The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on November 7, 2013 9:01 AM ESTCrysis 3
Still one of our most punishing benchmarks, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers and still holds “most punishing shooter” title in our benchmark suite. Only in a handful of setups can we even run Crysis 3 at its highest (Very High) settings, and that’s still without AA. Crysis 1 was an excellent template for the kind of performance required to drive games for the next few years, and Crysis 3 looks to be much the same for 2013.
Crysis 3 is another strong title for NVIDIA, leading to GTX 780 Ti easily taking the top spot at 2560 for single-GPU setups. At 62.4fps it’s the first and only card fast enough to deliver better than 60fps despite Crysis 3’s punishing rendering workload, and in the process outperforms the 290X by about 20%. Even 7990, the closest thing to single-card competition for the GTX 780 Ti, is still only less than 2fps ahead.
Meanwhile throwing on another GTX 780 Ti will further improve performance here, though with shaky results for NVIDIA. At 2560 this is enough to crack 100fps, but at a 4K NVIDIA’s SLI scaling starts coming up short. The difference in scaling becomes so great that the 290X closes the gap and then some, leading to the 290X CF taking the lead. Given the fact that the GTX 780 Ti SLI is largely overkill for anything but these high resolutions, this weaker scaling undercuts the practicality of going with a GTX 780’s Ti SLI in these situations.
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bronopoly - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Who plays at 60 fps? Surely not people playing games competitively.Tetracycloide - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
They don't include 1080p because they assumed no one would be stupid enough to buy a $700 card for 1080p gaming. I guess you showed them...Ryan Smith - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
We actually have the 1080p data, however we didn't publish it since it's not a resolution we're really expecting this card to be used with. When GPU Bench 14 goes live, that data will be available alongside everything else.bronopoly - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
I need 120 fps for my games when I'm using lightboost or 144 fps when I'm not using it. A lot of people aren't satisfied with 60 fps on good settings. When I go from a high framerate to something as awful as 60 fps, I usually restart my computer because I think something is wrong.Mondozai - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
The vast majority of people play at 60 fps. Including most people buying a high-end card. And the move is towards 4K over the next few years. You'll probably be stuck at 1080p for a long time if you insist on 120-144 fps while we will get 4K monitors next year for relatively affordable prices and even more so in 2015.That's your right. But cards like these are not going to be tailored towards people who want as high a fps as possible as opposed to as high a graphics fidelity as possible where 60 fps is the acceptable threshold. You can whine and bitch about it as much as you want. Won't make a difference.
HisDivineOrder - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Where are these "properly-cooled 'GHZ' Editions of the R290X?" If they existed, you might have an argument, but they don't. So talk about what exists.Even HardOCP--between ignoring the ear-piercing sound of the 290X at 55% fanspeed--admitted they had seen and heard nothing of custom coolers for the R9 290/290X yet and that doesn't bode well.
So if you're waiting for a custom cooler to show up and save the R9 series, it looks like they're far, far away...
Tetracycloide - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
"Let's all pretend we suffer from a crippling lack of foresight!"OverclockedCeleron - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
1) Everyone knows what comes after a GPU announcement [hint: an avalanche of custom GPUs based on that GPU].2) Many reviewing sites have said that AMD is preventing their partners from producing custom R290X gpus until 780 Ti is released. Can you guess why ;-)?
bronopoly - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Can I just make stuff up too?3) Insert wild speculation and conspiracy
Mondozai - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Someone's got an NV card and wants to defend it to death :D