The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on November 7, 2013 9:01 AM ESTMetro: Last Light
As always, kicking off our look at performance is 4A Games’ latest entry in their Metro series of subterranean shooters, Metro: Last Light. The original Metro: 2033 was a graphically punishing game for its time and Metro: Last Light is in its own right too. On the other hand it scales well with resolution and quality settings, so it’s still playable on lower end hardware.
For the bulk of our analysis we’re going to be focusing on our 2560x1440 results, as monitors at this resolution will be what we expect a single GTX 780 Ti to be primarily used with. A single card does have the necessary horsepower to drive a 4K monitor on its own, but only at lower quality settings. Even as powerful as GTX 780 Ti is, a pair of them will be needed to get good framerates out of most games if using 4K at high quality settings.
Looking at our Metro: Last Light results then, it’s the start of what’s going to be a fairly consistent streak for the GTX 780 Ti. Though it doesn’t improve on GTX Titan or GTX 780’s gaming performance by leaps and bounds, the additional SMX and increased clockspeeds means that it has little trouble pulling away from those cards and from AMD’s 290 series. As a result the GTX 780 Ti beats the GTX Titan by 11%, GTX 780 by 19%, and though it’s closer than normal, the lead over the 290X stands at 6%.
To that end in Metro it leads the pack of single-GPU cards, though it does come up just short of being able to average 60 frames per second at 2560. Anything over 60fps will require multiple GPUs; and even then GTX 780 Ti is fast enough that sometimes even a pair of GPUs (GTX 770 SLI) isn’t going to be appreciably faster.
Meanwhile looking at GTX 780 Ti SLI performance, the SLI setup tops the charts at 2560 for everything short of the 290X in uber mode, though in this case (like most cases) two high-end GPUs is on the verge of being overkill even at 2560. Otherwise looking at 4K, NVIDIA’s poor 4K scaling on Metro once again makes itself present here, with NVIDIA’s performance only minimally benefitting from the second card. In the case of Metro at 4K, the 290X CF is going to be by far the faster option.
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1Angelreloaded - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Physically the 780 and 780 TI are literally the same unit, minus minor things. The difference is the neutered chip, and OC'd VRAM, Which means your paying for the same unit at 2 completely different prices, in fact, How much does it cost to disable the SMX texture? So shouldn't the overhead on the original unit be higher with more work having to be done? Or like AMD tricore are we paying for defective chips again ?TheJian - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Wrong. They have been saving DEFECT FREE GK110 units for months just to be able to launch this with good quantity (probably only started having better results at B1, which all of these are). I doubt that there are many 780's that have fully working units that are disabled. They are failed Tesla chips (you can say DP is disabled on purpose, but not the SMX's). Do you really think 550mm chips have a ZERO defect rate?...LOL. I would be surprised if the first runs of Titan had any more working SMX's too as they were directly failed Tesla's. Sure there are probably a few cards with some working that are disabled but Yields and history say with chips this big there just has to be a pretty high defect rate vs. 100% working chips. It is pretty much the largest chip TSMC can make. That's not easy. Both AMD and NV do this to salvage failed chips (heck everybody does). You come with a flagship, then anything that fails you mark as a lower model (many models). It allows you to increase your yield and chips that can be sold. You should be thankful they have the tech to do this or we'd all be paying FAR higher prices do to chucking chips by the millions in the trash.TheJian - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-78..."Not to be caught off-guard, Nvidia was already binning its GK110B GPUs, which have been shipping since this summer on GeForce GTX 780 and Titan cards. The company won’t get specific about what it was looking for, but we have to imagine it set aside flawless processors with the lowest power leakage to create a spiritual successor for GeForce GTX 580. Today, those fully-functional GPUs drop into Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 780 Ti."
There, don't have to believe me...confirmed I guess ;)
beck2448 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Great job Nvidia! I think the partners with custom cooling will get another 15 to 20 % performance out of it with lower temps and less noise, and that is insane for a single GPU. Can't wait to see the Lightning and Windforce editions.aznjoka - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
The crossfire scaling on the 290x is much better than the 780ti. If you are running a dual card set up, getting a 290x is pretty much a no brainer.beck2448 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
from Benchmark reviews: In conclusion, GeForce GTX 780 Ti is the gamer’s version of GTX TITAN with a powerful lead ahead of Radeon R9 290X. Even if it were possible for the competition to overclock and reach similar frame rate performance, temperatures and noise would still heavily favor the GTX 780 Ti design. I was shocked at how loud AMD’s R9 290X would roar once it began to heat up midway through a benchmark test, creating a bit of sadness for gamers trying to play with open speakers instead of an insulated headset. There is a modest price difference between them, but quite frankly, the competition doesn’t belong in the same class.Read more at http://benchmarkreviews.com/8468/nvidia-geforce-gt...
1Angelreloaded - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
TBH the stock Nvidia cooler isn't that much better either they tend to run a lot hotter than ACX/Twin Frozer, and other such solutions, so both have cooling headroom, Hawaii though is just plain ridiculous.deedubs - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Noticed the graph for shadowplay performance has its labels reversed. It makes it look like SP increases performance instead of decreasing.Ryan Smith - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Whoops. Thanks for that. The multi-series graph tool is a bit picky...Filiprino - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
I don't see NVIDIA as a real winner here, really. Their margin is very tight, and AMD drivers still have to mature, and when you talk about crossfire, AMD is doing clearly better, for $200 less and 6dB more.