Nvidia’s fully unlocked GK110-based GTX 780 Ti sets new benchmark records
For most oF 2013, the Nvidia GTX Titan has ruled the single-GPU roost unchallenged, but that all changed last month with the launch of the AMD Radeon R9 290X. That smoldering GPU dethroned the GTX 780 and displayed performance close enough to Nvidia’s flagship GPU to make the green team just a wee bit uncomfortable.
So it did what any hypercompetitive GPU maker would do: It released a new GPU that would erase all doubt as to who makes the fastest single GPU in the world. That, in a nutshell, is the GTX 780 Ti. It is faster than the R9 290X, and faster than the GTX Titan, and therefore is the fastest GPU for gaming Nvidia has ever created. As for why it’s not named Titan Ultra or some other Titan derivative, it can’t do Double Precision Compute like the Titan, making it more akin to the GTX 780, hence the name.
The “Ti” part of its name refers to the fact that it’s a super-charged version of the GTX 780. Not only does it have higher clock speeds and faster 7GHz memory, but it also has three additional SMX units enabled, allowing for a staggering 25 percent increase in CUDA cores, going from 2,304 to 2,880 total. For those keeping track at home, that’s 15 SMX units total, which is the full amount possible in the GK110 die. The almighty GTX Titan has only 14 and the GTX 780 has 12, so for the first time we are seeing GK110’s fully armed-andoperational power, and it’s awesome to behold. The GTX 780 Ti has 3GB of 7GHz GDDR5 memory, too, endowing it with significantly boosted memory bandwidth, despite using the same 384-bit memory bus as the GTX 780. But the card costs $700, so it has a hefty price tag to match its performance.
Despite its prodigious power, it’s still a Kepler board, so it’s extremely efficient. Nvidia claims its TDP is 250 watts, the same as the GTX 780 and the GTX Titan. In testing, it remained cool and quiet at all times, never going beyond 85 Celsius when highly overclocked— that’s 10 C cooler than the Radeon R9 290X at stock clocks. It hovered around 82 C at its stock boost clock of 928MHz. We were able to juice our review board up to 1,225MHz Boost clock, and we think that should be achievable on most retail boards. Nvidia’s Kepler boards have always been highly overclockable.
In testing, the GTX 780 Ti spanked everything it went up against, ending the Radeon R9 290X’s short-lived time in the limelight. We were actually surprised by how much faster it was than not only the R9 290X, but the Titan as well. On average, it was anywhere between 10 to 25 percent faster than a Titan at 2560x1600 resolution, where it was able to hit the magical 60fps mark for the first time in Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Ghosts.
The fact that it can kick so much ass while still being relatively cool and quiet makes this the most well-rounded and powerful GPU Nvidia has ever released. The timing is fitting, too; we expect this to be the last Kepler card we’ll ever see, as the company is beginning its transition to a 20nm lithography for the upcoming Maxwell architecture. –Josh Norem
