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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raghu78 - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
what most of reviews. across a wide range of games and you will see these two cards are tied.http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canu...
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/20...
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Geforce-GTX-770-Graf...
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/896-22/recapitulat...
bitstorm - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
It seems to match up with other reviews I have seen. Maybe you are looking at ones that are not using the reference card? The non-reference reviews show it doing a bit better.Still even with the better results of the non reference cards it is a bit disappointing of a release from Nvidia IMO. While it is good that it will likely cause AMD to drop the price of the 7970 GE but it won't set a fire under AMD to make an impressive jump on their next lineup refresh.
Brainling - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
And if you look at any AMD review, you'll see fanbois jumping out of the wood work to accuse Anand and crew of being Nvidia homers. You can't win for losing I guess.kallogan - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
barely beats 680 at higher power consumption. Turbo boost is useless. Useless gpu. Next.gobaers - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
There are no bad products, only bad prices. If you want to think of this as a 680 with a price cut and modest bump, where is the harm in that?EJS1980 - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
Exactly!B3an - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
I'd glad you mentioned the 2GB VRAM issue Ryan. Because it WILL be a problem soon.In the comments for 780 review i was saying that even 3GB VRAM will probably not be enough for the next 18 months - 2 years, atleast for people who game at 2560x1600 and higher (maybe even 1080p with enough AA). As usual many short-sighted idiots didn't agree, when it should be amazingly obvious theres going to be a big VRAM usage jump when these new consoles arrive and their games start getting ported to PC. They will easily be going over 2GB.
I definitely wouldn't buy the 770 with 2GB. It's not enough and i've had problems with high-end cards running out of VRAM in the past when the 360/PS3 launched. It will happen again with 2GB cards. And it's really not a nice experience when it happens (single digit FPS) and totally unacceptable for hardware this expensive.
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
people have been saying that for a long time. i heard the same thing when i bought my 550 ti's. and, 2 years later....only battlefield 3 pushed ppast the 1 GB frame buffer at 1080p, and that was on unplayable setting (everything maxed out). now, if I lower the settings to maintain at least 30fps, no problems. 700 MB usage max. mabye 750 on a huge map. now, at 1440p, i can see this being a problem for 2 gb, but i think 3gb will be just fine for a long time.just4U - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
I don't quite understand why Nvidia's partners wouldn't go with the reference design of the 770. I've been keenly interested in those nice high quality coolers and hoping they'd make their way into the $400 parts. It's a great selling point (I think) and disappointing to know that they won't be using them.chizow - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
I agree, it feels like false advertising or bait and switch given GPU Boost 2.0 relies greatly on operating temps and throttling once you hit 80C.Seems a bit irresponsible for Nvidia to send out cards like this and for reviewers to subsequently review and publish the results.