Conclusion

Conclusion

As always the gaming editions from MSI a there somewhat more affordable models, yet remain to be impressive. The sheer performance that the GeForce GTX 780 Ti 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 roughly a 70 Degrees C temperature. This round though MSI factory clocked this product pretty high at 1020 MHz on the baseclock, 1085 Mhz on the boost clock. 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 money, but considering the Titan still sells in the 800~900 EUR range this product actually makes sense. The biggest differences in-between the Titan and the GTX 780 Ti are twofold, obviously 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 foresee that 3GB utilization will be breached. The second difference in-between Titan and GTX 780 Ti is Double Precision. Titan will remain the product to get if you 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. 

Aesthetics

This gaming edition graphics card comes with the latest revision of the Twinfrozr cooler and is roughly 10 degrees Celsius cooler/lower opposed to the reference cooler whist remaining silent. This revision is a dual-slot solution with two 9 cm 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.

Cooling & Noise Levels

The NVIDIA reference coolers do their job well, but they follow the temperature target of 80 Degrees C. With the Twinfrozr cooling technology the GPU will get roughly 400W of cooling power thrown at it. As a result the temperature target might remain at almost 70 Degrees C with similar results showing with thermal imaging (measured at the backside of the PCB at the GPU location). In its default configuration you barely hear airflow when the GPU is under stress installed in a PC. 

Power Consumption

Once 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 40% 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 65+ FPS there. Or what about Hitman Absolution with 65+ 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

The card is already clocked for you at 1020 MHz (875 = reference clock)) and boosting to 1085 MHz. This GPU can take 1150 MHz fairly easily really, and at that stage you added another 10% performance already. Our tweak made the GPU run at 1100-1150 MHz whilst boosting over 1200 MHz (depending on temperature, power draw and load). This result is fairly similar on all GTX 780 Ti cards, mind you that we did not voltage tweak. That way this 2880 Shader processor card at a boost frequency of 1200+ MHz this way only consumes 10~15 Watts more, which is pretty nice. 

Concluding

MSI has a very competitive offering with their Gaming edition of the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. It is sturdily build with good components quality, it's darn fast in performance as it even can pass the mighty GeForce GTX Titan. 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.  The product will slowly be available in the stores in the next week or so, be weary though, there will probably a normal and an OC Gaming edition, our sample specifically is the 780TI GAMING 3GD5 SKU. The MSRP pricing for the card will be roughly EUR 600~650  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. Definitely a recommended product especially when you consider that the Gaming versions often are priced a little better.

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