NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 - More than Just a Rebadging Exercise

*Updated as of 2nd June 2013 - Originally published as a preliminary review on 30th May, we've since refreshed our comparison results to update the article to a full review, complete with ratings.

Double Seven, Oh

Over a year ago, NVIDIA introduced the first of their first 28nm GPU based on their new Kepler architecture - the GeForce GTX 680 - to critical acclaim. The then new GeForce GTX 680, and specifically its GK104 GPU, was quite simply astounding in many ways, offering unprecedented levels of performance at unheard of power levels.

Mostly recently, NVIDIA topped that off with the GeForce GTX Titan, which unleashed the full unbridled fury of Kepler onto any gamers with deep enough pockets to get their hands on one. With its 2688 CUDA cores, it is the fastest single GPU card we have ever tested.

And just last week, NVIDIA offered a new high-end card to the gaming masses - the GeForce GTX 780. Despite being the first of the "new" GeForce GTX 700 series, the GeForce GTX 780 is not based on the highly anticipated "Maxwell" architecture. Instead, the GeForce GTX 780 can be thought of as GeForce GTX Titan Light, as it utilizes a slightly pared down version of the vaunted GK110 GPU used on the GTX Titan.

Today, just a week before Computex 2013, NVIDIA is bolstering the GeForce GTX 700 series with yet another SKU, the GeForce GTX 770. Not unlike the GeForce GTX 780, the new GeForce GTX 770 is powered by a Kepler chip, this time, the GK104. To be specific, the GK104 in the GeForce GTX 770 is identical in specifications to the GeForce GTX 680, save for modified clock speeds.

This means 8 SMX units and a grand total of 1536 CUDA cores. Base clock speeds have been boosted to 1046MHz (up from 1006MHz); but maximum GPU Boost clock speeds have been toned down to 1085MHz (down from 1110MHz). Finally, memory clock speeds received the most substantial boost and is now a staggering 7012MHz DDR (up from 6008MHz DDR). It is the first graphics card to boast a 7GHz memory clock rate, thus setting its own little record. The card will be offered by NVIDIA’s add-in board partners with either 2GB or 4GB of GDDR5 framebuffer.

The GeForce GTX 770 will also benefit from NVIDIA’s second generation GPU Boost 2.0 technology. As detailed in our review of the GeForce GTX Titan, in which this new technology debuted in, GPU Boost 2.0 now uses a GPU temperature threshold to determine if clock speeds can be further boosted. Power draw is still a considering factor, but no longer the main one.

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The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB GDDR5

Much like the GeForce GTX 780, the reference GeForce GTX 770 card measures 10.5 inches in length and sports the same blower-style cooler. The cooler has been upgraded with a new fan control algorithm which will provide more stable fan speeds. This means that when the GPU does get hot, the fan does not suddenly ramp up its speed, instead it does so gradually. NVIDIA claims that by doing so, it results in less perceived noise.

Interestingly, the rated TDP of the GeForce GTX 770 is 230W, which is considerably higher than both the older GeForce GTX 680 and GeForce GTX 670, which are 195W and 170W respectively. Will this translate to higher power consumption figures? We will find out soon enough, but here’s a look at the card.

Test Setup

For those who've been following our reviews, take note that we've replaced our old test rig with a brand new one for 2013. Here are the new specs we'll be running with:

• Intel Core i7-3960X (3.3GHz)
• ASUS P9X79 Pro (Intel X79 chipset) Motherboard
• 4 x 2GB DDR3-1600 G.Skill Ripjaws Memory
• Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive (OS)
• Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM 1TB SATA hard drive (Benchmarks + Games)
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Here's the list of cards we'll be testing.

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 320.18)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 320.18)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan 6GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 314.09)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 320.18)
• AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 13.4)

This is the list of cards used during our overclocking, temperature and power consumption tests. They were the reference cards from the manufacturers that were operating on earlier versions of their respective drivers.

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 310.90)
• AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta) - OC BIOS

Note 1: There's a slight discrepancy in driver versions used across all the cards, but bear with us updating of benchmarks is an ongoing process, especially on our new test rig. Despite this, they still paint a reasonably accurate expectation of where the new card stands among the competition.

Note 2 (updated on 2nd June): We have updated a part of our results by using a downclocked Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Windforce 5X Super Overclock 2GB GDDR5 with the latest NVIDIA ForceWare 320.18 drivers. The card was clocked down to the level of a reference NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680. We have also updated results from a reference AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB GDDR5 card, together with its latest drivers, the AMD Catalyst Software Suite 13.4. This is achieved by using an overclocked Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC 3GB GDDR5 so that it is representative of the aforementioned AMD card to a certain degree.

Note 3: In our performance testing, we left the default temperature ceiling at 80 degrees Celsius as most users would leave it as default. Only at our overclocking exercise did we increase the power target at 104 per cent and our temperature target was automatically increased to 89 degree Celsius.

