NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Review: The New High End
by Ryan Smith on May 23, 2013 9:00 AM ESTCivilization V
Our other strategy game, Civilization V, gives us an interesting look at things that other RTSes cannot match, with a much weaker focus on shading in the game world and a much greater focus on creating the geometry needed to bring such a world to life. In doing so it uses a slew of DirectX 11 technologies, including tessellation for said geometry, driver command lists for reducing CPU overhead, and compute shaders for on-the-fly texture decompression.
Civilization V is another game that not only tends to favor NVIDIA video cards, but strongly favors GK110 cards in particular. As a result the lead over the 7970GE is an incredible 47%, and the lead over the GTX 680 is right next to it at 46%. Though admittedly we’ve reached a point where the difference is almost academic, since even a GTX 680 can hit 60fps at 2560.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
155 Comments
View All Comments
Finally - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
The GTX770 is a GTX680 with a different BIOS.Degong330 - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
Amused to see blind fanboy comments=PaulRod - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
Well it is... slightly tweaked core, new bios, slightly improved performance... only worth buying if you're still on a 500/6000 series card or older.YukaKun - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
Actually, it is true... At least, for the curent PCB GTX680'sCheers!
Ninjawithagun - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
No, Finally is correct - the GTX 770 really is a GTX680 with a different BIOS! Unfortunately, there is no way to flash an existing GTX680 to a GTX770, in spite of early reports that such a capability existed. It was found out that in fact, the BIOS that was used to flash a GTX680 to a GTX770 was in fact a fake. The BIOS was a modified GTX680 BIOS made to look as if it were a GTX770 BIOS. Confused yet? lol The bottom line is that the only difference between a GTX680 and GTX770 is the clock speeds. The GTX770 comes in at around 11-12% faster clock speeds and as such is about that much faster in frame rate rendering in games. So if you already own one or more GTX680s, it is definitely NOT worth upgrading to a GTX770!An00bis - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
this reminds me of the 7870, differences of under 10%, about 5% clock to clock compared to a 7850 that can OC the same, and people still buy it even though it's like $50 or more expensive than a 7850, just because it comes with a 1ghz OC, compared to a 7850 that only comes at about 800mhz stock.DanNeely - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
The 770 is using a revised version of the chip. While we're unlikely to see a large improvement it should run slightly faster for the same TDP.Hrel - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
500Machelios - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
Better value than Titan, but still very niche...I'd like to see what Nvidia and AMD can bring at $250 in their next gen cards
AssBall - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
Agreed. A good video card should cost about as much as a good CPU, or a good MB.