The GeForce GTX 770 Review: Calling In A Hit On Radeon HD 7970?

[cangelini]

Wait, the new GeForce GTX 770 is powered by Nvidia's old GK104? That's right. And guess what? The card is faster, quieter, more feature-complete, and less expensive than the GeForce GTX 680 that came before it. Can it usurp the compelling Radeon HD 7970?

The GeForce GTX 770 Review: Calling In A Hit On Radeon HD 7970? : Read more

 

[jessterman21]

Amazing - this oughtta shake up the market!

 

[GMPoisoN]

CF 7970s > All

 

[EzioAs]

Thanks for the article.

Kind of an expected performance increase. Seeing overclocked GTX 680 review was conclusive enough unless you've never seen one. Never expected this card to be getting the Smart Buy award though to be completely honest.

Hey, how about another title for the review?
- GTX 680 Gets a New Cooler, BIOS Update and Price Drop! -

No? I'll think of a better one...

 

[CarolKarine]

the fact that every single site is comparing nvidia's next-gen stuff with AMD's current gen stuff kinda sickens me. don't start throwing around "Nvidia's got this gen in the bag" till we see what AMD comes up with. they've had what, 1 1/2, 2 years? I'm hoping for GCN 2 and a die shrink on a new architecture.

 

[Memnarchon]

[citation][nom]EzioAs[/nom]Never expected this card to be getting the Smart Buy award though to be completely honest.[/citation]
Better power consumption than 7970GE.
Less noise than 7970GE.
Runs cooler than 7970GE.
Same FPS as 7970GE.
$50 less cost.

Yeah indeed, why to get the Smart Buy award I wonder...

 

[Novuake]

That is some aggressive pricing right there! LOL

 

[rmpumper]

Finally, a card that will drop the prices of hd7000 and gtx600 GPUs.

 

[tlg]

Well in the UK the GTX770 is still more expensive than the HD7970.

 

[GMPoisoN]

When you factor in the 4 games that come with the HD7970 GHz Edition, it is still cheaper than the GTX 770. I find it odd that nVidia had over a year to come up with something to beat AMD in single GPU performance at this price point but failed to deliver.

Yes, there is a bit of power savings. Yes, multi-GPU performance is better. But, that is nothing new. I also wouldn't expect future drivers to deliver much in the way of performance improvements since this card is essentially a GTX 680 v2.

Ultimately, I expected more from nVidia. Yes, this is a polished card out of the gate. But I'm not sure the release of this card will affect AMDs bottom line as things currently stand, performance wise.

Agreed. Sapphire 7970 Ghz ftw <3

 

[SiliconWars]

None of Nvidia's partners are using the reference cooler so this is just a scam to get better turbo clock speeds and good scores on quiet and cool operation. You've been had Chris and now you've spread Nvidia's lies to your readership.

 

[CaptainTom]

Some people think this is meh, some think it is great, but the answer is really in-between.

-This should force the 7970's down a little.
-This should have been about 10% stronger with its crazy high clocks.

Bottom line: AMD really won't care much because of their bundles. Look at the 7850 prices. They really haven't budged more than $10, and they are still selling like hotcakes!

 

[jbc029]

So nvidia has delivered a 680 at near max overclock out of the box and called it a 770? Guess I shouldn't be surprised. How many names did the 8800gt live under? The *entirety* of the performance bump is due to the out-of-the-box overclock.

So they've released their "GE edition" 680 after getting smashed by the 7970 over the last six months, and thrown in a price drop. They needed it, because the neither the 670 nor 680 were worth it after AMD got their drivers sorted out, unless you were using SLI.

 

[DjEaZy]

... so... nVidia haz it's cards on the table... now... i wait thill AMD shows the HD8000 series of...

 

[ohyouknow]

pretty package 680.

For those looking to jump into the GPU market, it can be a solid buy. But GHZ editions from Gigabyte, Sapphire, XFX can also be found at the same $400 price range with aftermarket coolers as well. Includes gaming bundle for those who want those games. No $50 advantage.

4gb 770 card would be the same cost as a high-end GHZ edition. Sapphire Vapor-X so on and so forth.

 

[RazberyBandit]

Whatever happened to multi-resolution tests? Most people don't own a 30" 1440P monitor...