The key rivals for the GeForce GTX 770 in this stratospheric segment of the market will be the AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, and NVIDIA’s own GeForce GTX 780 and GeForce GTX 680. We are expecting the GeForce GTX 770 to outperform the GeForce GTX 680, thanks to its higher base core clock speeds and memory speeds. The only question is, "by how much?"

Benchmarks

We've also updated our benchmark list, adding Unigine's new Valley benchmark, as well as 3DMark 2013 and the big one, Crysis 3. We've also updated Unigine from version 3.0 to 4.0. Dirt 3 was excluded this time because it failed to run.

• Futuremark 3DMark 11
• Futuremark 3DMark 2013
• Unigine 4.0 "Heaven"
• Unigine "Valley" 1.0
• Battlefield: Bad Company 2
• Crysis Warhead
• Crysis 2
• Assassin's Creed 3
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
• Hitman: Absolution
• Far Cry 3
• Crysis 3

*Updated as of 2nd June 2013 - Originally published as a preliminary review on 30th May, we've since refreshed our comparison results to update the article to a full review, complete with ratings.

3DMark 11 Results

We begin our report of the GeForce GTX 770’s performance was 3DMark 11, a synthetic benchmark that evaluates a card’s DirectX 11 performance. It tests aspects such as tessellation and DirectCompute.

As we had expected, the GeForce GTX 770 is a faster card than the GeForce GTX 680 as evidenced by its higher 3DMark 11 scores. Its scores were about 6- to 7% higher for both settings and was just as much ahead of its rival, the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition. However, despite the higher clock speeds of its GK104 core, it was still no match for the GeForce GTX 780 and its pared down GK110 core.

3DMark 2013 Results

3DMark (2013)'s Fire Strike benchmark is Futuremark's most ambitious and technical benchmark to date utilizing a grueling two-part test with extreme levels of tessellation and volumetric illumination, as well as complex smoke simulation using compute shaders and dynamic particle illumination, while Fire Strike Extreme ramps up the difficulty with more tessellation, more particle effects and more taxing DirectCompute calculations.

On 3DMark 2013 Fire Strike, the GeForce GTX 770’s lead over the GeForce GTX 680 was 7%; however, it was beaten by the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition with a slim margin of slightly over 2%. The two GK110-based cards - GeForce GTX Titan and GeForce GTX 780 - were untouchable. For the Fire Strike Extreme test, the GeForce GTX 770's lead was also about 7%, and the winning margin of the lone AMD Radeon card was narrowed to just 1%.

*Updated as of 2nd June 2013 - Originally published as a preliminary review on 30th May, we've since refreshed our comparison results to update the article to a full review, complete with ratings.

Unigine 4.0 "Heaven" Results

The latest version of Unigine’s longstanding “Heaven” benchmark tests GPUs with extreme tessellation, dynamic sky with volumetric clouds, real-time global illumination, and screen-space ambient occlusion among others.

With anti-aliasing turned off, the new GeForce GTX 770 was just about  6 to 7% quicker than the older GeForce GTX 680, and it managed to beat the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition by a wider margin that  ranged from 8- to slightly over 14%. Compared to the GeForce GTX 780, the new GeForce GTX 770 was more than 20% slower. The gulf in performance between the GK110 and GK104 is certainly very wide.

With anti-aliasing set at 8x, and at the highest resolution of 2560 x 1600, the GTX 770 was beaten by the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition card by a razor-thin margin of almost half a percentage point. The former's winning margins were over the GTX 680 were roughly maintained in the same range prior to applying anti-aliasing (about 6 - 7%).

Unigine 1.0 "Valley" Results

Valley is a new benchmark from Unigine that renders a highly detailed seamless landscape covering a total area of 64,000 square kilometers. It also utilizes dynamic sky effects, volumetric clouds, sun shafts, DOF, and ambient occlusion.

Previously, the GeForce GTX 680 was only about on a par with the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, but the new GeForce GTX 770 is convincingly quicker than AMD’s fastest single GPU card. On Unigine’s “Valley” benchmark, the GeForce GTX 770 was at least 18% faster than the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition; however, with anti-aliasing set at 8 times at the highest resolution, they were competing so closely that the winning margin by the NVIDIA card was as low as 1%.

*Updated as of 2nd June 2013 - Originally published as a preliminary review on 30th May, we've since refreshed our comparison results to update the article to a full review, complete with ratings.

Crysis 2 Results

Our first real world game-based benchmark is Crysis 2 and whose gameplay, at Ultra settings, puts GPUs through their paces with a grueling test of tessellation, Parallax Occlusion Mapping, water rendering, particle motion blur and shadowing.

