NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Review: The New High End
by Ryan Smith on May 23, 2013 9:00 AM ESTSynthetics
As always we’ll also take a quick look at synthetic performance, though as GTX 780 is just another GK110 card, there shouldn't be any surprises here. These tests are mostly for comparing cards from within a manufacturer, as opposed to directly comparing AMD and NVIDIA cards. We’ll start with 3DMark Vantage’s Pixel Fill test.
Pixel fill is traditionally bound by ROP and memory throughput, but with enough of both the bottleneck can shift back to the shader blocks. In this case that’s exactly what happens, with the GTX 780 trailing GTX Titan by about the theoretical difference between the two cards. On the other hand it’s very odd to see the GTX 680 get so close to the GTX 780 in this test, given the fact that the latter is more powerful in virtually every way possible.
Moving on, we have our 3DMark Vantage texture fillrate test, which does for texels and texture mapping units what the previous test does for ROPs.
Unlike pixel fill, texel fill is right where we expected it to come in compared to cards both above and below the GTX 690.
Finally we’ll take a quick look at tessellation performance with TessMark.
NVIDIA’s tessellation performance is strongly coupled to their SMX count, so the high number of SMXes (12) on the GTX 780 helps it keep well ahead of the pack. In fact we’re a bit surprised it didn’t fall behind GTX Titan by more than what we’re seeing. On the other hand the lead over the GTX 580 is right where we’d expect it to be, showcasing the roughly trebled geometry performance of GTX 780 over GTX 580.
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.