The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on November 7, 2013 9:01 AM ESTFinal Words
Bringing this review to a close, after having seen NVIDIA upstage themselves a couple of times this year already with GK110, it’s admittedly getting a bit harder each time to write about NVIDIA’s flagship GPU. NVIDIA won’t break significant new ground just by refreshing GK110, but gradual performance increases in conjunction with periodic price drops have kept the market fresh while making NVIDIA’s high-end cards a bit faster and a bit cheaper each time. So in that respect we’re enthusiastic about seeing NVIDIA finally release a fully enabled GK110 GeForce card and the performance improvements it brings.
With that in mind, with the release of the GeForce GTX 780 Ti NVIDIA is once more left solidly in control of the single-GPU performance crown. It won’t quite get to claim a massive performance advantage over its closest competitors, but at the end of the day it’s going to be faster than any other single-GPU card out there. This will break down to being 11% faster than Radeon R9 290X, 9% faster than GTX Titan, and a full 20% faster than the original GTX 780 that it formally replaces.
To that end, while NVIDIA can still charge top dollar for their flagship card it’s a sign of the times and of the competition that they released their fully enabled GK110 part as a cheaper GTX 780 series card. At $700 it’s by no means cheap – and this has and always will be the drawback to NVIDIA’s flagships so long as NVIDIA can hold the lead – but it also means that NVIDIA does need to take AMD’s Radeon R9 290 series into account. As such the 290X and the GTX 780, though lesser performing parts, will remain as spoilers for GTX 780 Ti due to their better balance of performance and pricing. All the while GTX 780 Ti stands at the top of the heap for those who want the best.
Meanwhile we bid au revoir to the original GK110 GeForce card, GTX Titan. Though GTX Titan will still be on the market as an entry level compute card, it is finally dethroned as the fastest single-GPU gaming card in NVIDIA’s lineup. At least for the time being GTX Titan is still very secure in its place in the market as a compute card, and so there it will continue, a position that reflects the fact that there’s little need for NVIDIA to keep their gaming and compute products commingled together as a single product. Though we wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if NVIDIA made additional prosumer products of this nature in the future, as GTX Titan clearly worked out well for the company.
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. We won’t hazard to guess just how much it costs NVIDIA over a cheaper design (or what it adds to the final price tag), but with GTX 780 Ti NVIDIA has once again proven just how capable the cooler is when paired with GK110. Even with the slightly higher power consumption of GTX 780 Ti versus the cards that have come before it, thanks to that cooler GTX 780 Ti still hits an excellent sweet spot between performance and noise, offering the flexibility and simplicity of a blower without the noise that has traditionally accompanied such a cooler. And all the while still delivering more than enough performance to hold on to the performance crown.
Finally, let’s talk about SLI for a moment. Much like GTX Titan before it, GTX 780 Ti is so fast that it’s almost more than enough on its own for any standard single-monitor resolution. Even 2560x1440 with high settings isn’t enough to bog down GTX 780 Ti in most games, which makes a pair of GTX 780 Tis in SLI overkill by any definition. Properly using that much power requires multiple monitors, be it an Eyefinity/Surround setup, or more recently a tiled 4K monitor.
In either scenario a GTX 780 Ti is going to be a solid performer for those segments, but NVIDIA is going to have to deal with the fact that their performance advantage is going to melt away with the resolution increase. Right now a single GTX 780 Ti has a solid lead over a single 290X, but a pair of GTX 780 Tis is going to tie with a pair of cheaper 290Xs at 4K resolutions. And with 290X’s frame pacing under control NVIDIA no longer has that advantage to help build their case. GTX 780 Ti still has other advantages – power and noise in particular – but it does mean we’re in an interesting situation where NVIDIA can claim the single-GPU performance crown while the crown for the dual-GPU victor remains up for grabs. It's still very early in the game for 4K and NVIDIA isn't under any great pressure, but it will be an area of improvement for the next generation when Maxwell arrives in 2014.
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beck2448 - Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - link
They live in a dream world. Pros buy Nvidia 80% plus. That says everything about quality and reliability.Mondozai - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link
EJS, the buttboy for Nvidia, most sane people are non-fanboys.This means most people, including myself, skipped AMD the last few generations because they did a shitty job. We bought Nvidia hardware instead. Now, the roles will be changed with aftermarket coolers.
