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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chizow - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Figured Nvidia would not let the crown rest with AMD when they still had their trump card to play (full 2880SP GK110), so this is not unexpected at all.I still feel Nvidia comes out of this with a black eye however, while AMD started the price escalation with Tahiti for 28nm, Nvidia took this greed to a new level with 690/Titan pricing. $699 is what the high-end GK110 SKU should have sold for, max, and it should've arrived this time last year. The fact AMD had to undercut Nvidia pricing so badly with the 290/290X will be something Nvidia will have a difficult time living down for years to come.
The fact we will have 3 SKUs launched in such a short time since Titan released that outperform it at a fraction of the cost is an absolute slap in the fact to some of Nvidia's most loyal and spendy customers. Lesson learned for Nvidia, and certainly a lesson learned for many of their customers.
TheJian - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Let me know when EITHER side makes more than they have in the last 10yrs. For NV that was ~800mil in 2007 (Q1 2008 TTM). For AMD it's ~500mil.http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/financi...
http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/financi...
http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?fe...
A year ago 209mil for NV this Q. This year, 119m. Get the point? That's far worse than a year ago right? Lessons for Nvidia? Charge more every chance you get...LOL. Don't forget how much R&D etc costs. They are on Tegra4 now, and they haven't made a DIME on them yet total. Until they break 1Billion in Tegra sales it will continue to lose money robbing gpus cash. I highly doubt AMD's will break even for a while either once it hits. Also note it only took another 150mil or so in revenue to make 209mil last year. So basically they are selling the same crap for less right? 1.2B in revenue last year making 209mil. 1.05B revenue now, making 119.
Anyone thinking either side is ripping them off needs to learn how to read balance sheets. Start expecting slower release schedules, worse drivers, an less perf jumps until profits go back up.
hero4hire - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link
Hail corporate!Price is just the price. If you feel safer with profits, branding, and fatter balance sheets as persuasive then look no further than the 80's American auto manufacturers as the greatest product around.
Hail corporate!
just4U - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
From the Article: "And though GTX Titan is falling off of our radar, we’re glad to see that NVIDIA has kept around Titan’s second most endearing design element, the Titan cooler"---
I am not in the market for a card yet. Quite happy with my 7870 from His... but overall, that cooler is the most interesting thing to come out of this generation of video cards. (Amd needs to take note of that to..)
You see people going the aftermarket route in regards to reference coolers that simply can't cut it. So it's about damn time NVidia got off their butts and designed something special. Both companies have been guilty of neglect with their shitty coolers.. leaving partners to think outside the box and fix the problem. That's helped to set them apart from each other but it doesn't address the fact that we get flooded with the sub par that sticks around as a lemon thru-out the life of each card.
just4U - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Oh.. forgot to mention..I'd be more interested in this generation if they'd get temperatures under control. Not interested in any card hitting 80C+ under load... been there done that, and it can take it's toll out on your other hardware over time.
tomc100 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
I will stick to my Radeon 7970 for now since my room gets pretty hot in the summer time so neither gpu is going to perform well for me in the summer even with the air conditioner turned on. Also, I'm hoping mantle will provide another 25-50% increase in performance in some games.Conduit - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Thanks but no thanks. Who the hell pays $700 for a video card? I have a $200 card that plays all my games on ULTRA with AA at 60 fps.If I ever go for a high end card it will be a custom cooled R9 290.
nsiboro - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
2 thumbs up + 2 big-toe up !Trenzik - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
I have to admit $700 is a lot for a GPU, but its more of an enthusiast thing. You get obsessed with specs and frames :). I enjoy it.Makaveli - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
lol conduit,You mean at 1680x1050 right?