On Crysis 2, at 1920 x 1200 pixels resolution, the recorded frame rates of the GeForce GTX 770, GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition were all hovering around 60fps. Pushing them to the higher resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, all of the cards managed in excess of 30fps. While the GeForce GTX 770 was about 8% speedier than the GTX 680, it marginally lost out to the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition card and was about 18% behind the GeForce GTX 680.

Crysis 3 Results

Our newest gaming benchmark is the much anticipated sequel to Crysis 2 and, much like its predecessors, continues to be an absolute beast of a game, utilizing CryEngine 3 to the max with extreme amounts of tessellation, per-pixel per-object motion blur, Bokeh Depth of Field, displacement mapping on small terrain, particle and volumetric lighting and fog shadows, improved dynamic cloth and vegetation, dynamic caustics and diffuse shadows. 

On Crysis 3, the GeForce GTX 770 continued its fine showing, easily outperforming both the GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. Surprisingly, the GeForce GTX 780 was the quickest card here, but that could be because the GeForce GTX Titan was running on slightly dated drivers. Unfortunately, we don’t have a GeForce GTX Titan on hand to properly update the results. For some reason, our reference GTX 680 card (the downclocked Gigabyte GTX 680) failed to complete the test as the game crashed repeatedly at the highest setting as we tried to measure the FPS with Fraps. But with Fraps turned off, the game managed to run with the card, and to extrapolate from the previous results, we estimate its score would be around 11- to 12fps.

*Updated as of 2nd June 2013 - Originally published as a preliminary review on 30th May, we've since refreshed our comparison results to update the article to a full review, complete with ratings.

Assassin's Creed 3 Results

Unlike previous games in this franchise, Assassin’s Creed 3 uses the all-new AnvilNext game engine, which was designed from ground up. This new game engine features enhanced graphic effects such as deferred lighting and ambient occlusion.

The GeForce GTX 770 was around 8% faster than both the GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, but trailed the GeForce GTX 780 around 12%.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Results

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 might not have the most advanced game engine around, but it is one of the most popular first-person shooter games. The latest game in the Call of Duty franchise employs the use of a heavily modified version of Infinity Wards IW 3.0 engine, which includes upgraded water and lighting effects, lens flare effect, HDR and bounce lighting.

On Black Ops 2, the GeForce GTX 770 was around 8% quicker than the GeForce GTX 680 and the the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition.

*Updated as of 2nd June 2013 - Originally published as a preliminary review on 30th May, we've since refreshed our comparison results to update the article to a full review, complete with ratings.

Far Cry 3 Results

Far Cry 3 is running on the Dunia 2 Engine, a modified version of Crytek's CryEngine. As such, this benchmark features heavy tessellation, high amounts of volumetric lighting, and deferred radiance transfer volumes (global illumination).

Without AA, the GeForce GTX 770 only managed to outperform the GeForce GTX 680 by almost 7% at the resolution of 2560 x 1600; while at the lower resolution, GTX 770 was beaten by the GTX 680 by a margin of almost 13%. In comparison with the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, it was almost on par with the GTX 770 at the lower resolution, and at the higher resolution, it was just 12% behind (about 5fps). Against the GeForce GTX 780, the GeForce GTX 770 trailed by around 10% to 20%. With AA set at 8x, the GTX 770 outperformed both rivals by at least 16- to 20%.

Once more, we saw an anomaly in results for the GeForce GTX Titan, but this time it was only confined to its non-AA results. Clearly it's just a matter of needing new drivers to bring its scores up to where it should be and we'll get to that when the GTX Titan makes its way back to us. 8x MSAA results on the other hand, came out as expected.

Hitman: Absolution Results

Hitman: Absolution is another challenging benchmark, running on IO Interactive's proprietary Glacier2 engine, a very hardware intensive engine which is able to render up to 1200 NPCs at the same time. The benchmark tool used to test this game is extremely intensive and features a massive crowd of NPCs, Reflective Shadow Mapping (RSM), Direct Compute accelerated Bokeh Depth of Field, extreme tessellation and Ambient Occlusion.

In this benchmark, the GeForce GTX 770 was only marginally faster than the GeForce GTX 680 while the Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition handily beat the newcomer. This could be due to the GTX 770's smaller 2GB framebuffer as the AMD card has 3GB of memory.

The GeForce GTX Titan had similar standings to Far Cry 3, right down to the non-AA results that are requesting for newer drivers. However, you should be well aware that it can chalk up better results than the GeForce GTX 780, so this is a non-issue while we await the GTX Titan to back for another round of tests.

Overclocking

The over-volting utility from EVGA Precision (version 4.2.0) didn't work for the NVIDIA GTX 770 card but we managed to overclock the GK104 chip to 1141MHz for its base clock; while for its video memory, we managed to push its operating frequency to a high of 7142MHz DDR with an offset of 200MHz.

