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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1Angelreloaded - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
They can't because of antitrust/monopoly laws, the penalties for NVidia would be retarded from the Gov. TBH since ati has been lowballing it lately this has caused NVidia to cap yields for higher prices.Mondozai - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link
EJS the buttboy for Nvidia keeps entertaining us! Dance monkey, dance!Kodongo - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Us? Speak for yourself. If you willingly allowed nVidia to rape your wallet, more fool you. Me, I will go for the best price-performance cards which puts me firmly in the Radeon camp at the moment.1Angelreloaded - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Depends on your perspective, SLI is just better overall, and supported better. I'll gladly pay for a better product versus 1 at mainstream budget with less feature sets.anubis44 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
"SLI is just better overall".Not anymore. HardOCP said: "We've been telling our readers for years that CrossFire just didn't feel as good as SLI while gaming.
Those times have changed, at least on the new Radeon R9 290/X series. The new CrossFire technology has improved upon the CrossFire experience in a vastly positive way. Playing games on the Radeon R9 290X CrossFire configuration was a smooth experience. In fact, it was smoother than SLI in some games. It was also smoother on the 4K display at 3840x2160 gaming, and it was noticeably smoother in Eyefinity at 5760x1200."
Read the whole R9 290X crossfire article here:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/11/01/amd_rade...
Finally, ignore the noise about noise on the reference R9 290(X) cards. The custom cooled versions are coming out by the end of November and they'll be as quiet and cool as the nVidia cards, but faster and cheaper.
TheJian - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
You need to read balance sheets: paste from another post I made at tomshardware (pre 780ti)-Simple economics...NV doesn't make as much as they did in 2007. They are not gouging anyone and should be charging more (so should AMD) and neither side should be handing out free games. Do you want them to be able to afford engineers and good drivers or NOT? AMD currently can't afford them due to your price love, so you get crap drivers that still are not fixed. It's sad people don't understand the reason you have crap drivers is they have lost $6Billion in 10yrs! R&D isn't FREE and the king of the hill gets to charge more than the putz. Why do you think their current card is 10db’s higher in noise, 50-70 watts higher and far hotter? NO R&D money.
NV made ~550mil last 12 months (made $850 in 2007). Intel made ~10Billion (made under 7B 2007, so profits WAY UP, NV way down). Also INtel had 54B in assets 2007, now has 84billion! Who's raping you? The Nvidia hate is hilarious. I like good drivers, always improving products, and new perf/features. That means they need to PROFIT or we'll get crappy drivers from NV also.
Microsoft 2007=14B, this year $21B (again UP HUGE!)
Assets 2007=64B, 2013=146Billion HOLY SHITE.
Who's raping you...IT isn't Nvidia...They are not doing nearly as well as 2007. So if they were even raping you then, now they're just asking you to show them your boobs...ROFL. MSFT/Intel on the other hand are asking you to bend over and take it like a man, oh and give me your wallet when I'm done, hey and that car too, heck sign over your house please...
APPLE 2007=~3Bil profits 2013=41Billion (holy 13.5x the raping).
Assets 2007=25B, wait for it...2013=176Billion!
bend over and take it like a man, oh and give me your wallet when I'm done, hey and that car too, heck sign over your house please...Did you mention you're planning on having kids?...Name them Apple and I want them as slaves too...LOL
Are we clear people. NV makes less now than 2007 and hasn't made near that 850mil since. Why? Because market forces are keeping them down which is only hurting them, and their R&D (that force is AMD, who by the way make ZERO). AMD is killing themselves and fools posting crap like this is why (OK, it's managements fault for charging stupidly low prices and giving out free games). You can thank the price of your card for your crappy AMD drivers
Doesn't anyone want AMD to make money? Ask for HIGHER PRICES! Not lower, and quit demonizing NV who doesn't make NEAR what they did in 2007! Intel killed their chipset business and cost them a few hundred million each year. See how that works. If profits for these two companies don't start going up we're all going to get slower product releases (witness what just happened, no new cards for 2yrs if you can't even call AMD's new as it just catches OLD NV cards and runs hot doing it), and we can all expect CRAP DRIVERS with those slower released cards.
mohammadm5 - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Wholesale-Price-GeF...thats the wholesale price its not nvidia that charges so much is the resellers. the profit nvidia makes per gpu is very low but the reseller make alot of money, also the new amd r9 290 is going for $255 per unit at wholesale price and the r9 280x is going for $160 dollar per unit. you have to also remember thats the distributer price not the manufacturer price,witch should be alot lower. i know the gtx 780 at manufacturer price sells from $200 to $280 depending on brand.
so remember this is america were they sell you something made in china for 1 dollar for 10 dollars
RussianSensation - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Looks overpriced to be honest.I'd rather get MSI Lightning 780 or better yet grab 2 after-market R9 290s once they are out for $100-150 more and likely get 50-60% more performance. High resolution gaming advantage over R9 290X melts away to less than 8%. It looks even worse against $399 R9 290 - only a 15% advantage for a 75% price increase. Terrible value proposition. NV should have priced this guy at $599.
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_780_T...
A5 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
The article repeatedly points out that is overpriced. Like every other flagship card ever.Anyone looking for price/performance is getting a 280 or 770 (or lower).
Dantte - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Can we remove Battlefield 3 from the benchmarks and add Battlefield 4 please. BF3 is now 2 years old and is no long current with the genre. When's the last time you heard someone say "hey, I wonder how well this card will perform in BF3," I bet not for a while, but I have been hearing that exact statement for BF4 for the last year!