NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Review: The New High End
by Ryan Smith on May 23, 2013 9:00 AM ESTMeet The GeForce GTX 780
As we previously mentioned, the GTX 780 is very much a Titan Mini in a number of ways. This goes for not only the architecture, features, and performance, but as it turns out it will be the case for the design too. For the reference GTX 780 NVIDIA will be straight-up reusing the GTX Titan’s board design, from the PCB to the cooler, and everything in between.
As a result the reference GTX 780 inherits all of the great things about the GTX Titan’s design. We won’t go into significant detail here – please read our GTX Titan review for a full breakdown and analysis of Titan’s design – but in summary this means we’re looking at a very well built blower design almost entirely constructed out of metal. GTX 780 is a 10.5” long card composed of a cast aluminum housing, a nickel-tipped heatsink, an aluminum baseplate, and a vapor chamber providing heat transfer between the GPU and the heatsink. The end result is that the reference GTX 780 like Titan before it is an extremely quiet card despite the fact that it’s a 250W blower design, while it also maintains the solid feel and eye-catching design of GTX Titan.
Drilling down, the PCB is also a re-use from Titan. It’s the same GK110 GPU mounted on the same PCB with the same 6+2 phase power design. This is part of the reason that GTX 780 has the same TDP as GTX Titan, while at the same time giving GTX 780 as much or more TDP headroom than Titan itself. Using the same PCB also means that GTX 780 has the same 6pin + 8pin power requirement and the same display I/O configuration of 2x DL-DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort 1.2.
Also being carried over from Titan is GPU Boost 2.0, which was first introduced there and has since been added to additional products (many GeForce 700M products already have it). GPU Boost is essentially a further min-maxed turbo scheme that more closely takes into account temperatures and GPU leakage characteristics to determine what boost bins can be used while staying below TDP. It’s more temperature dependent than the original GPU Boost and as a result more variable, but in cooler situations it allows tapping into that thermal headroom to hit higher clockspeeds and greater performance, TDP allowing. At the same time this means GTX 780 also gains GPU Boost 2.0’s temperature target functionality, which allows users to cap boost by temperature as well as TDP. As with Titan this limit is 80C by default, with the idea being that adjusting the limit is a proxy for adjusting the performance of the card and the amount of noise it generates.
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mac2j - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
The problem with $650 vs $500 for this price point is this:I can get 2 x 7950s for <$600 - that's a setup that destroys a 780 for less money.
Even if you're single-GPU limited $250 is a lot of extra cash for a relative small amount of performance gain.
Ytterbium - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
I'm disappointed they decided to cut the compute to 1/24 vs 1/3 in Titan, AMD is much better value for compute tasks.BiffaZ - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
Except much consumer (@home type) compute is SP not DP so it won't make much difference. SP performance is around equal or higher than AMD's in 780.Nighyal - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
I don't know if this is possible but it would be great to see a benchmark that showed power, noise and temperature at a standard work load. We can get an inferred idea of clock per watt performance but when you're measuring a whole system other factors come into play (you mentioned CPU loads scaling with increased GPU performance).My interest in this comes from living in a hot climate (Australia) where a computer can throw out a very noticeable amount of heat. The large majority of my usage is light gaming (LoL) but I occasionally play quite demanding single player titles which stretches the legs of my GPU. The amount of heat thrown out is directly proportional to power draw so to be able to clearly see how many less watts a system requires for a controlled work load would be a handy comparison for me.
TL:DR - Please also measure temperature, noise and power at a controlled workload to isolate clock per watt performance.
BiggieShady - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
Kudos on the FCAT and the delta percentages metrics. So 32,2% for 7990 means that on average one frame is present 32,2% more time than the next. Still, it is only an average. Great extra info would be to show same metrics that averages only the deltas higher then the threshold delta, and display it on the graph with varying thresholds.flexy - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
NV releases a card with a ridiculous price point of $1000. Then they castrate the exact same card and give it a new name, making it look like it's a "new card" and sell it cheaper than their way overpriced high end card. Which, of course, is a "big deal" (sarcasm) given the crazy price of Titan. So or so, I don't like what NV does, in the slightest.Many ages ago, people could buy *real* top of the line cards which always cost about $400-$500, today you pay $600 for "trash cards" which didn't make it into production for Titan due to sub-par chips. Nvidia:"Hey, let's just make-up a new card and sell those chips too, lols"
Please AMD, help us!!
bds71 - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
for what it's worth, I would have like to have seen the 780 *truly* fill the gap between the 680 and titan by offering not only the gaming performance, but ALSO the compute performance - if they would have done a 1/6 or even 1/12!! to better fill the gap and round out the performance all around I would HAPPILY pay 650 for this card. as it is, I already have a 690, so I will simply get another for 4k gaming - but a comparison between 3x 780's and 2 690's (both very close to $2k) at 8Mpixels+ resolution would be extremely interesting. note: 3x 30" monitors could easily be configured for 4800x2560 resolution via NVidia surround or eyefinity - and I, for one, would love to see THAT review!!flexy - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
Well compute performance is the other thing, along with their questionable GPU throttle aka "boost" (yeah right) technology. Paying premium for such a card and then weak compute performance in exchange compared to older gen cards or the AMD offerings... Seriously, there is a lot to not like about Kepler, at least from an enthusiast point of view. I hope that NV doesn't continue that route in the future with their cards becoming less attractive while prices go up.EJS1980 - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Cynical much?ChefJeff789 - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
Glad to see the significant upgrade. I just hope that AMD forces the prices back down again soon. I hope the AMD release "at the end of the year" is closer to September than December. It'll be interesting to see how they stack up. BTW, I have shied away from AMD cards ever since I owned an X800 and had SERIOUS issues with the catalyst drivers (constant blue-screens, had to do a Windows clean-install to even get the card working for longer than a few minutes). I know this was a long time ago, and I've heard from numerous people that they're better now. Is this true?