Hello everyone. In this review, as a happy owner of an Asus Geforce Gtx780 Ti, I will try to reveal its main advantages and disadvantages, but I'll start with a preface.

What's wrong with the 2x Asus Matrix HD7970?

It was not a mania to spend money that pushed me to this act, but the deplorable situation of AMD in the field of drivers. The fact is that if one Asus Matrix worked perfectly, then with the second the situation changed radically. For example:

When using Catalyst 13.11 Beta, the second video card was loaded up to 99% during idle time and warmed up well. And the first one was fine. And if this was solved by rolling back the drivers to 13.4, then I lost about 20% in performance. And the problem was precisely in the drivers. Yes, and the stability suffered, the FPS subsidence did not suit me either. But this is not the only reason. I was not quite happy with the home "oven" in the literal sense, although I placed 10 turntables in the Corsair Carbide Series 400R case. And they consumed a lot.

With the GTX780 Ti, the situation is different: the performance is higher (with more stable operation), the heating is less (especially since the air was thrown out), and the "green" ones have much better firewood. Also included is Geforce Experience with ShadowPlay, game optimization, driver control, as well as the ability to change the "GEFORCE GTX" backlight rendering on video cards with a reference CO. But more about all this later.

Since I sold my Asus Matrix on the 27th, I had to think quickly. On the one hand, I could have taken the version from Gigabyte with their WindForce, but the warranty and availability decided everything. On Sunday, I went and bought, perhaps, one of the few Gtx780 Ti delivered to Sochi.

Design and Cooling System

Perhaps I'll start with this. Now all the latest reference COs from Nvidia look almost the same, below is a photo with a comparison of Gtx780 Ti, Gtx Titan and Gtx780

Well, the internal component

And also characteristics

Perhaps I will not write much about the effectiveness of Nvidia's reference SO. If you, as I am not very worried about the noise (maybe you are sitting in headphones), or simply do not pay attention, then your own profile in Msi Afterburner will help you, and thanks to this, even with overclocking, the video card does not heat up more than 80 * C even in the most difficult applications. But I think that dropsy would not hurt such a device. Fortunately, on the way Asus Geforce GTX780 Ti ROG Poseidon... And the Asus Gtx780 Ti with DirectCU II is just around the corner

Or you can put on the Arctic Cooling Accelero Hybrid.

Yes, by the way, the air does not stagnate in the housing - the turbine at maximum speed (more than 4200Rpm) blows out air no worse than any 120-speed turntable at 2000Rpm. The only downside is noise.

Performance and overclocking

Application performance

As befits a high-end product, the video card delivers excellent performance in any application. And, as mentioned above, it does it stably, without FPS drops. Crysis 3 also turns out to be quite playable at maximum settings. However, nothing else can be expected. It should also be noted that in idle (or at low load) the frequency decreases to 324Mhz, at low load - about 700Mhz.

In idle

Below are videos from Battlefield 4, Crysis 3, Saints Row IV, and Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon. The settings are maximum.

The tests were carried out on the configuration:

Kingston HyperX 8Gb 1600Mhz

OCZ Vector 128Gb

Seagate Contellation 3Tb 7000Rpm, 128Mb

Battlefield 4

Crysis 3

Far cry 3 blood dragon

Saints row iv

As well as temperature indicators

Battlefield 4

Crysis 3

Far cry 3 blood dragon

Saints row iv

Overclocking

The Gtx780 Ti copes well with overclocking, the frequencies 1080 for the core and 1838 for the memory were excellent, there are no artifacts or FPS drops, the voltage is also stable. And thanks to Boost, the frequency increases to 1132. But this is in the case, according to Gpu-Z. In applications, I observed 1209Mhz. Compared to factory overclocking (about 928 in Boost and 1000Mhz in reality), this is not a bad option. The only sad thing is that the power reserve is 106%. But it's not that simple. If you believe the official data, the TDP of GTX780 Ti is 250W, and with an increase in the power reserve, these 106% are counted not from 250, but from 300W! As a result, everything turns out very well. And yes, the video card does not heat up more than 80 * C with a custom CO profile, the frequency is not reset, and we have smooth gameplay in any games.

Screenshot of Gpu-Z at standard frequencies

Screenshot of Gpu-Z overclocked

If you want to overclock your video card even more, then you need to resort to unlocking the voltage for Msi Afterburner, everything is described below.

It's worth starting with checking the PWM controller for compatibility, for this, on the command line, enter: msiafterburner / ri4,20.99 or msiafterburner / ri3,20.99. If the program returns 41, then you can go further. In the folder with MSI Afterburner, go to the profiles directory. Find the file with the card ID and add at the end:

VDDC_Generic_Detection \u003d 0

VDDC_NCP4206_Detection \u003d 4: 20h

VDDC_Generic_Detection \u003d 0

VDDC_NCP4206_Detection \u003d 3: 20h

Geforce Experience

It is worth mentioning separately a new application from Nvidia, Geforce Experience.

1.) Here you and the optimization of games, which works in most licensed games (list on the Nvidia website), you do not have to configure anything. Although sometimes there are shoals - for example, I found 3x Crysis 3, 2x Fallout 3, 2x Skyrim, and 2x Borderlands 2.

