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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HisDivineOrder - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Sure, you can save money by buying into the R9 290X, but save that money because you're going to need it in a few years for a hearing aid.OverclockedCeleron - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
As if there won't be any custom-cooled R290X-based GPUs. You make it sound like all GPU vendors and partners have abandoned AMD, and that AMD is going to be stuck with that fan forever. Well done for being short-sighted.HalloweenJack - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
[img]http://assets.diylol.com/hfs/8fa/d87/4bb/resized/y...[/img]halo37253 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Personally I find it Kinda sad given the Fact that GK110 is a much bigger chip in general it would have a bigger lead at stock. Plus powerusage while gaming goes back and forth with the titan, it is competing with. Nvidia just has more aggressive TDP throttling, while AMD's is mainly temp based.290x is only hot under stock cooler, It actually runs pretty cool under water. Also 290x is doing more with less transistors compared to Nvidia. Sucks Nvidia needs to scale Kepler to such a higer level just to compete with AMD's lower offerings. AMD would slaughter Nvidia with a Die of equal size.
Also with the 290 being $399 Nvidia is boned, unless the drop the gtx780's price again. 290 @ 1300mhz is about the same as a 780 @ 1400mhz.
G-Sync only works with one monitor so far, and considering I already have a 120hz monitor and already get a taste of wants to come I could care less. We won't see it in anything not overpriced for years to come, by that time we will probably have a open standard that both Intel and AMD can use. Plus I want a 1440p ISP with G-Sync and doubt that will happen any time soon. Mantle is by far a more interesting option if you ask me. I already with with vsync off and get no tearing and games are as smooth as ever with AMD's current drivers. Smoother then my old Nvidia card, though I just made the switch to AMD and never really had the chance to use the old "crap" drivers.
fewafwwaefwa - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
foad cretin.fewafwwaefwa - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
hope you get your stomach disemboweled.fewafwwaefwa - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
I'd gladly saw your head open.Samus - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
The problem with this card is the 25% price premium over AMD's 290X for 11% more performance.The only real advantage it has over the 290X is lower noise. Other than that it lacks next-gen optimizations (Mantel, EA partnership, console ports, etc.)
ahlan - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
http://s11.postimg.org/odh7byx3n/amd_N.pngLol most review site are Nvidia's bitch....
tcube - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
erm... 290x in uber mode is edged by what? 1-5%... I can't call this a win + GK110 has reached it's full potential. And 780Ti is basically an excelent GK110 chip castrated and sold for 700$ instead of the regular 4k$ (K6000) + they pushed GDDR5 to it's maximum to just edge the 290x... I don't know... This thing looks like vapor ware, let's see some availability but I doubt it's ok for nvidia to sell a perfectly good chip for what? 6 times less? Plus the last tests with 290 without the x show that 290x has lots of potential leftHow I see it 290x was rushed to market and suffers because of it bad cooler, high temperatures and slow memory... 780ti is the best of the Kepler architecture Oc'ed both memory & gpu with basically a pro grade chip and 30% more diespace and it just barelly edges out the 290x in uber mode.
What AMD managed is to make nvidia divert perfect GK110's from pro line to mainstream and shifted their focus - which is a bad thing to do atm for nvidia. And nvidia reacted like a... fanboy really by scrambling to bring a lab rat on the market... just to barely claim the crown back... instead of focusing on maxwell and pro line improvements... They really behaved like little kids with ADHD with this one... but ... oh well...