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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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...