NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Video Card Review @ [H]

[FrgMstr]

Kyle that giveaway for the Galaxy is your time which is CST or EST?

It will be at the North Dallas store. Noon CDT and 7:30 CDT. (Central Daylight Time)

 

[WorldExclusive]

Excuse me as I go smash a Titan with a sledgehammer.

Sounds like the correct course of action.

I can't even consider a Titan after seeing the stock and crazy 780 OC results.

 

[LigTasm]

Sounds like the correct course of action.

I can't even consider a Titan after seeing the stock and crazy 780 OC results.

No kidding, and I put mine for sale yesterday as I don't need that much GPU power. I can't see it selling even over $750 at this point.

 

[WorldExclusive]

No kidding, and I put mine for sale yesterday as I don't need that much GPU power. I can't see it selling even over $750 at this point.

The Titan is now a GTX 780 6GB.

What a turn of events in such a short period of time.

 

[grausch]

One small typo on the conclusion page -

There were however a couple games that did benefit from the beefier and quite a bit more expensive GTX TITAN. Metro: Last Light certainly benefited with the extra CUDA Cores, buy allowing us to turn on PhysX with the highest in-game settings. Far Cry 3 was also better with "Ultra" settings and 2X MSAA at 2560x1600 on the GTX TITAN compared to its GTX 780 counterpart.

It should be "by".

Great review. Looks like a solid step up from the GTX 680, but I would have liked a slightly lower price.

 

[XamediX]

Nice review. I'm hoping this will push prices down on the 670's, specifically this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121768

This is way too overpriced ATM. At 250-300 they may have me sold. I know I'm not the only one who can't wait for the newest cards to be released so that lower versions drop their price.

The Titan is now a GTX 780 6GB.

What a turn of events in such a short period of time.

You think they released the Titan at $999 just to warm the market up for the $649 GTX780? I was wondering it myself.

 

[The Cobra]

The Titan is now a GTX 780 6GB.

What a turn of events in such a short period of time.

I am a tad upset and a little pissed off about this.

 

[Parja]

Excuse me as I go smash a Titan with a sledgehammer.

Why don't you just send it to me and I'll use it to make a realistic rendering of you smashing it with a sledgehammer?

 

[Rizen]

I am a tad upset and a little pissed off about this.

The price you pay for being an early adopter. I bought an i7 right when Intel released them and I paid $400 for 6GB of DDR2000 memory. Two years later I picked up 12GB of memory that could run the same timings for $100. It happens.

That said, you can still overclock your Titan, and it will have better performance.

 

[Rizen]

As an owner of 680 SLI I'm going to sit out this round. But pretty impressive on the overclocks. Definitely beat my expectations there. Still would have preferred to see them stick to the $500-550 price point, but I can understand why they are not. These will sell out instantly.

 

[WorldExclusive]

You think they released the Titan at $999 just to warm the market up for the $649 GTX780? I was wondering it myself.

I think it's the other way around. I think they released a $999 card to make money on the left over GK110 with more enabled cores.
But now those are sold, now they can sell the stock piled disabled core GK110 cards for less.

It would have been much harder to release a the GTX 780 first and then charge $999 for the Titan version.

 

[Blkout]

I got two machines, each with overclocked Gigabyte WF3 670's, I'm going to pick up a Gigabyte WF3 780 for one machine and move one 670 to the other for SLI. The 2560x1600 display will get the SLI 670's and the 1920x1080 display will get the single 780.

 

[KillRoy X]

It's about time I UPGRAY'D!

lemme lemme lemmm upgrayd!

Seriously, my computer is coming up on I think 5 years old, the only thing I've replaced is the grahics card.

Running Bioshock and Tombraider just fine.

 

[Blkout]

I think it's the other way around. I think they released a $999 card to make money on the left over GK110 with more enabled cores.
But now those are sold, now they can sell the stock piled disabled core GK110 cards for less.

It would have been much harder to release a the GTX 780 first and then charge $999 for a Titan.

As for the pricing, AMD was first with the $550-600 price point last year. The GTX 780 is superior in every way over the 7970. The price is justified.

AND...releasing Titan at $1k makes everyone feel like they're getting a good deal on the 780 at $650 when in reality if Titan had never been released people would be complaining about the high price as they did with the 7970 when it was released.

 

[bandit390]

Is the EVGA 780 ACX being reviewed?

 

[climber07]

It's been a while since I upgraded my video card. Looking like it might be about time. The 780 appears to be a great value for the performance.

 

[maxius]

nice review kyle oh if you have a 680 you can flash it to a 770 yep nvidia is doing it again folks http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GTX-680-GTX-770-BIOS-Flash-Hack,22561.html expect more flashing and re-brands down the line so the 760ti will just be a 670... and so forth

 

[Parja]

AND...releasing Titan at $1k makes everyone feel like they're getting a good deal on the 780 at $650 when in reality if Titan had never been released people would be complaining about the high price as they did with the 7970 when it was released.

