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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NewCardNeeded - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Even the R9 280X crossfire beats the GTX 780 Ti in SLI in several cases !!!!!!!! Note that I do mean the 280, it's not a typo. The 290X Crossfire *SLAUGHTERS* the 780 Ti in SLI AND it's a fraction of the price.austinsguitar - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
okay okay...lets tell this guy about what happens after a new nvidia graphics card comes out shall we...first 2 weeks a card comes out (ALWAYS UN OPTIMIZED FOR SLI) 2 weeks later (ABSOLUTE SCALING WITH THE NEXT AVAILABLE DRIVER) happens every time dude. That little guy will be better in two weeks, just trust meNewCardNeeded - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
I'm not so sure this time. Nvidia have held back the 780 Ti for months until AMD released their new cards. They've had plenty of time to optimize for SLI. Expect small gains yes, but nothing more.Let's see what happens when mantle comes out...
austinsguitar - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Temperature, power (wattage), noise....This beats the 290x bad....Think about this....95 degrees and the ungodly noise coming from the 290x is ABSOLUTELY "UN"ACCEPTABLE... The card is cheap yes, but after 2 years of game playing your energy bill will determine that factor. I do realize that amd's drivers are getting better, but come on people....mantle?
NewCardNeeded - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Have you never heard of a "third party cooler"?Coming this way soon !
NewCardNeeded - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Read the article again without your green tinted glasses on!Full load on Crysis 3:
Power (W):
780 Ti = 372
290X = 375
Does it really beat the 290X bad?
austinsguitar - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
oh im sorry i was speaking about crossfire and sli configurations when putting into account the power draw... and everyone knows that when nvidia plays its games at 60 it clocks things lower, and power draw is very impressive...odds are these cards will never see below 60 for a while now, and nvidia's power draw at medium loads are phenomenal.Kutark - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Jesus Christ, i've been reading the comments. The AMD fanbois are starting to get worse than Biodrones were during the release of TORtanic. Granted there is some definite Nvidia fanboism going on but the reality is this. Nvidia is on a 9 month old architecture and is able to put out a card that beats AMD's brand new architecture's top dawg by roughly 10%, running at a significantly lower temperature, and significantly quieter.Does that justify a $200 price gap? Well thats up to the consumer to decide. But to try to suggest this is a "Tie" or anything other than Nvidia reclaiming the fastest single card crown is just being ridiculous.
I just find it hilarious some of these AMD people sitting here spouting off these very specific scenarios where the AMD card comes out on top and acts like that means anything. Ok, so crossfire 290x (only a thousand dollars!) beats sli 780ti's in several cases, whoopety do. This will affect all of the 1/10th of 1% of people who will pay that kind of money for a graphical solution on their gaming rigs.
The other thing is, Nvidia's architecture is 9 months old for shits sake. You dont think they will have something else out in a few months thats going just crap all over AMD's new
Kutark - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Gah, stupid IE9 (im on a computer i can't install a good browser on). Anyways, i was just saying, Nvidia will likely release something early to mid 2014 which will probably blow any current gen cards out of the water and then where is AMD? Same spot they've been in?I'm glad AMD released the 290x, it is overall a HUGE step forward for them and im glad nvidia has some real competition. That is only a good thing for the consumer. But overblowing this 290x as something it isnt is not doing any favors. We need to stop blowing smoke up AMD's ass so they actually keep pushing themselves and come out with a proper Nvidia smasher, and then nvidia will be in a position that they cant keep charging 400-800 dollars for cards that should be 250-400 dollars.
UpSpin - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
I don't get your comment and I'm no GPU fanboy at all (even though I only bought NVidia GPUs in the past), because I barely game high end games and find such high prices (both AMD and NVidia) for a GPU ridiculous. But I'm interested in tech and consider buying a mid-tie GPU because my Nvidia GTX 560 TI starts acting strange.What matters is what NVIDIA or AMD sells now and what it costs now. It's a fact, that the 290X beats in half of the benchmarks the 780 Ti. The other half the 780 Ti wins. It's a fact, that the power draw between both single cards is identical. And it's a fact that the newly released 780 Ti is $150 more expensive than the newly released 290X.
Of course is the 290X too loud, but that's not a issue of the GPU (same power draw), more of the cooler, which should be fixed with a third party cooler implemented by ASUS, ... The NVidia reference coolers were always superb (that's why I own a reference EVGA 560 Ti, because it was really silent compared to the similar priced alternatives).
We live here and now and we can only buy the current stuff. So I don't care if Nvidia might release in the near or far future an even better card (at the time AMD might release a new card, too). And if you want to buy a GPU now, the Nvidia is, regarding the price, a complete rip off compared to the AMD.
As an excuse for the 'poor' performance of the Nvidia card you said, it's 9 month technology. So let me get this straight:
NVidia sells you 9 month old technology for $150 more than AMD asks you for the latest bleeding edge technolgy they can offer? And you defend this? Are you serious? Nvidia sold the Titan for even more during the last months. So be damn happy that AMD released such a great card at such a low price point, else you would get ripped off by NVidia the following months, too.