NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 - A Watered-Down Titan?

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 - A Watered-Down Titan?

NVIDIA has just announced its new GeForce GTX 780 and it sports the same Kepler GK110 GPU; albeit the GPU has been 'pared down' to support 2304 CUDA cores for the new card. This translates to approximately a reduction of 16 per cent from the 2688 CUDA cores of the GTX Titan as NVIDIA has disabled two Streaming Multiprocessors (SMX) units for the GTX 780. It also features less onboard video memory, with 3GB of GDDR5 frame buffer. In terms of absolutes, its GK110 GPU has a base clock of 863MHz and a boost clock of 900MHz, and they are higher than that of the GTX Titan. On the get-go, just like its model number suggests, the GeForce GTX 780 seems to be an ideal companion for the enthusiast and hard-core gamers rather than the over-the-top GTX Titan that's more suited for engineering tasks at a personal level with even more CUDA cores and a 6GB frame buffer that won't be of much advantage for gaming needs.

Out of the box, the GTX 780 is compared directly with the GTX 680 but from the wide variance in terms of their hardware specifications, we felt that it may not be a fair comparison. Besides boasting 50% more memory bandwidth than the GTX 680 with a 384-bit memory interface, the GTX 780 literally does a one-up with its 3GB VRAM, clocked at 6008MHz DDR (GDDR5) as the GTX 680 only sports 2GB of frame buffer. The TDP of the GTX 780 is rated at 250W, which is much higher than the GTX 680's 195W. This is acceptable considering that the two cards use a GPU core that's quite a bit different in capabilities - GK104 vs. GK110.

In terms of length, the reference card measures 266mm that puts it right between the shorter 255mm GTX 680 and the longer 280mm GTX 690; while making it as long as  the GTX Titan. In terms of video connectivity options, the card features the expected two DVI ports, one HDMI port and one DisplayPort output.

New Features

Despite their similarities, the GTX 780 does sport an improvement over the Titan as it features a new fan controller that uses an adaptive temperature filter with a control algorithm, which centers on fan speed and temperature in order to eliminate the unnecessary fan fluctuations to reduce fan noise. As this is a hardware feature, this update won't be available with the existing GeForce graphics cards, even the Titan.

The GTX 780 will retail for US$649, which makes it much cheaper than the GTX Titan at launch as its SRP was US$999. Even so, this is still a lot more expensive than the US$499 SRP that the GeForce GTX 680 had when launched. As usual, local pricing isn't available yet for all add-in board partners, but we've gotten word that ASUS will retail its GeForce GTX 780 for S$1,059. Also, the current salvo released by the various vendors will not deviate much in terms of fan/cooler design from the reference GeForce GTX 780. NVIDIA did mention we could look forward to custom designs a few months later, but if history serves as right, there won't be many such options on the top-end spectrum like the GeForce GTX 780 and they are bound to be even more expensive.

Let us now delve into our performance benchmarks section to determine just how much better the GeForce GTX 780 is ahead of the GeForce GTX 680 and its proximity to the GeForce GTX Titan.

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 780 3GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 320.18)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan 6GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 314.09)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 310.90)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB 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, the differences shoudn't be alarming as they are fairly recent releases and still paint a reasonably accurate expectation of where the new card stands among the competition.

Note 2: 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.

Here's a look at how the GTX 780 stacks up against its competition:

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Benchmarks

We have updated our benchmarks since our NVIDIA GTX Titan review and here's the full list that we'll be using for our initial GTX 780 review:-

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

3DMark 11 Results

We started off benchmarking the GeForce GTX 780 card with 3DMark 11, our trusty synthetic benchmark designed to test a GPU's performance at various aspects of DirectX 11 such as tessellation and DirectCompute.

The GTX 780 bested the GTX 680 by slightly over 26 per cent on Performance presets; while on the Extreme Preset, its winning margin increased to almost 35 per cent. This is in line with the company's claims stated in its marketing spiel. In comparison to its more powerful counterpart, the GTX Titan, it trailed behind almost 9 per cent on Performance preset, and it was about 11 per cent behind GTX Titan on the Extreme preset. Overall, you can tell that the GTX 780 is much closer to the Titan than the GTX 680.

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.

