The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on November 7, 2013 9:01 AM ESTOverclocking
Finally, let’s spend a bit of time looking at the overclocking prospects for the GTX 780 Ti. Although GTX 780 Ti is now the fastest GK110 part, based on what we've seen with GTX 780 and GTX Titan there should still be some headroom to play with. Meanwhile there will also be the matter of memory overclocking, as 7GHz GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus presents us with a new baseline that we haven't seen before.
| GeForce GTX 780 Ti Overclocking | ||||
| Stock | Overclocked | |||
| Core Clock | 876MHz | 1026MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 928MHz | 1078MHz | ||
| Max Boost Clock | 1020MHz | 1169MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 7GHz | 7.6GHz | ||
| Max Voltage | 1.187v | 1.187v | ||
Overall our overclock for the GTX 780 Ti is a bit on the low side compared to the other GTX 780 cards we’ve seen in the past, but not immensely so. With a GPU overclock of 150MHz, we’re able to push the base clock and maximum boost clocks ahead by 17% and 14% respectively, which should further extend NVIDIA’s performance lead by a similar amount.
Meanwhile the inability to unlock a higher boost bin through overvolting is somewhat disappointing, as this is the first time we’ve seen this happen. To be clear here GTX 780 Ti does support overvolting – our card offers up to another 75mV of voltage – however on closer examination our card doesn’t have a higher bin within reach; 75mV isn’t enough to reach the next validated bin. Apparently this is something that can happen with the way NVIDIA bins their chips and implements overvolting, though this the first time we’ve seen a card actually suffer from this. The end result is that it limits our ability to boost at the highest bins, as we’d normally have a bin or two unlocked to further increase the maximum boost clock.
As for memory overclocking, we were able to squeeze out a bit more out of our 7GHz GDDR5, pushing our memory clock 600MHz (9%) higher to 7.6GHz. Memory overclocking is always something of a roll of the dice, so it’s not clear here whether this is average or not for a GK110 setup with 7GHz GDDR5. Given the general drawbacks of a wider memory bus we wouldn’t be surprised if this was average, but at the same time in practice GK110 cards haven’t shown themselves to be as memory bandwidth limited as GK104 cards. So 9%, though a smaller gain than what we’ve seen on other cards, should still provide GTX 780 Ti with enough to keep the overclocked GPU well fed.
Starting as always with power, temperatures, and noise, we can see that overclocking GTX 780 Ti further increases its power consumption, and to roughly the same degree as what we’ve seen with GTX 780 and GTX Titan in the past. With a maximum TDP of just 106% (265W) the change isn’t so much that the card’s power limit has been significantly lifted – as indicated by FurMark – but rather raising the temperature limit virtually eliminates temperature throttling and as such allows the card to more frequently stay at its highest, most power hungry boost bins.
Despite the 95C temperature target we use for overclocking, the GTX 780 Ti finds its new equilibrium point at 85C. The fan will ramp up long before it allows us to get into the 90s.
Given the power jump we saw with Crysis 3 the noise ramp up is surprisingly decent. A 3dB rise in noise is going to be noticeable, but even in these overclocked conditions it will avoid being an ear splitting change. To that end overclocking means we’re getting off of GK110’s standard noise efficiency curve just as it does for power, so the cost will almost always outpace the payoff on a relative basis.
Finally, looking at gaming performance the the overall performance gains for overclocking are generally consistent. Between our 6 games we see a 10-14% performance increase, all in excess of the memory overclock and closely tracking the GPU overclock. GTX 780 Ti is already the fastest single-GPU card, so this only further improves its performance lead. But it does so while cutting into whatever is above it, be it the games where the stock 290X has a lead, or multi-GPU setups such as the 7990.
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fewafwwaefwa - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
sterven..althaz - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
G-Sync a game-changer, seriously? I admit to not having seen it in action, but it seems like a small advantage at best and something nobody in the whole world has a monitor that supports it at worst.MonkeyM - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link
780 isn't nearly as overprice as the ti. It's 500 now, not 650. Which, in all honesty, is a pretty fair price for a card that draw almost 70 watts less than the 290 or 290x. Badly overpriced? False. Overpriced? That's more than fair for the Ti, but a bit of a stretch for the 780. Meagre gain is also bullshit. You get the last 3 missing SMX's, an extra 1,000Mhz on the GDDR5's clock, and you also get a sizable 576 more stream processors. Other than those, it's a fair comment. I do wish they would feel the need to drop prices more, but you certainly get consistency when you buy from big green...Da W - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Hey look, an Nvidia Fanboy! So happy to get a few framerate advantage like if he owned the company or worked for it.WHO GIVES A DAMN?
At the end of the day i'm looking at performance/price/temperature/noise. That being said, living in Canada, every degree of heat my videocard produce, i save in heating bill.
euskalzabe - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
hahahaha... I totally understand, that is one of the reasons I still keep my GTX470: the heat it provides during cold Chicago winters is a plus until I move elsewhere next year and buy a 8xx Maxwell :)EzioAs - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
The GTX 780ti is also quite power hungry and loud and you would know that if you read the reviewWreckage - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
I'm guessing you ignored the "uber mode" setting for the 290x, it is off the charts compared to the 780ti.Nothing I said in my above post is wrong. I think it's the truth that is upsetting people.
EzioAs - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
You also didn't clarify that it was the Uber mode...and it is still one the charts.Without the "uber mode", the 290X is still quite close to the GTX 780ti in terms of gaming performance, power consumption and noise.
TheJian - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
You must not be reading anywhere but here, and even then, 290x isn't close:Oddly Anandtech doesn’t seem to know it has special tech in it that allows better OCing – power balancing (unbalancing?). You guys not using it or something? :)
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2013/11/...
