Farcry 3 (55avg, 290x hits 47avg)/Crysis 3 (50fps vs. 40fps 290x) maxed not hitting above 55fps and at 2560 shows they don’t even hit 30fps avg and this is OC’ed to the max and already kicking the crap out of AMD here (24fps crysis3 for 290x max oc’ed). So if you like to MAX everything in your game, these both are not even playable in crysis 3 or farcry3 at 2560 and many other games. You will constantly be turning stuff down at 1600p, so not quite sure how anyone can say these cards are overkill for 1080p when as he notes games like star citizen will no doubt slow you down even more than Crysis 3 (same engine, later game, well duh). You’ll need 20nm to max 2560 or always run things on low, medium etc like anandtech does. You can play there but with how many sacrifices?

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx780ti/3.htm
1304 OC (1291 core…LOL)/1940 mem
Note also these guys show the quiet mode dropped 290x to 669mhz!

This last site sort of shows more like toms...669mhz in quiet is huge right?

 

[nikoli707]

skyrim with a full max quality s.t.e.p. will bring even a titan to its knees at 1440p... skyrim is by far the most demanding gpu/cpu game ever made once modded as the game was designed to be. i want to see real skyrim benchmarks.