The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on November 7, 2013 9:01 AM ESTMeet The GeForce GTX 780 Ti
When it comes to the physical design and functionality of the GTX 780 Ti, to no surprise NVIDIA is sticking with what works. The design of the GTX Titan and its associated cooler have proven themselves twice over now between the GTX Titan and the GTX 780, so with only the slightest of changes this is what NVIDIA is going with for GTX 780 Ti, too. Consequently there’s very little new material to cover here, but we’ll quickly hit the high points before recapping the general design of what has now become the GTX 780 series.
The biggest change here is that GTX 780 Ti is the first NVIDIA launch product to feature the new B1 revision of their GK110 GPU. B1 has already been shipping for a couple of months now, so GTX 780 Ti isn’t the first card to get this new GPU. However while GTX Titan and GTX 780 products currently contain a mix of the old and new revisions as NVIDIA completes the change-over, GTX 780 Ti will be B1 (and only B1) right out the door.
As for what’s new for B1, NVIDIA is telling us that it’s a fairly tame revision of GK110. NVIDIA hasn’t made any significant changes to the GPU, rather they’ve merely gone in and fixed some errata that were in the earlier revision of GK110, and in the meantime tightened up the design and leakage just a bit to nudge power usage down, the latter of which is helpful for countering the greater power draw from lighting up the 15th and final SMX. Otherwise B1 doesn’t have any feature changes nor significant changes in its power characteristics relative to the previous revision, so it should be a fairly small footnote compared to GTX 780.
The other notable change coming with GTX 780 Ti is that NVIDIA has slightly adjusted the default temperature throttle point, increasing it from 80C to 83C. The difference in cooling efficiency itself will be trivial, but since NVIDIA is using the exact same fan curve on the GTX 780 Ti as they did the GTX 780, the higher temperature throttle effectively increases the card’s equilibrium point, and therefore the average fan speed under load. Or put another way, but letting it get a bit warmer the GTX 780 Ti will ramp up its fan a bit more and throttle a bit less, which should help offset the card’s increased power consumption while also keeping thermal throttling minimized.
| GeForce GTX 780 Series Temperature Targets | ||||
| GTX 780 Ti Temp Target | GTX 780 Temp Target | GTX Titan Temp Target | ||
| 83C | 80C | 80C | ||
Moving on, since the design of the GTX 780 Ti is a near carbon copy of GTX 780, we’re essentially looking at GTX 780 with better specs and new trimmings. NVIDIA’s very effective (and still quite unique) metallic GTX Titan cooler is back, this time featuring black lettering and a black tinted window. As such GTX 780 Ti remains 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 the GTX 780 Ti is a quiet card despite the fact that it’s a 250W blower design, while still maintaining the solid feel and eye-catching design that NVIDIA has opted for with this generation of cards.
Drilling down, the PCB is also a re-use from GTX 780. It’s the same GK110 GPU mounted on the same PCB with the same 6+2 phase power design. This being despite the fact that GTX 780 Ti features faster 7GHz memory, indicating that NVIDIA was able to hit their higher memory speed targets without making any obvious changes to the PCB or memory trace layouts. Meanwhile the reuse of the power delivery subsystem is a reflection of the fact that GTX 780 Ti has the same 250W TDP limit as GTX 780 and GTX Titan, though unlike those two cards GTX 780 Ti will have the least headroom to spare and will come the closest to hitting it, due to the general uptick in power requirements from having 15 active SMXes. Finally, 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.
On a final note, for custom cards NVIDIA won’t be allowing custom cards right off the bat – everything today will be a reference card – but with NVIDIA’s partners having already put together their custom GK110 designs for GTX 780, custom designs for GTX 780 Ti will come very quickly. Consequently, expect most (if not all of them) to be variants of their existing custom GTX 780 designs.
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Gadgety - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
@ConduitThose who want the maximum number of CUDA cores (SPs) for the minimum amount of money, and apply those CUDA cores for GPU based ray trace rendering. Disregarding memory size differences this is what it looks like:
The Quadro K6000 is $5000 for 2880 CUDA cores: 0.576 CUDA cores/dollar
The TeslaK20 is $3500 for 2496 CUDAs: 0.7 CC/dollar.
When the Titan launched it was a bargain at $1000 for 2688 CUDAS: 2.69 CC/dollar
When the memory limited GTX780 launched it was 3.55 CC/dollar
Now the GTX780Ti provides 2880 CUDAs for $699: 4.12 CC/dollar. Since it brings a decent 3GB memory, it's both cheaper and more powerful than the 1.5GB equipped GTX780. I get 576 extra CUDA cores for only 50 bucks!
For larger scenes the Titan still is better, but for those that create smaller renders, the GTX780Ti is the absolute value leader. I can fit four of them in my chassis, at a total cost of $2800 for 11520 CUDAs. If I need the larger 6GB memory, the Titan alternative would be $4000 and provide 10752 CUDAS. Still cheap compared to four K6000 Quadros, which would be
$20 000, for 11520 CUDAs. Although I would much prefer a 4GB, or larger version, of course.
So that is who the hell pays the ultra bargain $700 for a GTX780Ti. It's not all about gaming.
Ananke - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Why are you still using CUDA instead of OpenCL is beyond me :).GTX780Ti is overpriced, NVidia probably doesn't even care, because they care about HPC market for their 110 cores. On the other hand, they do feel some financial heat recently - Tegra was a flop, everybody and his grandma is buying Qualcom today, and it seems Intel tomorrow...HPC computing moves towards Intel and FPGAA.
NVidia indeed got EXTREMELY greedy in the last two years, and the industry has punished them.
p.p. 3GB is not enough for "high-end" pricing. It is the minimum size already.
Gadgety - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
What software are you using? The blazingly fast Octane runs only on CUDA. Blender Cycles runs on CUDA. VRay RT runs better on CUDA. Bunkspeed Shot and Bunkspeed Move for moving images, CUDA. 3DS Max, CUDA.The choice just seems less with OpenCL. What is there besides Luxrender? OpenCL, seems to have been in development, and there is hope for a brighter future, but I don't currently see it as on par with the CUDA applications, and it needs something to really take a big leap.
colonelclaw - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
I work in archvis, and we can't yet make full use of VRayRT because of memory usage. A typical housing development consumes >20GB Ram on our render nodes, and we don't make nearly enough money to justify buying K6000s or K5000s. Our still image output size is typically 5000x3337, so I think it's gonna be a few years until we can really embrace the whole GPU rendering, but it's definitely coming. I do use VRayRT a lot to set up lighting and materials at much lower resolutions, and it's pretty damn fast on a K4000.TheJian - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
One person out of how many that actually gets it? :)Heck you could sell the 3 AAA games for $100 off each card too ;) I just raised your CC/$ right? :)
Gadgety - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
Yes you did. Thanks. Assuming one can get $100 for the games, it's now 4.8CC/$. I assume the game bundle is temporary, though.hero4hire - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link
Sold my 2game bundle for $40. Everybody won.Trenzik - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Lol why is everyone's comments to Wreckage so MEAN? He made a simple comment and some of the replies are just ridiculous. Is he not allowed to state his opinion? And is it that hard to reply to something you don't agree to with dignity, class, and without having to cuss?Good old merica at its finest eh?
kyuu - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Because Wreckage is a blatant troll with nothing useful to contribute. No one is under any obligation to be nice to a useless shill, regardless of which company s/he is shilling for.kyuu - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Oh, and I'd add that Wreckage posted his/her comment well before anyone could have actually read the article, so it's pretty obvious s/he came specifically to spout off.