Also, please don't talk about mouthbreathers when you're literally chewing cowshit in your mouth everytime you're trying to say something. It stinks.
xdesire - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
You really don't know what you are talking about. Obviously, R9 290 holds great price/performance value but GTX 780 Ti has great OC potential out of the box. I'm afraid AMD shot themselves on their own foot with this reference coolerGrugtuck - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
Any reason why the 900000000 pound gorilla in the room isnt mentioned here? 290x spanks the living **** out of the 780i in CF vs SLI. It makes me think that driver issues are still not fully sorted out.Ryan you sound like an absolute idiot when you say that no one is going to need SLI or CF any more. I also think its interesting how these days suddenly 60FPS is the standard to live by when it comes to FPS. I started playing PC games competitively back around 2002 and 80FPS has always been what people shot for, not 60. 60 is the bar min for acceptable smooth play, its not the optimal for competitive or serious FPShooter gaming.
lostsanityreturned - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
Hmmm I figured I would run a quick bench... my OCed 780 gigabyte with stock cooling gets the same average fps as their OCed 780ti in metro... 67fps 1440p high preset.I imagine it would be even higher if I uninstall comodo (which seems to drop my average fps by 5-14 frames just by being installed even if everything is disabled and profiles are set up correctly to ignore games, goes right back up if uninstalled though)
I hit 77degrees after my third run and it dropped back down to 75 soon after when the fans ramped up again, keeping in mind this is Western Australia I am in currently at 34 degrees (that is 94.2 Fahrenheit), all the windows open and no air-conditioning with an aircooled case.
It isn't even a demanding overclock +161 to core and +189 to memory... which considering I usually run it at +181 and +201 with ease and stability (I turned it down to see what the results were for an easy overclock as they didn't push their 780ti much)
I was feeling like crap about them releasing a new card just 4=5months after I got the 780... now... not so
sf101 - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
I think obviously people are just irate with Nvidia thinking they can charge premiums on everything and not just small premiums but they seem really set on this +750$ area pricing refusing to cut their customer base a break on the overpricing.So they drop down the 780 GTX to 500$ and everyone cheers "ignorantly" !!! Really its just a smoke screen because they knew the 290 and 290x were out performing their card while running on poor performing cooling units and yet it still has a $100 premium over the 290 which also out runs it pretty much everywhere.
Now down come's the 780TI pooping all over early adopters of the 780 and more so the titan buyers who thought they were getting a flagship card and foolishly paid $1000+ for them.
But its not all bad because heck man performance is performance and the 780ti is obviously needed to keep Nvidia in this race so we all look past its release but can't look past its premium pricing which is just another rip off of the customers @ 150$ over the competitor's pricing which closely competes at lower resolutions and fails to out perform @ 4k and in SLI/crossfire configurations.
Now all that would be just business as usual if Reviewer's were Educating about AMD's crossfire and high resolution performance wins over even the new and improved 780TI.
Instead they are quiet as a mouse to All AMD's Wins aside from pricing because well that's obvious and hard to ignore right. and rip AMD a new one over the downsides aka heat and noise which is totally justified and expected.
While for the nvidia side of things its all Christmas and Win's on the review reading in such a way that the 780ti wins in every category. failing to mention the Wattage use is getting up there as well as heat and fan noise, perhaps not up to 290x height's but much further than the GTX780.
All of these things have been pointed out on other review sites the good and the bad.
FuriousPop - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link
lol, at the end of the day its all about target marketing.... excluding the fanboys of course. Fanboys = omg its better, faster, cooler oh oh i gotta have it. where as most normal people will analyse the cost of the GPU in relation to its performance to which if applicable to them would do other little upgrades to it/their case if need be, if it all still fits into the equation of how much to spend. etc etcdo your research, read lots of reviews, ask questions(if any) then purchase and don't look back. pretty simple.....
most of you all come here to rage and fire shots to either side (great entertainment btw) reminds me of that Halo Red Vs Blue. more like "fanboys - Red Vs Green" oh hey hey - why Red first eh eh!?
SymphonyX7 - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
Why exactly would I buy a GTX 780 Ti, when for a $100 more I can get TWO Radeon R9 290s in SLI and get twice the performance? The heat issue is there, but it ain't nothing an aftermarket cooler can't handle like the Accelero Xtreme 3.AMD wouldn't have flinched from the GTX 780 Ti's launch had it not been for their utterly terrible reference coolers.
SymphonyX7 - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
I meant Crossfire, not SLI. But you get the point. Have you seen those CF 290x vs SLI 780 Ti numbers? That's a ridiculous beatdown.TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
you know, what i see from this, is that the 290x in uber mode is just as fast as the 780ti in most senarios, and is often a little faster. which should mean that the third party coolers that get slapped on these things should allow the 290x to soundly beat the 780ti. lets get the windforce 3x version of both these cards when they come out, and bench those for a more equal review.