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.
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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.