2.) Checking and automatic (or at the user's request) installation of drivers, including Beta versions.

3.) ShadowPlay. This is a separate utility from Nvidia that uses a separate H.264 codec to record video from games without significant performance loss. Of course, there are losses, but within 10 Fps. This does not affect the gameplay. You can select the type of recording (background and manual; background; manual; broadcast on Twich;). In the background, you can select the recording duration, maximum 20 minutes. at a size of 7.5GB. It should also be noted that recording is only at 1080p.

4.) Illumination visualizer. Works on reference Gtx690, 770, 780, Titan and 780 Ti. There are many modes, I will not describe them.

My opinion

By buying this unit for 30,000 I was hoping to get maximum performance and I got it. Yes, I could have taken the Gtx780 with Direct CU II, but I didn't want to. And the warranty here is 3 years, in any case, this device will be relevant all this and next year.

If you are an avid gamer, enthusiast, then you should definitely pay attention to this card. Great build quality, optimized Nvidia drivers, maximum performance + great overclocking potential. Premium product, nothing to add.

Pros and Cons

To the pluses it is worth mentioning the huge performance - the most powerful single-chip graphics card! More good drivers and new Geforce Experience app with useful features

The disadvantages it is worth mentioning only the reference cooling system and the starting price in the DNS

advertising

Let's remember the line of NVIDIA video cards. GeForce GTX 770, GTX 780, GTX Titan and GTX 690 are a slightly incorrect but understandable classification of the company's line of accelerators. But the GTX 780 Ti? What for? Where to? What to compare with? The answer is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. If you think about it, then ...

The sixth GeForce series was very clear: each model next in rank had a large number in the name. And now video cards appear with an index that includes 7x0. At the same time, the GTX 690 has not disappeared; it still remains the fastest dual-core solution. Maybe GTX Titan is in the wrong group? Quite, why not, because he came to the gaming market from the world of calculations and remains the ultimate offer for both games and calculations.

The question arises - is it worth NVIDIA after the release of the GTX 780 Ti to remove it from production? The answer is also simple. What for? Popular with computing and enthusiasts alike, the GTX 780 Ti should be the best choice for gaming. This is because users are finally given a fully functional GPU with 2,880 stream processors. Yes, only now, after certain changes, which will be discussed below, the GK110 GPU is ready to merge into gaming applications and show what it can do.

Probably everyone is wondering why GK110 got a new name, or rather stepping B1, and not A2? It is believed that the numbers indicate fixes to metal joints inside the GPU. The letters indicate changes in the transistors themselves. In any case, there are no radical changes inside the crystal - it's all the same GK110. All NVIDIA needed was to adapt the full version of the GK110 to the required heat dissipation with the calculated frequencies, and this was not easy.

The secrecy of the company's developments is covered with such a veil of secrecy that it is almost impossible to achieve intelligible answers, you will simply be flooded with advertising or general phrases from which it is impossible to find out the technical data. Well, the secrets must be kept undisclosed, even under the sharp questions of the press. For our part, one can only guess what tricks they had to go to to fit the new GPU revision into the allotted power consumption range.

advertising

Technical features

As you already understood, there is no physical change in the basic logic circuits. It is possible that optimizations have appeared inside that reduce the time for passing tasks inside the GPU, which leads to a smaller volume of simultaneously operating transistors. Such a scheme of work has existed for a long time and is called "dark silicon". All 7.1 billion transistors operating at the same time cannot be cooled by any system, which means that you constantly need to monitor the balance, on the one side of which is performance, and on the other - frequency, power consumption and the resulting temperature. The better and more economical the shutters work, and the lower the temperature, the faster the calculations.

Even before Hawaii came from a competitor, NVIDIA introduced several GPU regulations. So, the base frequency is the lowest level of GPU operation, GPU Boost is the average GPU frequency in games. Most often, even after a long stay of the video card under gaming load, GPU Boost kept the frequency of the GPU slightly higher than the declared one. AMD has taken a different path - the only mode in which the video card fully realizes its power is "Normal" or, as it is also called, Uber mode.

But unlike the competitor, NVIDIA believes that the user does not need to deal with either the BIOS switches or the settings in the drivers - the video card will do everything for them, and by itself. And what we can really blame the GeForce developer is that the fixed power consumption limit is too close to the factory setting. It remains to be seen - have engineers really solved the common problem of soaring power consumption?