Temperature

The GeForce GTX 770 recorded a maximum sustained GPU temperature reading of 71 degrees Celsius, just a mere two degrees Celsius more than the GeForce GTX 680. It was a whopping 12 degrees Celsius cooler than the Radeon HD 7970 GHz. We have long lamented that the Radeon HD 7970’s cooler was insufficient for its GPU. More so the racket it makes compared to the new GeFoce 780 and 770 graphics cards.

Power Consumption

Idle power reading of the GeForce GTX 770 was slightly lower than that of the GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. At load, it maximum power draw was recorded to be 380W, 15% more than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680. Clearly, the extra performance has had a negative effect on both thermal and power characteristics. Nevertheless, its figure was considerably lower than that of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition at 439W.

*Updated as of 2nd June 2013 - Originally published as a preliminary review on 30th May, we've since refreshed our comparison results to update the article to a full review and an updated conclusion, complete with ratings.

More than Just a Rebadged GeForce GTX 680

There can be no doubt that NVIDIA’s new Kepler architecture has been a tremendous success. The release of the GeForce GTX 680 forced AMD to respond with the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, which was basically a factory-overclocked Radeon HD 7970. And even then, it was not faster, merely about on a par with the GeForce GTX 680. The GHz edition was also fairly limited in availability, leaving the regular Radeon HD 7970 to fend the high-end segment.

Earlier this year, NVIDIA tightened its grasp on the title of world’s fastest single GPU with the amazing GeForce GTX Titan. Based on the full-fat GK110 chip with 2688 CUDA cores, it offered unprecedented levels of single GPU performance. The only thing capable of matching it on AMD’s lineup was two Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards in CrossFireX.

And now, NVIDIA is solidifying their lineup with new GeForce GTX 700 series cards. Although these cards are based on the same Kepler architecture as the GeForce GTX 600 series cards, the new GeForce GTX 780 and GeForce GTX 770 both offers significant feature enhancements and performance improvements.

In terms of performance, the GeForce GTX 770 was generally faster than the GeForce GTX 680 by about 7 to 8%. When compared to the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, its lead diminishes a great deal, though there are some games where the GTX 770 can still maintain an 8% lead (and there are some where the AMD counterpart gets the better of it). But to say that the GeForce GTX 770 is a rebadged GeForce GTX 680 wouldn't be entirely fairs as it also benefits from a redesigned cooler, new fan control algorithms, and GPU Boost 2.0 technology. These add to the performance quotient of the GeForce GTX 770.

That said, the gulf in performance between the GeForce GTX 770 and the two GK110-based cards are painfully obvious. Expect the GeForce GTX 770 to trail the earlier released GeForce GTX 780 by around 20% to 50%, depending on the title. It goes without saying that the difference is even greater if we were to compare the GeForce GTX 770 to the flagship GeForce GTX Titan.

As for pricing, NVIDIA has set a scarcely believable launch price of US$399 for the 2GB version. This is even lower than the US$499 launch price that GeForce GTX 680 commanded when it was released last year. At this price, it is a no-brainer, considering GeForce GTX 680 cards are currently retailing for around US$450 to US$530 and yet the GeForce GTX 770 is consistently better than it. The Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition also cannot hope to compete as it goes for around US$450 too.

In fact, the US$399 price point is shared with the launch of the GeForce GTX 670. However, the almost non-existent lead time on the price advisory on NVIDIA's part meant that we didn't have time to bring you updated GeForce GTX 670 comparisons. Stay tuned for that in our upcoming GeForce GTX 770 graphics card shootout. For now, if you are have a budget of around US$400 to US$450, the new GeForce GTX 770 is the overwhelmingly obvious choice.

Locally, things are not as clear cut as the GeForce GTX 770 will enter our markets with a SRP of under S$800 (and closer to the S$700 range). This is about the same as what GeForce GTX 680 cards are currently commanding. However, Radeon HD 7970 cards can be had for less; with prices ranging from S$600 to S$650, they have an excellent value proposition. Take note though, these cards are the non GHz editions and you would have to put up with other aspects like higher performance draw and louder operational noise.

For those who have been planning to get a GeForce GTX 680, there’s no better time than now. For the same money, the GeForce GTX 770 a faster card with better features (GPU Boost 2.0, new fan control algorithm).

All in all, the GeForce GTX 770 is a welcomed edition to renew the old top-tier GeForce 600 series. The performance increase over the GeForce GTX 680 is decent, even if it has slightly poorer thermal and power characteristics. The argument for the Radeon HD 7970 isn't so clear but the GeForce GTX 770 still comes out as a better option once you factor in thermal, noise and operational power characteristics. It's a pity then that our local pricing scheme means that the GeForce GTX 770 is not really the obvious choice in this segment of the market.

For more follow-up reading, check out our shootout between four custom cooled GeForce GTX 770 cards that involve ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Palit.

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