“A new power management feature for the GTX 780 Ti related to clock speeds and overclocking in particular is called Power Balancing. A card like the GTX 780 Ti draws power across three rails: the PCI-Express lane and the two additional PCI-E power connections. Power is balanced between the three but can become unbalanced when overclocking and possibly limit your overclocks if you max out one rail while having headroom elsewhere. Power Balancing simply allows the balance to be maintained when overclocking, potentially allowing for higher overclocks than previous GK110 cards, on top of the already higher clock speeds.”
They only hit 1152, but in practice saw it hitting 1230. Mem hit 1950!
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_7...
More on power balancing. They hit 1276 boost 7948mem.
http://www.legitreviews.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-780...
1289 OC/1900 mem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1JOhT015ww
Linustechtips, as always both cards Oc’ed to the wall. He mentions Over 1200 core (not sure if that’s base or boost). But as you can see when both 780ti/290x are clocked to max 780ti dominates everything. Benchmarks at 8:35 or so. Also note Luke says 1080p will still be tough in upcoming games like star citizen etc as he shows. Pretty much a landslide by 15-25% “crushing everything” Luke says. He actually discusses 1080p and shows Farcry 3 (55avg, 290x hits 47avg)/Crysis 3 (50fps vs. 40fps 290x) maxed not hitting above 55fps and at 2560 shows they don’t even hit 30fps avg and this is OC’ed to the max and already kicking the crap out of AMD here (24fps crysis3 for 290x max oc’ed). So if you like to MAX everything in your game, these both are not even playable in crysis 3 or farcry3 at 2560 and many other games. You will constantly be turning stuff down at 1600p, so not quite sure how anyone can say these cards are overkill for 1080p when as he notes games like star citizen will no doubt slow you down even more than Crysis 3 (same engine, later game, well duh). You’ll need 20nm to max 2560 or always run things on low, medium etc like anandtech does. You can play there but with how many sacrifices?
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx...
1304 OC/1940 mem
Note also these guys show the quiet mode dropped 290x to 669mhz!
While Anandtech still uses very few games and a useless warhead game:
Games 780 wins or dominates in 2560 ALL vs. UBER 290x (of course all worse for quiet mode, note bit-tech only does 1080p and 5760):
Skyrim (bit-tech w/hires texture packs, techpowerup without)
Assassins Creed 3 (techpowerup, 5.3%)
SplinterCell Blacklist (techpowerup, blows away 690, crushes UBER 36%, also same shown at overclockersclub even 5760)
Battlefield 3 (techpowerup, legitreviews, overclockersclub 1080/5760)
Battlefield 4 (bit-tech, but barely, same 1080p, tweaktown shows big loss? But guru3d shows big win@2xMSAA…LOL – guru3d shows losses below)
Batman Arkham City (overclockersclub at both 1080/5760)
Tombraider (legitreviews, techpowerup, tweaktown etc)
WOW Mysts of Pandaria (techpowerup, over 25% faster, over 20% 5760)
StarCraft 2 HOS (techpowerup, over 15%, beat 690 too)
Diablo 3 (techpowerup, over 15%, 20% in 1080p also)
COD Black Ops 2 (techpowerup 17%, again over 22% in 1080p also)
Sleeping Dogs (techpowerup)
Crysis 3 (techpowerup, bit-tech)
Bioshock Infinite (Techpowerup, bit-tech etc – everyone I guess)
Phantasy Star online 2 (tweaktown, 17%+, even beats 1065mhz OC 290x)
Lost Planet 2 (tweaktown, over 34%! Same vs. 1065mhz 290x, same 1080p)
F1 2012 (tweaktown, beats 1065mhz 290x also, all resolutions)
Dirt Showdown (tweaktown tie 2560, but wins 1200p/1680x1050)
Far Cry2 (tweaktown, anyone play this? Still they show it over 10% NV)
Guild Wars 2 (techreport, dominated by old 780, so 780ti will be better)
Medal of Honor Warfighter (guru3d 17%).
Maybe there's a reason anandtech has chosen their games? Still waiting for the NVIDIA PORTAL.
The point here? Gsync, GeforceExp, Physx, Cuda, streaming, shadowplay, lower noise, power, heat, 3 AAA games, massive OCing and all the games above with some major victories (BEFORE and overclock). This is without mentioning all the driver issues, including AMD admitting they have a current problem with “VARIANCE” with 290/290x and will fix that with a driver supposedly in response to Tomshardware article, Techreport etc about retails perf being lower than press cards. For anyone thinking $700 is a rip-off, I suggest you look at the numbers/features above. On top you need a new fan or wait for better models before I'd even touch 290x/290 due to noise.
Only disappointment I can see as a buyer, is no full DP. Titan still has that and 6GB, though nobody can show a game using more than 3GB and run into the problem while being OVER 30fps. To force this into a problem (not sure you can, skyrim modded out?), you will be CRAWLING in fps.
Galidou - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Wow dude, hardcore fan or working for nvidia or I don't know, took the time to find every link, type that to make us realise this: nvidia's reference cooler is amazing like before, we know how GTX 780 ti pushed to the max performs(i don't think custom coolers will go much past 1300mhz on the core), 290x reference cooler is crap(like we didn't already know) and for that we still don't know how it performs pushed to the max.Oh and maybe YOU didn't chose your games for comparison... And yes it is close, from your carefully handpicked games it's averaging 15-20% faster while costing 28% more.
700$ is not a ripoff for totl performance but still too much for 99.8% of us(pc gamers that still use 1080p monitors).
For the 3gb argument, did you travel in the future, 2 years from now if the games will never use more? Skyrim with a couple mods goes close to 2gb in 1080p!! Heavily modded over 2gb easily.i'm right now on the limit of mods with my GTX 660 ti 2gb, sometimes it suffers from a little lack of memory...