The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on November 7, 2013 9:01 AM ESTHitman: Absolution
The second-to-last game in our lineup is Hitman: Absolution. The latest game in Square Enix’s stealth-action series, Hitman: Absolution is a DirectX 11 based title that though a bit heavy on the CPU, can give most GPUs a run for their money. Furthermore it has a built-in benchmark, which gives it a level of standardization that fewer and fewer benchmarks possess.
On a competitive basis Hitman: Absolution ends up being the second and last title where the GTX 780 Ti just doesn’t have enough performance to overcome AMD’s lead. Compared to where we were 2 weeks ago the GTX 780 Ti significantly cuts into the 290X’s lead, but in the end it’ll come up 3% behind. Though as with Bioshock we’re admittedly looking at another scenario where everyone is already past 60fps, so the absolute performance difference is somewhat academic.
As for our multi-GPU setups at 4K the story is much the same. Both 290X CF and GTX 780 Ti SLI get above 60fps, but it’s 290X CF that takes the top spot.
Looking briefly at our minimum framerates, as we’re approaching a CPU limited scenario we have a mix of results. Despite losing on averages, the GTX 780 Ti wins on minimums by 2fps, bottoming out at 64fps and making it the first GK110 card to offer a minimum over 60fps. On the other hand if we scale up to 4K and multi-GPU setups, the GTX 780 Ti SLI will clearly come up short versus the 290X CF, with the latter being the only setup to break 60fps there.
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Tetracycloide - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Hardware vendors get much better prices than that which is why you so often find third party coolers on custom cards for a fairly modest markup ($10-20).nathanddrews - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
The Arctic Accelero Xtreme III that Tom's used was only $70, but even if it was $100 extra, that's still a $150 gap. For vendors, subtract the cost of the bad cooler from the good cooler and I'll bet we see dual/tri-fan 290s for under $450.Also, this is interesting:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-...
Mithan - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Great card, but about $150 over priced. I would purchase this for $550 right now, but $700? No.1Angelreloaded - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Maxwell is due out next year, so tbh this would be a bad bandwagon to jump on, an architechure change and possible die shrink will come next year and depending on yields I would anticipate a 10-15% jump in the next series with lower tdp.kwrzesien - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Maybe even at $600. $700? No.Nirvanaosc - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Great review, but the Overclocking section still has the same text as the R9 290 review.piroroadkill - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
290 and 290X look even better in this when used in CF. They scale better than 780Ti in SLI.You can save even more with 290X CF than 780Ti, AND get better performance in almost every test listed.
With that setup you'd be wise in either case to get a nice custom cooling loop anyway.
Gast - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
1st paragraph of the conclusion. "NVIDIA’s high-end cards a bit faster and a big cheaper each time."Should be "a bit cheaper each time".
Pneumothorax - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Sad, this goes to show that Nvidia was selling us mid-range Keplers all last year at premium prices. This card is what the GTX 680 should've been all along. OTOH, if the 7970 was priced much better out of the gate, it might've forced the green team not to have ripped us off so much.EJS1980 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
If Nvidia released this as their answer to the 7970, AMD would have simply gone out of business. Maybe AMD should thank NVidia for showing them mercy, and keeping them afloat...j/k!