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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Gadgety - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
@ConduitThose who want the maximum number of CUDA cores (SPs) for the minimum amount of money, and apply those CUDA cores for GPU based ray trace rendering. Disregarding memory size differences this is what it looks like:
The Quadro K6000 is $5000 for 2880 CUDA cores: 0.576 CUDA cores/dollar
The TeslaK20 is $3500 for 2496 CUDAs: 0.7 CC/dollar.
When the Titan launched it was a bargain at $1000 for 2688 CUDAS: 2.69 CC/dollar
When the memory limited GTX780 launched it was 3.55 CC/dollar
Now the GTX780Ti provides 2880 CUDAs for $699: 4.12 CC/dollar. Since it brings a decent 3GB memory, it's both cheaper and more powerful than the 1.5GB equipped GTX780. I get 576 extra CUDA cores for only 50 bucks!
For larger scenes the Titan still is better, but for those that create smaller renders, the GTX780Ti is the absolute value leader. I can fit four of them in my chassis, at a total cost of $2800 for 11520 CUDAs. If I need the larger 6GB memory, the Titan alternative would be $4000 and provide 10752 CUDAS. Still cheap compared to four K6000 Quadros, which would be
$20 000, for 11520 CUDAs. Although I would much prefer a 4GB, or larger version, of course.
So that is who the hell pays the ultra bargain $700 for a GTX780Ti. It's not all about gaming.
Ananke - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Why are you still using CUDA instead of OpenCL is beyond me :).GTX780Ti is overpriced, NVidia probably doesn't even care, because they care about HPC market for their 110 cores. On the other hand, they do feel some financial heat recently - Tegra was a flop, everybody and his grandma is buying Qualcom today, and it seems Intel tomorrow...HPC computing moves towards Intel and FPGAA.
NVidia indeed got EXTREMELY greedy in the last two years, and the industry has punished them.
p.p. 3GB is not enough for "high-end" pricing. It is the minimum size already.
Gadgety - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
What software are you using? The blazingly fast Octane runs only on CUDA. Blender Cycles runs on CUDA. VRay RT runs better on CUDA. Bunkspeed Shot and Bunkspeed Move for moving images, CUDA. 3DS Max, CUDA.The choice just seems less with OpenCL. What is there besides Luxrender? OpenCL, seems to have been in development, and there is hope for a brighter future, but I don't currently see it as on par with the CUDA applications, and it needs something to really take a big leap.
colonelclaw - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
I work in archvis, and we can't yet make full use of VRayRT because of memory usage. A typical housing development consumes >20GB Ram on our render nodes, and we don't make nearly enough money to justify buying K6000s or K5000s. Our still image output size is typically 5000x3337, so I think it's gonna be a few years until we can really embrace the whole GPU rendering, but it's definitely coming. I do use VRayRT a lot to set up lighting and materials at much lower resolutions, and it's pretty damn fast on a K4000.TheJian - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
One person out of how many that actually gets it? :)Heck you could sell the 3 AAA games for $100 off each card too ;) I just raised your CC/$ right? :)
Gadgety - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
Yes you did. Thanks. Assuming one can get $100 for the games, it's now 4.8CC/$. I assume the game bundle is temporary, though.hero4hire - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link
Sold my 2game bundle for $40. Everybody won.Trenzik - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Lol why is everyone's comments to Wreckage so MEAN? He made a simple comment and some of the replies are just ridiculous. Is he not allowed to state his opinion? And is it that hard to reply to something you don't agree to with dignity, class, and without having to cuss?Good old merica at its finest eh?
kyuu - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Because Wreckage is a blatant troll with nothing useful to contribute. No one is under any obligation to be nice to a useless shill, regardless of which company s/he is shilling for.kyuu - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Oh, and I'd add that Wreckage posted his/her comment well before anyone could have actually read the article, so it's pretty obvious s/he came specifically to spout off.