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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will1956 - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
troll but trueRajiv Kishore - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Waiting on 290 with better cooling, will ask my sis to pick 1 up when she's coming back to india. Nvidia 780ti is overkill for my 1080p screen. Gj nvidia can't wait for maxwell! Still single gpu king.HalloweenJack - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
So it uses as much power as the R290X , its thermal load is set lower and its nearly as noisy under load. but its faster and costs a lot more.R290 is the winner here - $200 cheaper , add an aftermarket cooler or wait for the AIB to be unleashed , and for less money you`ll have a faster (factory overclocked , or oc yourself) R290 which beats the 780Ti
A5 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
1) A 3dB difference means that the R290X in "standard" mode is twice as loud as the 780 Ti.2) In "Uber" mode, which is what the 290X has to use to match performance, it is 8dB louder. That is a huge difference.
Traciatim - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
A5, that point 1 is incorrect. 3dB is twice the power but not twice as loud. 3dB is about where anyone can perceive a loudness difference, 10dB is generally what is perceived as twice as loud.tedders - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
While the results speak for themselves, I cannot wait to see what a properly air cooled 290X will be able to do against a 780ti. It has pretty much shown that the stock reference cooler on the 290X is its bottleneck. Will you be revisiting the 290X review once the other manufactures come out with their properly cooled cards?pyroHusk - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Completely agree with you, R9 290X clock rate throttle so much by the crap reference cooler. Reviewer from techspot replace R9 290 reference cooler with HIS IceQ X2 from R9 280X and temperature drop to 60-70C easily.nathanddrews - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Tom's also replaced the 290 cooler with a tri-fan setup and saw a 20% fps gain without all the noise. Seems to me that a $400 290 + a high quality cooler ($50?) will get you close to the 780ti for $250 less.hoboville - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Once reviews from both sides come in (when both sides come out with third-party coolers), then we can see how these cards stack up. Right now, the AMD cards can't be realistically overclocked (or in the case of the 290X realistically reach its innate performance). The numbers from Tom's hardware are promising, but who knows what ASUS and the rest will pull out of their hats.Hopefully by mid December we can make good informed decisions, but for now, it's just too early to buy. There's still rumors that Never Settle will come into the picture, so waiting is good.
IanCutress - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
A high quality VGA air cooler is more like $100-$120. Or strap on a closed loop liquid cooler