Yup, certainly makes the 780 look like a heck of a deal. It's not like they were going to have trouble moving them with the performance boost over the 680, though.

 

[XamediX]

I think it's the other way around. I think they released a $999 card to make money on the left over GK110 with more enabled cores.
But now those are sold, now they can sell the stock piled disabled core GK110 cards for less. It would have been much harder to release a the GTX 780 first and then charge $999 for the Titan version.

That is true. You make a good point. As a self-proclaimed savvy consumer, I am always wary of such things. It keeps me from going broke with my hobby, heh.

AND...releasing Titan at $1k makes everyone feel like they're getting a good deal on the 780 at $650 when in reality if Titan had never been released people would be complaining about the high price as they did with the 7970 when it was released.

Yea that was what I was suspicious of. But they are good cards. I remember paying $300 for a top of the line Geforce3.

 

[FrgMstr]

Is the EVGA 780 ACX being reviewed?

EVGA will not send HardOCP cards. They do not like how critical we are. So I just ignore those guys for the most part. Too expensive to buy 10 different models from EVGA to cover...

 

[Xinmosni]

nice review kyle oh if you have a 680 you can flash it to a 770 yep nvidia is doing it again folks http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GTX-680-GTX-770-BIOS-Flash-Hack,22561.html expect more flashing and re-brands down the line so the 760ti will just be a 670... and so forth

The heck?

Scroll down on the page you linked. This is a fake, and not something "nvidia" is doing again; it was a prank on reddit.

 

[Starrbuck]

The heck?

Scroll down on the page you linked. This is a fake, and not something "nvidia" is doing again; it was a prank on reddit.

Derp?

 

[refraxion]

Any chance of a tri sli 780 review at both 2560 and triple monitor setup Kyle?

Thanks!!

 

[euchrestalin]

As an owner of 680 SLI I'm going to sit out this round. But pretty impressive on the overclocks. Definitely beat my expectations there. Still would have preferred to see them stick to the $500-550 price point, but I can understand why they are not. These will sell out instantly.

My sentiments exactly.

 

[magoo]

Wow. I'm going to wait for water blocks to be made then grab a couple of these.
The OC potential looks fabulous.
Bye-bye 670s.
Bye-bye 7970s.

Great review. Thanks for including Last Light in there.

So.......I guess you have to be present in the store to win the give-away.......lucky shits.
Not everybody lives in Texas you know.......

Now get off my lawn.

 

[Bojamijams]

Places like Anandtech, PCPer, TechCrunch and Hardware Canucks all realize that FPS measurements are misleading for showing the true performance of a system.. especially since FPS takes into effect runt frames which give the FPS rating a fake boost.

Frame Time is what those sites have shifted to and only include FPS ratings for people who don't know that Frame Time is the new standard and need to be eased into it, or simply as a secondary metric.

I'm very dissapointed to find you did nothing with Frame Time.

 

[Finkus]

As an owner of 680 SLI I'm going to sit out this round.

Me too. The price/performance is just not cutting it for an upgrade.

680 at release = £450.
780 available today = £550.

That's almost 25% price hike for 30-35% performance increase....

 

[WorldExclusive]

AND...releasing Titan at $1k makes everyone feel like they're getting a good deal on the 780 at $650 when in reality if Titan had never been released people would be complaining about the high price as they did with the 7970 when it was released.

Each persons review of pricing is relative.

Some feel that the 780 is a deal, while others feel that they just got ripped off on the Titan.
At the end of the day, the questions is, "Are you happy with your purchase?" If the answer is yes, then it doesn't matter what the perception of value is.

That is true. You make a good point. As a self-proclaimed savvy consumer, I am always wary of such things. It keeps me from going broke with my hobby, heh.

The rumors of the cut-down GK110 was floating around BEFORE the Titan was released. I posted that here:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1751686&highlight=

It really came down to Nv going after those that wanted the fastest performance and computing power, knowing they'll pay top dollar for it.
Meanwhile working on a card geared more towards gamers.

 

[Avalanche]

Places like Anandtech, PCPer, TechCrunch and Hardware Canucks all realize that FPS measurements are misleading for showing the true performance of a system.. especially since FPS takes into effect runt frames which give the FPS rating a fake boost.

Frame Time is what those sites have shifted to and only include FPS ratings for people who don't know that Frame Time is the new standard and need to be eased into it, or simply as a secondary metric.

I'm very dissapointed to find you did nothing with Frame Time.

I'm guessing they know to use FCAT scripts to filter out the runt frames. From there you can reasonably deduce frame time on your own.

