GeForce GTX 780 1080p Performance Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,622 words · ~8 min read
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this video is brought to you by the Corsair Vengeance k70 and k95 these
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fully mechanical keyboards are designed for performance gaming visit Corsair.com
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vengance gaming to learn more welcome to my 1080p performance review of the
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GeForce GTX 780 from NVIDIA this comes in and replaces the GeForce GTX 680 and
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is positioned slightly below the GeForce GTX Titan in terms of performance
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spoiler alert but significantly below the GeForce GTX Titan which is a $1,000
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card in terms of price our testing
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methodology is pretty straightforward we always overclock all of our cards you
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can find our overclocking results in the spreadsheet that is in the video
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description if you want to check it out and we are using fraps because we don't
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have a frame rating capture setup yet but we're hoping to add something like
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that in the future we are only testing single GPU setups however so the
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discrepancies between fraps and a capture setup are not nearly as
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significant as they are in particularly cross fire configurations our test bed
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is our usual test bed we've got a 3960x behind me at 4 GHz 16 gigs of RAM a p9x
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79 Deluxe motherboard a 128 gig SSD
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powered by an antech high current Pro 1,000 watt and cooled by a Corsair h100
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we're running Windows 7 still for our test platform just because that is the
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way we wanted to do it for our drivers we're doing something we don't usually
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do and we are using the latest beta drivers from both NVIDIA and AMD this is
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giving us the latest performance enhancements and what's kind of cool
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about what you're about to see is that there have been some changes in terms of
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rankings so we've done performance guides featuring some of these graphics
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cards on some of these games where the results are different than what you're
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going to see now so remember guys beta drivers are non-f finalized and there
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can be weird bugs and glitchiness which is why we try to avoid using them for
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performance reviews but what you're about to see is more of a glimpse into
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how they perform like exactly now or even a little bit into the future now
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we're almost to the point where we're talking performance numbers but I want
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to talk about some of the things that make this card special besides performance it shares a lot with the GTX
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Titan it uses the same GK 110 core it uses the same cooler with an updated
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acoustic profile meaning that the fan doesn't spin up and down unnecessarily
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it maintains things very steadily it also has GPU Boost 2.0 which allows you
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to do really cool stuff like you can either say Okay temperatures be damned I
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want you to run at the highest performance possible I'm okay with 90°
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on my GPU or and it'll perform better or
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you can say you know what I want my card to run really cool I'm only comfortable
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with 70° and the card will dynamically turn itself down in terms of voltages
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and clock speeds to stay within that Target that you've determined now it
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doesn't have 6 gigs of RAM like the GTX Titan but it does use the same PCB so
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you got support for all the NVIDIA Technologies SLI two-way 3-way four-way
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NVIDIA 3D Vision NVIDIA 3D Vision surround with three around displays plus
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an auxiliary display and the fact that it uses the same PCB means we've got a
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very beefy designed card that should be great for overclocking and once we
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overclock these cards you're going to see the performance is very similar the
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one thing that's missing on the back of the card here and why I have it turned around is an additional 3 gigs of memory
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this card has 3 gigs versus the 6 gigs of memory on the GTX Titan let's start
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with Metro last Light and we are cranking the details on all the games
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for this video because these are high-end cards and if you're spending $300 plus dollars on a card you better
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be turning up the details this is where we see how our overclocked methodology
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really reveals the uh the Lesser price to Performance value of some of the
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higher-end cards when you're overclocking everything so the GTX 780
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performs almost the same as a Titan and a 7950 performs almost the same as a 7970
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only the GTX 660 Ti really falls behind
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in this particular test in BioShock Infinite we see about a 10% performance
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advantage over the 7 80 going to the Titan with the Titan outperforming
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everything and the 780 outperforming everything else however I'd like to take
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a moment while you enjoy these graphs to point out that it's about more than
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performance Acoustics is a huge part of the experience particularly for silent
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freaks like me and you may or may not have noticed already that there's a
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significant amount more background noise to this particular segment of the video
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compared to the rest of it and I'd like to see if you guys can figure out where
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the problem lies in Tomb Raider we see a bit more of
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a spread with the Titan outperforming the GTX 780 by about 10% the 780
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outperforming everything else by a wide margin and then the AMD cards nice and
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close to the GTX 680 and the 660 Ti trailing behind in Far Cry 3 we see
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another example of almost identical performance between the Titan and the
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780 with the 680 falling behind significantly clustered with those other
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cards this is one of those games where these look like next Generation cards
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and everything else looks like a last generation card in Far Cry 3 blood
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Dragon surprise surprise the Titan's the big winner it's a $1,000 video card so
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it pretty much better win I mean I mean it's good that it does uh the 780
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however is once again only about 10% slower but what's neat to see here is
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that in Far Cry 3 blood Dragon we've seen a significant change in the way
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those last generation gpus lined up in terms of performance so what's cool
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about this is the fact that NVIDIA has
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the 680 literally all on the way out of
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their product lineup it is replaced as of today but it is still getting driver
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enhancements that are making it perform better in these new games and again the
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GTX Titan and 780 look like they don't even belong in the same set of
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benchmarks as these other cards the 3 gigs of RAM particularly at 1080p
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doesn't seem to hold back the 780 in any way and it performs almost as well as
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the Titan about 50% better than anything
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else on the field so what did we take away from all of this
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the GTX 780 looks compared to the Titan like a stunning price to Performance
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proposition it performs at worst about 10% slower once you overclock them and
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guys if you're buying GTX 780s and not overclocking them shame on you okay so
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it performs very close to a Titan and cost significantly less than a Titan
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with all that cool Titan feature stuff that goes on I mean even the illuminated
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GeForce GTX logo that you can set up to breathe or you can increase the
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brightness when it's under a gaming load and all kinds of cool stuff like that is
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included on this card at a significantly lower price now with all of that said it
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doesn't just come down to price to Performance ratio and this is
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particularly of note when you look at the competition now normally I don't
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talk about game bundles in these videos because I don't know if that game bundle
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is still going to exist 6 months down the line when you might be watching this
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but an AMD has had the never settle bundle running for almost 6 months now
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which means that I better talk about it because they are serious about this you
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may or may not have noticed that a lot of the games uh the 7970 didn't
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outperform the GTX 780 not by a long
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shot but what's kind of neat about it is a lot of those games are included with a
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7970 or AMD radon graphics card purchase
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so it's something to think about make sure that you're doing the math if
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you're planning to buy that game anyway especially immediately factor that in
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but if you are looking for the balls to the- walls best performing single card
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solution and single card really is what I recommend more than a dual card setup
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particularly on the AMD side where it can hurt the experience more than it
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actually helps it seriously guys Google frame rating it's true if you're looking
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for the ultimate single card experience I would point at this guy as opposed to
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the GTX Titan it performs almost as well as a Titan has all those cool features
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and really leaves the last generation GTX 680 in the dust thank you for
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checking out this review of the GTX 780 don't forget to subscribe to lonus Tech
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