Conclusion

Conclusion

It is kind of amazing what a little competition can do. Honestly I am not certain that Nvidia would have released this card if AMD didn't release the 290/290X cards. The end result is a graphics card that is a notch faster then the GeForce GTX Titan for far less money. Speaking about money, the suggested retail price of the GeForce GTX 780 Ti is set at 699 USD. In the EU based on VAT differences that would boil down to roughly 650 EUR. And sure,a lot of monmey, but considering the Titan still sells in the 800~900 EUR range this product actually makes sense.

The biggest differences inbetween the Titan and the GTX 780 Ti are twofold, obvously 3GB graphics memory will save some cost for NVIDIA. That said, with Ultra HD gaming becoming a big thing we do feel that cards of this caliber should have gotten 4 GB of memory at the last. Even with BF4 in UHD / Ultra 4xMSAA we already are filling that framebuffer close to 3GB. Future games will get UHD texture packs and I forsee that 3GB utilization will be breached. The second difference inbetween Titan and GTX 780 Ti is Double precisdion. Titan will remain the product to get if youy are computing a lot, you get full DP on it whilst the GTX 780 and 780 Ti will run DP in a 1:24 ratio. But that's not a troublesome factor for gaming whatsoever though. 

So yeah, The GeForce GTX 780 Ti is a clusterfrack of performance alrifght, man what a fast card, exceptional really. We had a great time testing this one GPU, but as you know we'll be showing SLI scaling versus Ultra High Definition game performance in another article as well. Now coming from a GeForce GTX 680 you can expect a good 35% more performance and looking upwards from a GeForce GTX Titan, the performance difference is roughly 5 to 10%. 

Aesthetics

For the the Kepler based graphics cards Nvidia applies their new TLC package, considering it's gonna be an expensive GPU to bake, they really wanted to do everything right. And that certainly shows, the looks remain terrific similar to the GTX 690, 780 and Titan. The GeForce GTX logo on top some might dislike, it surely doesn't bother me though and that see-through Plexiglas in the cooler makes it look quite nice. So I think everybody will agree with me it's just a great looking and very sturdy product.
 

Cooling & Noise Levels

The cooling itself really, you can't complain about. As of lately the temperature targets that Nvidia are using are relatively new. The default setting for this will be 83 degrees C, which Nvidia feels is a nice balance in-between performance, power consumption and temperature. Most of you would however prefer something a little lower. You can obviously change the temperature target of the fan RPM yourself. But at 83 degrees C and at that level the noise levels are just fine. Really, with one card installed you are absolutely fine. In idle you barely can hear the cooling solution and under stress, well you can hear some airflow and that's it. Perfectly fine would sum it up well. 

Power Consumption

Again not bad, the card is still rated at as having a 250 Watt TDP, we measure that to be a little higher though, roughly 260 to 265 Watts (under full stress). But at this performance level, that is absolutely okay. 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, really. If you look at the dual-GPU based ARES II for example, that card alone draws 500 Watt / 250 Watt per GPU. So, perspective is the word I like you to keep in mind.

Game Performance

GeForce GTX 780 Ti in most scenarios will be 5 to 10% faster than the GTX Titan, comparing towards GTX 680 it seems 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. Gaming you must do with a nice 30" monitor of course, at 2560x1440/1600. I mean Battlefield 4 at Ultra quality is still oozing out 64 FPS there. Or what about Hitman Absolution with 63 FPS at 2560x1440 High quality and 2xMSAA? At these resolutions the GeForce GTX 780 Ti offers just a phenomenal gaming experience with image quality that you can only see on a PC.

Overclocking

With the release of Titan, GTX 780 and now the GTX 780 Ti 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 can take 1100 MHz fairly easily really, and at that stage you added another 10% performance already. Our tweak made the GPU run at 1100-1175 MHz depending on temperature, power draw and load. For a 7.1 Billion transistor en-counting product that is just amazing stuff really.

Concluding

Let's finalize this review as you'll need to browse our SLI article as well! The GeForce GTX 780 Ti is a powerhouse of technology. Silky smooth and fluid framerates is what you'll get thanks to the tremendous horsepower at hand. It does so while hardly making any noise and with dynamically adjustable temperatures you can decide yourself how hot your GPU may run. The card is a severe chunk faster compared to the GeForce GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition. Direct competition is of course the R9 290X from AMD, up-to 2560x1440 the GTX 780 Ti, mostly wins. At Ultra HD levels the cards get closer to each other though. The MSRP pricing for the GeForce GTX 780 Ti is EUR 579.00 excl. VAT (US $699 incl. VAT), meaning roughly 650 EUR incl VAT in the EU.

A bit more value, from October 28th until December 31st, gamers who buy a GeForce GTX 780 Ti will receive free downloadable copies of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Splinter Cell Blacklist from participating retailers and e-tailers. Also, in North America, participating retailers and e-tailers will also offer the Holiday Bundle with SHIELD, which includes all three games and a voucher for $100 off an NVIDIA SHIELD portable game console. This special offer expires November 21st. Combined with sheer silence and the overall brute performance to play any game to date with the very best image quality settings and high monitor resolutions the GeForce GTX 780 Ti is a no-brainer no matter how you look at it. Especially since its much cheaper then a Titan. So yeah, expensive yeah for sure... but I betcha that a lot of people will add this to their Christmas gift list. It's a Guru3D Top Pick alright.

We have a GeForce GTX 780 Ti SLI article as well, read that over here.

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