As we are still updating our results on our new graphics testbed, the performance results on the GTX 690 are not available yet. That aside, the GTX 780 continued to outperform the GTX 680 while ranking just a hair behind the GTX Titan. On both tests, it was just about 4 per cent behind the Titan while its winning margin over the GTX 680 ranges from 44 to 50 per cent. The Radeon HD 7970 performed better on the updated 3DMark benchmark but still trailed the GTX 780 by margins that range from about 24 to 30 per cent.

Unigine 4.0 "Heaven" Results

Our updated Unigine's "Heaven" benchmark tests GPUs with extreme tessellation, dynamic sky with volumetric clouds, real-time global illumination, and screen-space ambient occlusion among others.

The GTX 780 performed in line with expectations, outperforming the Radeon HD 7970 and the GeForce GTX 680 by as much as 50% at the lowest settings while at the highest settings, its winning margin was pared slightly to 40 per cent.

Unigine "Valley" 1.0

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.

Thte GTX 780 continued to outclass both GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970, while it put up very respectable results that are just a stone's throw away from what the GTX Titan was capable of.

Crysis 2 

Our first real world game-based benchamark 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.

The GTX 780 was about 11 per cent behind the GTX Titan while maintaing its impressive lead over the GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970 cards. Against the GTX 690, the GTX 780 trailed behind the most powerful card in this lineup by margins that range from 14- to 34 per cent.

Dirt 3 Results

For this gaming benchmark, the GTX 780 performed within expectations (at least 25% ahead of the GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition), while at the higher resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, its average frame rate dropped below 100.

Assassin's Creed 3 Results

The GTX 780 establised its lead over its primary competitors. Interestingly, it was a mere 2 per cent ahead of the GTX 690 at the lower resolution and 7 per cent behind at the higher resolution; however, we strongly believe that this is due to the latest ForceWare version 320.18 used by the GTX 780 that caused this discrepancy. The GTX 690, which is currently not in our possession, was tested with an earlier set of drivers.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Results

From this benchmark, we witnessed a mixed bag of results, with the GTX 780 pulling ahead of the Titan at the lower resolution; while at the higher resolution, the performance of the cards were very similar to that of Dirt3.

Far Cry 3

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

We noticed that with anti-aliasing turned off, the raw higher clockspeed of the GTX 780 puts it at an advantage over the GTX Titan; however, at 8X MSAA, the Titan pulled ahead due to more GPU compute prowess as it has 16 per cent more CUDA cores than the GTX 780. At the highest setting, the GTX 780 managed to pulled ahead by the GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970 by roughly 16 per cent but its 22.9 FPS (frames per second) average meant that the card hadn't enough horsepower for decent gameplay at such settings. Only the GTX 690 managed to set a average frame rate above 30 FPS.

Hitman: Absolution Results

Hitman: Absolution is another taxing benchmark that operates on IO Interactive's proprietary Glacier2 engine, a very hardware-intensive engine, which is able to render up to 1200 NPCs (non-player characters) simultaneously. It also features Reflective Shadow Mapping (RSM), Direct Compute accelerated Bokeh Depth of Field, extreme tessellation and Ambient Occlusion.

We also observed the same performance behavior of the GTX 780 when the anti-aliasing setting of the benchmark was turned off, the overall performance of the GTX 780 was very similar to the previous benchmark, Far Cry 3.

Please note that the benchmark tool of this game is far more graphically intensive than the actual story mode campaign level it is based on.

Crysis 3 Results

Crysis 3 that is the sequel to Crysis 2, proves to be a graphically-intensive game just like its predecessors. It utilizes the CryEngine 3 to the extreme levels, with copious 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.

Without anti-aliasing, the GTX 780 still manages to churn out average frame rates above 30 FPS even at the highest tested resolution. When more compute power is required for at 8x MSAA, the card fell behind but its performance at with anti-aliasing enabled was almost identical to the GTX Titan.

Overclocking Results

During our overclocking exercise, we ran into some performance degradation when we overclocked the video memory to its operating frequency of 6800MHz. We decreased the memory offset until we reached an operating frequency of 6248MHz, while we overclocked the GK110 chip to 1063MHz for its base clock. With this, we managed to achieve performance gains that range from about 14 to 19 per cent. Safe to say, in its overclocked state, the GTX 780 will slightly outperform a GTX Titan.