 

[Rafeed Iqbal]

so this is basically a gtx 680, which was basically a overpriced gtx 670, which (IMO) is beaten by a 7970. Interesting.

 

[de5_Roy]

liked the review, didn't like the card. imo this is the card that should have been gtx 670, with $450 price tag instead of the 670 with cut-down gk104. 🙁

 

[ubercake]

$400 is a great deal for the performance.

Plus you know you can add a second card without having to deal with the microstutter the competition presents.

Because I always run with two cards, AMD isn't even under my consideration. If AMD gets their multi-card issues with microstutter straightened out, I'll be looking at what they have to offer again.

 

[EzioAs]

[citation][nom]EzioAs[/nom]Never expected this card to be getting the Smart Buy award though to be completely honest.[/citation]
Better power consumption than 7970GE.
Less noise than 7970GE.
Runs cooler than 7970GE.
Same FPS as 7970GE.
$50 less cost.

Yeah indeed, why to get the Smart Buy award I wonder...

I'll give you the reasons why I don't think the Smart Buy was necessary.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125413
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150586
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127732

All of the above cards are running at 1000MHz on the core which makes them somewhat a GHz edition card, yet they still cost $400. They all have custom design cooler which is generally better than pretty much any reference cooler, even the new Nvidia reference cooler. Heck, even this review proves that http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-770-gk104-review,3519-26.html. The cooler use on this review are not 100% similar to the ones on the HD 7970 cards links above but it applies. That disproves your heat and noise performance points.

For power consumption, during Bitmining and under maximum load, yes, the GTX 770 is marginally lower, but under typical gaming load, it's close enough that it doesn't matter much. Anandtech also shows quite similar results. Performance is quite similar indeed, but there's also the extra VRAM and game bundles that comes with HD7970 which doesn't show any sign of slowing down just yet.

To end, I don't think any awards was necessary. In my opinion, THG should probably reserve any recommendations for the monthly buyers guide. Not that I don't like the GTX 770, but prices do change and for new cards especially, those with non-reference design coolers will cost significantly more which probably is the results of manufacturers trying to rip-off uninformed and always-assume-new-is-better buyers.

 

[Guest]

I've noticed that in single card performance the 7970 performs well in Hitman and Tomb Raider, 2 games optimized to work well with AMD products. Now considering that all games are nothing but console ports and the next Gen consoles are supporting AMD designs, I'm wondering if this is a trend we might be seeing more frequently. I'm curious to see what gaming performance looks like in another year.

 

[Au_equus]

the guys at anandtech were able to add another 100MHz to the core clock and bump the memory to an effective 8GHz:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6994/nvidia-geforce-gtx-770-review/18
The OC'd 770 still couldn't get a whiff of the 780 in terms of performance, but the fact they did do that is impressive.
IMO, 680's in SLI hold their own and are more than sufficient to wait for the Maxwell/gtx800 series.

 

[sincreator]

[citation][nom]mindkiller316[/nom]I've noticed that in single card performance the 7970 performs well in Hitman and Tomb Raider, 2 games optimized to work well with AMD products. Now considering that all games are nothing but console ports and the next Gen consoles are supporting AMD designs, I'm wondering if this is a trend we might be seeing more frequently. I'm curious to see what gaming performance looks like in another year.[/citation]

I've been wondering the same thing. Are games going to start coming out fully optimised for AMD, and force Nvidia to wait a little longer for driver fixes? That would switch things up a bit on the driver front, I'm sure. It used to be the other way around with the TWIMTBP program...

 

[zeratul600]

I dont like how you guys compare cards, you compare apus taking into consideration gaming and calculation prowess but with video cards you only take gaming into account, while nvidia cards are really crippled in that area... i dont thing that you can say that this card its better than a 7970 just because it is slightly cheaper (less ram), and like half of the computing power of a 7970, perhaps in gaming it stands toe to toe, but in the other aspect it not so much (but i must admit that noise en power consumption doesn't appeal top me, cheap energy in venezuela and my sound system i loud enough)javascript:%20void(0);

 

[Geekkid]

What I get out of this is if you don't plan on ever upgrading to a second card, the 7970 is still a solid buy, particularly in regards to the compute performance and the great overclocking potential, but if you have any desire to go with a multiple card solution, the GTX 770 is the clear winner every time.