NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 Review: The $400 Fight
by Ryan Smith on May 30, 2013 9:00 AM ESTDiRT: Showdown
As always, starting off our benchmark collection is our racing benchmark, DiRT: Showdown. DiRT: Showdown is based on the latest iteration of Codemasters’ EGO engine, which has continually evolved over the years to add more advanced rendering features. It was one of the first games to implement tessellation, and also one of the first games to implement a DirectCompute based forward-rendering compatible lighting system. At the same time as Codemasters is by far the most prevalent PC racing developers, it’s also a good proxy for some of the other racing games on the market like F1 and GRID.
Despite the fact that it’s a $400 card, GTX 770 straddles the line between being a card best suited for 2560x1440, and a card best suited for 1920x1080. With GTX 780 and above we could get away with 2560 on the highest settings in most games, but with GTX 770 there will at times be compromises, either in quality/resolution, or dropping below 60fps.
In any case, DiRT: Showdown remains a troublesome title for NVIDIA. With its advanced lighting system on, GTX 770 trails the 7970 – let alone the 7970GE – at every resolution. For GTX 780 this wasn’t a problem, but for GTX 770 this means dropping below 60fps at 2560.
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chizow - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
They are both overpriced relative to their historical cost/pricing, as a result you see Nvidia has posted record margins last quarter, and will probably do similarly well again.Razorbak86 - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
Cool! I'm both a customer and a shareholder, but my shares are worth a hell of a lot more than my SLi cards. :)antef - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
I'm not happy that NVIDIA threw power efficiency to the wind this generation. What is with these GPU manufacturers that they can't seem to CONSISTENTLY focus on power efficiency? It's always...."Oh don't worry, next gen will be better we promise," then it finally does get better, then next gen sucks, then again it's "don't worry, next gen we'll get power consumption down, we mean it this time." How about CONTINUING to focus on it? Imagine any other product segment where a 35%! power increase would be considered acceptable, there is none. That makes a 10 or whatever FPS jump not impressive in the slightest. I have a 660 Ti which I feel has an amazing speed to power efficiency ratio, looks like this generation definitely needs to be sat out.jwcalla - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
It's going to be hard to get a performance increase without sacrificing some power while using the same architecture. You pretty much need a new architecture to get both.jasonelmore - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
or a die shrinkBlibbax - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
As these cards have configurable TDP, you get to choose your own priorities.coldpower27 - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
There isn't much you can really do when your working with the same process node and same architecture, the best you can hope for is a slight bump in efficiency at the same performance level but if you increase performance past the sweet spot, you sacrifice efficiency.In past generation you had half node shrinks. GTX 280 -> GTX 285 65nm to 55nm and hence reduced power consumption.
Now we don't, we have jumped straight from 55nm -> 40nm -> 28nm, with the next 20nm node still aways out. There just isn't very much you can do right now for performance.
JDG1980 - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
Yes, this is really TSMC's fault. They've been sitting on their ass for too long.tynopik - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
maybe a shade of NVIDIA green for the 770 in the charts instead of AMD red?joel4565 - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
Looks like an interesting part. If for no other reason that to put pressure on AMD's 7950 Ghz card. I imagine that card will be dropping to 400ish very soon.I am not sure what card to pick up this summer. I want to buy my first 2560x1440 monitor (leaning towards Dell 2713hm) this summer, but that means I need a new video card too as my AMD 6950 is not going to have the muscle for 1440p. It looks like both the Nvida 770 and AMD 7950 Ghz are borderline for 1440p depending on the game, but there is a big price jump to go to the Nvidia 780.
I am also not a huge fan of crossfire/sli although I do have a compatible motherboard. Also to preempt the 2560/1440 vs 2560/1600 debate, yes i would of course prefer more pixels, but most of the 2560x1600 monitors I have seen are wide gamut which I don't need and cost 300-400 more. 160 vertical pixels are not worth 300-400 bucks and dealing with the Wide gamut issues for programs that aren't compatible.