NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Review: The New High End
by Ryan Smith on May 23, 2013 9:00 AM ESTTotal War: Shogun 2
Our next benchmark is Shogun 2, which is a continuing favorite to our benchmark suite. Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. Even 2 years after its release it’s still a very punishing game at its highest settings due to the amount of shading and memory those units require.
Compared to DiRT, Shogun 2 immediately presents us with a scenario that sees GTX 680 doing very well. At 51.6fps at 2560, the GTX 780 is some 34% ahead of the GTX 680, 39% ahead of the 7970GE, and only 11% behind Titan. Compared to the GTX 680 tier cards this is actually better than the GTX 780 will get on average, and like Titan before it the lead will depend on just what aspect of the GPU any given game is pushing the most. At the same time 11% is fairly consistent for how far behind Titan GTX 780 will trail, reinforcing its position as a budget Titan card.
As an aside, this is by far the best game for the GTX 780 versus the old Fermi based GTX 580. Here we see the GTX 780 flat-out double the performance of the GTX 580. NVIDIA may have a tough time selling the GTX 780 on its price tag, but in cases like this the performance gains over last generation hardware are very remarkable.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
155 Comments
View All Comments
Akrovah - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
Oh yeah, forgot audio data, all of which gets stored in main RAM. And THAT will take up a pretty nice chunk of space righ there.Sivar - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
You realize, of course, that the 8GB RAM in consoles is 8GB *TOTAL* RAM, whose capacity and bandwidth must be shared for video tasks, the OS, and shuffling the game's data files.A PC with a 3GB video card can use that 3GB exclusively for textures and other video card stuff.
B3an - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
See my comment above.DanNeely - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
Right now all we've got is the reference card being rebadged by a half dozenish companies. Give it a few weeks or a month and I'm certain someone will start selling a 6GB model. People gaming at 2560 or on 3 monitor setups might benefit from the wait; people who just want to crank AA at 1080p or even just be able to always play at max instead of fiddling with settings (and there're a lot more of them than there are of us) have no real reason to wait. Also, in 12 months Maxwell will be out and with the power of a die shrink behind it the 860 will probably be able to match what the 780 does anyway.DanNeely - Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - link
On HardOCP's forum I've read that nVidia's told it's partners they shouldn't make a 6GB variant of the 780 (presumably to protect Titan sales). While it's possible one of them might do so anyway; getting nVidia mad at them isn't a good business strategy so it's doubtful any will.tipoo - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
If a slightly cut down Titan is their solution for the higher end 700 series card, I wonder what else the series will be like? Will everything just plop down a price category, the 680 in the 670s price point, etc? That would be uninteresting, but reasonable I guess, given how much power Kepler has on tap. And it wouldn't do much for mobile.DigitalFreak - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
The 770 will be identical to the 680, but with a slightly faster clock speed. I believe the same will be true with the 760 / 670. Those cards are probably still under NDA, which is why they weren't mentioned.chizow - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
Yep 770 at least is supposed to launch a week from today, 5/30. Satisfy demand from the top-down and grab a few impulse buyers who can't wait along the way.yannigr - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
No free games. With an AMD card you also get many AAA games. So Nvidia is a little more expensive than just +$200 compared with 7970GE.I am expecting reviewers someday to stop ignoring game bundles because they come from AMD. We are not talking for one or two games here, for old games, or demos. We are talking about MONEY. 6-7-8-9-10 free AAA titles are MONEY.
Tuvok86 - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
I believe nVidia has bundles as well