 

[Schro]

Places like Anandtech, PCPer, TechCrunch and Hardware Canucks all realize that FPS measurements are misleading for showing the true performance of a system.. especially since FPS takes into effect runt frames which give the FPS rating a fake boost.

Frame Time is what those sites have shifted to and only include FPS ratings for people who don't know that Frame Time is the new standard and need to be eased into it, or simply as a secondary metric.

I'm very dissapointed to find you did nothing with Frame Time.

I could go dredge up other posts where Kyle and Brent have responded to this, but in short, the "Maximum Playable Settings" charts that you see reflect the best playable performance for a given card. This takes into account frame time delivery, smoothness, runt frames and whatever else you want to point at, but is expressed as a subjective opinion. Since we actually play the games rather than running a script or canned benchmark, we use our intuition as gamers to know what is a good experience and what is not. We have been doing things like that around here for a VERY long time.... many years before the whole frame time revolution started. When we are determining these settings, we don't watch the FPS counter even though we are recording it - that data is captured and presented to back up our subjective opinion, but it is NOT what we rely upon.

That being said, at some point, I wouldn't be surprised if we had an FCAT article appear, but knowing about that is a bit above my paygrade around here (i.e. I'm only speculating).

 

[sushiwarrior]

Places like Anandtech, PCPer, TechCrunch and Hardware Canucks all realize that FPS measurements are misleading for showing the true performance of a system.. especially since FPS takes into effect runt frames which give the FPS rating a fake boost.

Frame Time is what those sites have shifted to and only include FPS ratings for people who don't know that Frame Time is the new standard and need to be eased into it, or simply as a secondary metric.

I'm very dissapointed to find you did nothing with Frame Time.

FCAT does NOTHING for single card systems. Trust me, I've run tons of tests on it. FCAT is a buggy tool at best as well and half the time it runs into problems with the captured video. No single card setup will drop frames or have runt frames. Neither AMD or Nvidia have any problems with single card setups.

Crossfire, on the other hand, needs FCAT to display proper performance with the current drivers. New drivers, that's another story, they perform perfectly. So as soon as the new AMD drivers are out FCAT will be a thing of the past and I'll be happier for it.

That being said, at some point, I wouldn't be surprised if we had an FCAT article appear, but knowing about that is a bit above my paygrade around here (i.e. I'm only speculating).

They shouldn't bother. An FCAT setup costs upwards of 3-4k, and the only thing it will report is issues with crossfire. Reviews like this don't need FCAT, it's useless.

 

[///AMG]

Looks like a decent card, but I think I will wait for w/e AMD has coming, if nothing comes by end of the year I think I will have 2 of these.

 

[Blkout]

Each persons review of pricing is relative.

Some feel that the 780 is a deal, while others feel that they just got ripped off on the Titan.
At the end of the day, the questions is, "Are you happy with your purchase?" If the answer is yes, then it doesn't matter what the perception of value is.

And this is your opinion, as was mine. Different opinions from different people.

 

[WorldExclusive]

And this is your opinion, as was mine. Different opinions from different people.

Correct sir.

 

[Blkout]

Correct sir.

I have bought products full well knowing they weren't a good value, but fit my needs at the time. Doesn't mean I still don't look for a good value when I can find it and still can't spot a bad value either. My preference is to look for value when its applicable but as stated, I have splurged many times.

 

[Blkout]

Looks like a decent card, but I think I will wait for w/e AMD has coming, if nothing comes by end of the year I think I will have 2 of these.

I expect best case scenario, AMD will match or barely exceed 780 performance but you will have to wait until the end of the year to see that. Nvidia seems to be one step ahead this round.

 

[Methadras]

I just bought a 4GB GTX670. Once I overclock it, I should be near the level of a GTX680 or close to it. I just don't see the need to make the jump for another $200 premium above what I just paid for that GTX670.

 

[WorldExclusive]

I have bought products full well knowing they weren't a good value, but fit my needs at the time. Doesn't mean I still don't look for a good value when I can find it and still can't spot a bad value either. My preference is to look for value when its applicable but as stated, I have splurged many times.

Ok, now I understand your position on this.

I splurged on this because I have three monitors, and I'm not taking the cheap SLI route of trying to beat a single card.
Buy the most card I can afford, OC and see if I need another. With this beating a Titan when OC'd, with my limited gaming time, I doubt I will need another 780 in SLI before BF4 is released.
I could probably find a 780 for $500-550 used or one on sale by then.

 

[shad0w4life]

How does this get a gold award for being more expensive that previous generations that had huge gains in performance. If they phased out the 680 and offered it at the same price it would definitely be worthy.

HC did more games with Fcat and there were a few games where it was very "meh" as well.


@sushiwarrior FacrCry 3 single card has frame latency issues still, HC pointed that out in their graph showing frame latency.

 

[Yakk]

Seems like a good card, at $650 it's a no-go for me though.