NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 Review: The $400 Fight
by Ryan Smith on May 30, 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.
With Shogun 2 we see an immediate advantage for NVIDIA and the GTX 770 in particular. Where the 7970GE and GTX 680 were generally tied here, the GTX 770 pulls ahead by several percent. It won’t get GTX 770 to 50fps at 2560, but it at least gets it into the 40s.
Altogether this gives the GTX 770 a 19% advantage over the 7970GE. Meanwhile against past generation NVIDIA cards the difference is anywhere between 14% over the GTX 680, and coming very close to outright doubling the performance of the GTX 570. The GTX 680 comparison ends up being particularly interesting, as this is well ahead of where clockspeed alone should have pushed the GTX 770. In this case Shogun 2 seems to especially benefit from that extra memory bandwidth.
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mapesdhs - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
I've just bought two 3GB 580s for 450 UKP total, will be benching them next week
single & SLI. If you're interested in the results, let me know by PM/email (or Google
"SGI Ian" to find my contact page) and I'll send you the info links once the tests are
done. I'll be testing with 3DMark06, Vantage, 3DMark11, Firestrike, Call of Juarez,
Stalker COP, X3TC, PT Boats, Far Cry 3, and all 4 Unigines (Sanctuary, Tropics,
Heaven and Valley). If I'm reading reviews correctly, two 580s SLI should beat a 780.
If your existing 580 is a 1.5GB card, note you can get a 2nd one off eBay these days
for typically less than 150 UKP. I've won two this month, a Zotac card for 123 UKP
(using it to type this post) and an EVGA card for 142 UKP.
And yes, I agree, the new gen card pricing is kinda nuts. Anyone would think
we haven't had a recession. I doubt peoples' budgets have suddenly become
30% higher (only reason I could buy some is I sold some of my other stuff to
cover the cost). The two 3GB 580s I bought were in total 100 UKP less than the
cheapest 780 from the same seller (I probably could have eventually obtained
two 3GB 580s off eBay, but decided the chance to get them from a proper
retailer right now with warranty, etc. was too good to pass up).
Ian.
colonelclaw - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Thanks for the reply, Ian. For some reason I'd totally forgotten about SLI. I'd be very interested to see the results of a 580 SLI vs. 780, and I suspect a few other readers here would too. One thing, how closely matched do the two cards have to be? Exactly the same model? Just the same clock speeds? Or is it more forgiving? I can't imagine it would be very easy to track down a 2nd identical 580, which is the reason I ask. If any Anand readers with knowledge of SLIing can share their experiences that would be great.shompa - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
Memory... How many games are 64bit? = How many games needs more then 4gig memory? Today zero. It was even more fun when most PCs had BIOS. It cant even address that much graphic memory.Maybe 64bit gaming will be mainstream in a year? I don't know. I sure seems to take its time. I have used 64 bit in my work since 1995 (real computers) and 64bit on my mac since 2002. (OSX 10.27 Smeagol). Gaming/Windows takes its time since Windows don't have smart software packaging. (real computers have the same binary for 32/64bit, different languages and even different architectures. I loved when Apple had "fat binaries" and everything could run on both PPC and X86. Gives the customer a choice of architecture.)
SymphonyX7 - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
Looks more like a GTX 680 Plus. The gains over the year-old GTX 680 and HD 7970 Ghz edition are measly and power efficiency was thrown in as an afterthought.I'll wait for the HD 8950 and HD 8970 or whatever they'll call it before I make a decision. I suppose it's worth the wait considering what implications the new PS4 and Xbox One will have on game development and their impact on PC ports performance-wise.
kwrzesien - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
4GB models have appeared at Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...Colin.B - Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - link
I just ordered the Gigabyte GTX 770, sold one of my 660 SCs for 160 dollars and am returning the one I just bought. Will I see a big performance drop from 660 SLI to the 770 at 2560x1440? I hope I made the right choice :/