MSI GeForce GTX 780 Gaming review

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Conclusion

Conclusion

The gaming edition GeForce GTX 780 from MSI is mighty impressive. The sheer performance that the GeForce GTX 780 is able to deliver is downright nice, very nice. Armed with military class components, that awesome TwinFrozr cooler that is very silent and keeps this GPU chilled down at a cool 60 Degrees C temperature. This might as well be one of the finest GeForce GTX 780 cards available on the market. We had a great time testing this graphics card. Coming from a GeForce GTX 680 you can expect a good 30% more performance and looking down from a GeForce GTX Titan, the performance difference is only roughly less then 5% and we even have seen a win over Titan here and there thanks to the fact that this card can boost really high, the performance remains close to a Titan. That has everything to do with the factory clocks of this product versus power and temperature targets versus the dynamic Boost clock. 

Aesthetics

Armed with the latest revision of the Twinfrozr cooler the card is a hefty 20 degrees Celsius lower opposed to the reference cooler whist remaining silent. This revision is a dual-slot solution with 10cm fans, which I think just looks great. The PCB is customized and I can spot merely quality components ensuring a longer lifespan of this product, lovely. The looks, well the cooler in its all black design, the two subtle and silent fans combined with a hint of red makes this a good looking package alright. Great looking and very sturdy I must state as well. There is a metal plate at the top of the card so the card can not bend when seated horizontally in the PC, missing however is a full cover back-plate.


 
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Cooling & Noise Levels

The NVIDIA reference coolers are doing their job well, but they follow the temperature target of 80 degrees C. With the TwinFrozr cooling technology the GPU will get 450W of cooling power thrown at it. As a result the temperature target might remain 80 degrees C, but we have never seen the card pass 60 Degrees. Now if the temperature is that low there is an extra benefit... the power and temp limiters do not kick in, allowing the product to boost a little higher then usual. So this is why the card is so close towards the GeForce GTX Titan. Noise wise I am very happy as well. In its default configuration you can not hear airflow when the GPU is under stress installed in a PC. It really is that silent, very impressive.

Power Consumption

Again not bad, the card is rated at as having a 250 Watt TDP, we measure pretty much 246 Watts. From the top of my head that's roughly the number as GeForce GTX 580 had a two years ago. Compared to that product you have nearly double the performance at the same wattage. That 250 Watt TDP also will make running multi-GPU solutions a bit more easy. With two card we think an 800 Watt PSU would be sufficient. So while it's not great to have a GPU sucking up 250 Watt it could have been a lot worse. So, perspective is the word I like you to keep in mind.

Game Performance

The card in most scenarios will be what, 5% to 2% slower than the GTX Titan?, comparing towards GTX 680 it seems 30% maybe 35% faster. Drivers wise we can't complain at all, we did not stumble into any issues. And with a single GPU there's no micro-stuttering (if that ever bothered you) and no multi-GPU driver issues to fight off. Performance wise really there's not one game that won't run seriously good at the very best image quality settings. I mean, Metro Last Light at 2560x1440 withat very high quality  is doing 47 FPS on average, I rest my case.

Overclocking

With the release of GTX Titan, GTX 780 and GTX 770 a thing or two have changed, the new boost modes now also can be configured with temperature targets relative to maximum power draw and your GPU Core frequency offsets. Saying that I realize it's sounds complicated, but you'll have your things balanced out quite fast. This GPU with the MSI TwinFrozr cooler can take 1150 MHz fairly easily really, at that stage you added another 10% performance already. Our tweak made the GPU run at just above 1200 MHz depending on temperature, power draw and load.

For a processor with a gobsmacking 7 Billion transistors, that is just impressive stuff really. We do wonder - what if we had a little more Voltage available for the GPU - aah, that nagging itch ;)

 

 Guru3d-toppick

Concluding

There is very little to conclude other then the obeservation is simple, the MSI GeForce GTX 780 Gaming edition rock hard and solid man. It is a sturdy build with great components quality, it's darn fast in performance as it comes close to a Titan. Butter smooth fluid framerates is what you'll play your games with thanks to the very serious amount of horsepower at hand with this GTX 780. It does so while hardly making any noise and very low stress temperatures.

The card is a nice chunk faster compared to the GeForce GTX 680, 770 and the Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition. If you opt the MSI N780 TF 3GD5/OC edition, then you are in for something unique. Next to that, there still remains to be room left for tweaking. Overall the product is just impressive and has great aesthetics. The product is slowly getting available in the stores then please be careful, there will be a normal and an OC edition, our sample specifically is the N780 TF 3GD5/OC SKU. The MSRP pricing for the card is EUR 599 (incl. VAT, and sure I concur that the price remains the only obstacle for this product series, as with that budget it is out of reach for many.  Don't forget to check out our other GeForce GTX 780 content & related downloads. 

We reward the MSI GeForce GTX 780 Gaming edition with our top pick award. What a lovely product.

Let me give you some advice bastard. Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.” 

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