Final Words & Conclusion
Final Words & Conclusion
Playing games with GeForce GTX 780 Ti is pretty, could very much be in refernce with Aerosmith's Sweet Emotion. The response and feel you get from two of these puppies in SLI is just amazing. I'm inclined to say though that NVIDIA really should have gone for a 6GB model, that or a mixed GDDR5 version with 4 GB as in Ultra HD you'll be running into graphics memory limitations real fast if you use say 4x MSAA. And as you have been able to see, overall up-to WQHD (2560x1440) NVIDIA SLI is mostly the faster option, however in UHD (3840x2160) the competition is cacthing up real fast and even overtaking. Considering that the regular R9 290 sells at 349 EUR / 399 USD it'll be a tough nut to crack for NVIDIA. I do expect to see the regular GTX 780 drop in price even further. Nvidia has two massive benefits though, it's a cooler product and it is more silent, read that carefully... more silent, not silent. Nvidia is a notch ahead compared to AMDs frame pacing solution. But in all fairness AMD is evolving rapidly thanks to that XDMA Crossfire interface on the 290/290X and even UHD shows fairly little latency issues at 3840x2160.
The Guru3D Recommendation
So if you are going to stick with one monitor then the reality is that with graphics cards as powerful as the GeForce GTX 780 Ti really is that 2-way SLI could only be a viable solution with multiple screens, or QHD and Ultra HD.
- Our recommendation as such is simple, with a single monitor setup up-to 2560x1440 you'd honestly be good to go with just one card.
- Now, if you have that nice Ultra HD monitor with a 3840x2160 resolution, that's where a 2nd card will make a lot of sense. Also with three screen Surround setups, the same logic applies.
Processor power then. Each time we publish an article on multi-GPU solutions we read it on the forums, "you should be using a faster test platform". Hence we moved to a X79 / Core i7 3960 Extreme processor clocked at 4600 MHz. The two components alone cost 1200 EUR (excluding the liquid cooling), with multi-GPU gaming they do show an increase in performance. You do need to wonder though if the 10~15% performance increase in lower resolutions really justifies that money, but obviously if you can afford two or three cards in SLI, you probably will go for the best and fastest infrastructure as well.
Noise & Heat
Depending on your configuration the temperature target protection of the GeFirce GTX 780 Ti will keep these cards at 83 Degrees C. As explained, in a poorly ventilated chassis this can have an effect though, since the temperature is the top priority the cards could clock down a bit once they want to pass that 83 degrees C target. Our thermal imaging does show temperatures a few degrees higher then reported on the thermal sensor. Noise wise really, it's as good as it can be. Up-to two cards you can hear a some airflow under full GPU stress. Nothing rather irritating or annoying though.
Power Consumption
Two GeForce GTX 780 Ti cards in SLI consume roughly 500 Watts, add to that the rest of your system (processor, chipset, peripherals) at say 200 Watts and you'll find yourself in the 700 Watt power consumption region. If you plan to overclock CPU and GPUs, then make sure you add at least another 200W onto your PSU requirements. Keep that in mind okay? Increased voltages means increased power consumption. To be able to operate two or more cards in SLI mode you'll need a SLI compatible motherboard, most if not all Intel X58, P67, Z68, Z77, Z87 and X79 motherboards are SLI certified, some P55 motherboards as well. AMD's 900 series carry SLI support as well and sure, Haswell (Z87) solutions will all run fine as well. Carefully check that out before opting for your SLI preference and thus before purchasing multiple cards.
Driver Compatibility - In all our tests we had no driver issues whatsoever. All games worked straight out of the box. We see a bit of a bottleneck with Hitman Absolution being capped to 65 FPS. But other then that, seriously, props to that. SLI has been well refined by Nvidia over the years. So yeah, time to wrap thing up I say. Two GeForce GTX 780 Ti cards set up in SLI will still cost you say 1200 EUR, for that money you'll gain a incredibe performance kicking your configuration into the highest gear performance wise. We'll admit it though, if you are on a single monitor, there's just no need for it unless you like to break 3DMark scores. Realistically once you reach multi-monitor gaming with three monitors or Ultra HD, there's where a SLI configuration makes the most sense. We hope you enjoyed this review. Until next time.
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