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.
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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