Temperature Results

Like the GTX Titan, the GeForce GTX 780 is also using NVIDIA's new GPU Boost 2.0 technology. According to the our performance logs during our overclocking exercise, its operating temperature actually hit a maximum of 83 degrees Celsius, but it quickly tapered off after the end of the benchmark. As we have noted in our Titan review, with the temperature now acting as the main gatekeeper when factoring how much it can boost the clock speeds, cards with GPU Boost 2.0 enabled would tend to operate at the 80 degrees Celsius threshold to perform at optimal levels.

Having said that, the GeForce GTX 780 registered a cool 77 degrees Celsius during our temperature tests, making it the second coolest of the high-end graphics cards lot.

Power Consumption Results

The GTX 780's power consumption figures are naturally slightly lower than the GTX Titan due to the former's lower number of active CUDA cores. Also note that it's almost on par with the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition card, which means the GeForce GTX 780 is providing a lot better performance per watt.

Conclusion

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 card is one that grew on us as our initial impression of it being a trimmed down version of the more powerful GTX Titan changed somewhat for the better during our testing experience. It is true that the card has less graphic compute power due to its reduction in the number of CUDA cores in comparison with the GTX Titan; however, during our performance testing, it showed its mettle against NVIDIA's top dog by trailing behind by just a hair's breadth. In its overclocked state, it performed like a GTX Titan, hence for its 'tenacity', it's hard for us to dismiss the new GTX 780 as a watered-down version of the GTX Titan.

Also as important is the performance improvement of the GeForce GTX 780 against last year's top single GPU part (the GeForce GTX 680) and against AMD's fastest single GPU part (the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition). For this, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 on average manages a near 50% improvement against both cards! That's a massive improvement and you can easily see why we were more than content with the GeForce GTX 780. Unfortunately, it doesn't retail for the same price point that the GeForce GTX 680 originally launched, so you might have to re-evaluate your expectations and ability to own one. More on price-performance matters after the photo break.

With its new adaptive temperature controller, the GeForce GTX 780 ran quietly and according to NVIDIA, it produces about three decibels less noise than a reference GTX 680 card. From our experience, it is as quiet as the GTX Titan, which is commendable for such a powerful card. We understand the importance of user experience with IT products and services, and NVIDIA has also launched their GeForce Experience software that promises to take the hassle of determining game settings for a supported NVIDIA-based gaming system. As the software has just crossed over its beta version, there are naturally still kinks to be ironed out for it.

In terms of local availability, the add-on card partners have already launched their cards and they are priced at slightly above S$1,000 or so. This makes the GeForce GTX 780 about 25 to 30% more expensive than a GeForce GTX 680 graphics card that has an average price close to S$800 (though there are exceptions like Palit that retail for as low as S$650 for the reference model). Given the performance improvements of the GeForce GTX 780 in percentage, that's about how much more expensive it is over the GeForce GTX 680. Looking at its cost from another perspective, it's about 25 to 30% more affordable than the GeForce GTX Titan, but only has  10% or less performance differential. Hence, the GeForce GTX 780 can be seen as an ideal filler between the GTX 680 and the GTX Titan.

All things considered, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 card isn't revolutionary or even evolutionary, but its performance level and price point makes it an ideal choice for gaming enthusiasts and performance seekers who are looking to upgrade from the GTX 680, but without bearing the hefty S$1.5K for a full-fat GTX Titan or going all out for a GTX 690. And without a suitable challenger from the AMD camp, it might seem as if NVIDIA can price their offerings as they see wish.

On a side note, there is an interesting option if you're willing to spend more. At little over S$1.2K for a pair of AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics cards, you can get performance levels that rival or surpass the GTX Titan and the GTX 690. You do have to spend more than the GeForce GTX 780, but this configuration does give more bang for your buck as well. Unfortunately, there are other downsides to contend with like the high power consumption and much more noisier operation in addition to more physical space required for such a setup and more cable management. If you recall, the GeForce GTX Titan was already heralded as an enabler for high gaming performance in a slim chassis and it only gets better with the GeForce GTX 780 being a much more 'reasonably priced' variant of it.

So at the end of these comparisons, there's no equivalent to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 and you're only paying for a proportionate increase in performance over the previous generation GeForce GTX 680.

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