The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on November 7, 2013 9:01 AM ESTMetro: Last Light
As always, kicking off our look at performance is 4A Games’ latest entry in their Metro series of subterranean shooters, Metro: Last Light. The original Metro: 2033 was a graphically punishing game for its time and Metro: Last Light is in its own right too. On the other hand it scales well with resolution and quality settings, so it’s still playable on lower end hardware.
For the bulk of our analysis we’re going to be focusing on our 2560x1440 results, as monitors at this resolution will be what we expect a single GTX 780 Ti to be primarily used with. A single card does have the necessary horsepower to drive a 4K monitor on its own, but only at lower quality settings. Even as powerful as GTX 780 Ti is, a pair of them will be needed to get good framerates out of most games if using 4K at high quality settings.
Looking at our Metro: Last Light results then, it’s the start of what’s going to be a fairly consistent streak for the GTX 780 Ti. Though it doesn’t improve on GTX Titan or GTX 780’s gaming performance by leaps and bounds, the additional SMX and increased clockspeeds means that it has little trouble pulling away from those cards and from AMD’s 290 series. As a result the GTX 780 Ti beats the GTX Titan by 11%, GTX 780 by 19%, and though it’s closer than normal, the lead over the 290X stands at 6%.
To that end in Metro it leads the pack of single-GPU cards, though it does come up just short of being able to average 60 frames per second at 2560. Anything over 60fps will require multiple GPUs; and even then GTX 780 Ti is fast enough that sometimes even a pair of GPUs (GTX 770 SLI) isn’t going to be appreciably faster.
Meanwhile looking at GTX 780 Ti SLI performance, the SLI setup tops the charts at 2560 for everything short of the 290X in uber mode, though in this case (like most cases) two high-end GPUs is on the verge of being overkill even at 2560. Otherwise looking at 4K, NVIDIA’s poor 4K scaling on Metro once again makes itself present here, with NVIDIA’s performance only minimally benefitting from the second card. In the case of Metro at 4K, the 290X CF is going to be by far the faster option.
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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!