Specifications

Name	R9 290	R9 290X	GTX 690	GTX 780	GTX 780 Ti	GTX Titan
Codename	Hawaii	Hawaii	GK104	GK110	GK110	GK110
Technological process, nm	28	28	28	28	28	28
Core / cores size, mm 2	438	438	294x2	521	521	521
Number of transistors, million	6200	6200	3540x2	7100	7100	7100
Core frequency, MHz	Up to 950	Up to 1000	915 (1020)	860 (900)	880 (930)	840 (880)
Number of shaders (PS), pcs.	2560	2816	3072	2304	2880	2688
The number of rasterization blocks (ROP), pcs.	64	64	64	48	48	48
Number of texture units (TMU), pcs.	160	176	256	192	240	224
Maximum fill rate, Gpix / s	60.6	64	58.6	41.4	42	40.2
Maximum texture sampling rate, Gtex / s	151.5	176	234.2	165.7	210.2	187.5
Pixel / Vertex Shader Version	5.0 / 5.0	5.0 / 5.0	5.0 / 5.0	5.0 / 5.0	5.0 / 5.0	5.0 / 5.0
Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5
Effective memory frequency, MHz	5000	5000	6000	6000	7000	6000
Memory size, MB	4096	4096	2048x2	3072	3072	6144
Memory bus, bit	512	512	256x2	384	384	384
Memory bandwidth, GB / s	320	320	192x2	288.4	336	288.4
Power consumption (2D / 3D), W	nd / nd	nd / nd	nd / 300	nd / 250	nd / nd	nd / 250
CrossFire / Sli	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Recommended price at the time of announcement, $	399	549	999	499	699	999

Appearance and dimensions

Due to the release of the AMD Volcanic Islands family of video cards, the market for graphics adapters has started a fierce excitement. Nvidia even cut prices for their top-end graphics cards, but that didn't help either. It was necessary to do something and somehow change the situation in their favor. We needed a special model that would make the flagship AMD Radeon R9 290X and remove it from the list of competitors.

In principle, nVidia has such a video card - this is the GeForce GTX TITAN. This is the fastest single-chip video card at the time of release. But its price is too high and for the majority it is simply not available. Not even every gamer dares to buy one for himself. After all, for this money, you can easily buy a good computer with excellent performance.

And so, nVidia has finally released a video card that is better than its competitor from AMD and is more affordable - the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. She also became the head of the GTX 7xx family of video cards.

It can be assumed that this is a kind of trump card that the green ones kept up their sleeve. There was just a certain pause and the right moment for the release was chosen.

Specifications

This video card was returned three of the fifteen large blocks from the Kepler architecture - streaming multiprocessors. It is much more powerful, especially in terms of shader instructions and texturing.

It also supports 7 GHz video memory, thereby increasing the bandwidth by as much as 14%.

Dimensions of the reference version

• Height: 26.67 cm / 10.5 inches
• Length: 11.16cm / 4.376in
• Width: Two slots

GPU specifications

• CUDA Core: 2880
• Base Clock: 875
• Boost Clock: 928
• Texture fill rate: 210 (GigaTexels / s)

Memory specifications

• Memory Speed \u200b\u200b(Gbps): 7.0
• Memory size: 3072 MB
• Memory interface: 384-bit GDDR5
• Maximum memory bandwidth: 336

Capabilities

• FXAA and TXAA: +
• Support for NVIDIA SLI technology: +
• Purevideo: +
• 3D Vision: +
• PhysX: +

Software environment: CUDA

• DirectX: 11
• OpenGL: 4.3
• Bus: PCI-E 3.0
• 3D Games: +
• Blu Ray 3D: +

Specifications

• Maximum digital resolution: 4096 × 2160
• Max VGA Resolution: 2048 × 1536
• Media connection: HDMI, DisplayPort, Dual Link DVI-I, Dual Link DVI-D
• Multiple display support: +
• HDCP: +
• HDMI: +
• Audio Input for HDMI: Internal

Power and temperature

• Maximum temperature: 95
• Power consumption: 250 W
• Minimum system power requirements: 600 W
• Power connectors: 6-pin & 8-pin

Comparison of GTX 780 TI vs GTX 780

	GeForce GTX 780	GeForce GTX 780 Ti
GPU	GK110	GK110
Number of transistors	7.1 billion	7.1 billion
Technological process, nm	28	28
GPU clock frequency, MHz: Base Clock / Boost Clock	863/900	875/928
Stream Processors	2304	2880
Texture blocks	192	240
Rasterization Blocks (ROP)	48	48
Video memory: type, size, MB	GDDR5, 3072	GDDR5, 3072
Memory clock frequency: real (effective), MHz	1753 (7010)	1502 (6008)
Memory bus width, bit	384	384
Interface	PCI-Express 3.0 x16
Image output
Interfaces	1 x DL DVI-I, 1 x DL DVI-D, 1 x HDMI 1.4a, 1 x DisplayPort 1.2
Maximum resolution	VGA: 2048 × 1536, DVI: 2560 × 1600, HDMI: 4096x2160, DisplayPort: 4096 × 2160
Maximum power consumption, W	250	250

Manufacturers

MSI GTX 780 Lightning 3 GB

It has a core frequency of 980 MHz and a memory frequency of 1502 MHz

MSIGTX 780TwinFrozrGaming 3GB

ASUS GTX 780 DirectCU II OC 3 GB

It has a core frequency of 889 MHz and a memory frequency of 1502 MHz

EVGA GTX 780 Superclocked w / ACX Cooler 3 GB

It has a core frequency of 967 MHz and a memory frequency of 1502 MHz

Gigabyte GTX 780 WindForce OC 3 GB graphics card

It has a core frequency of 954 MHz and a memory frequency of 1502 MHz

PalitGTX 780SuperJetStream 3GB

It has a core frequency of 980 MHz and a memory frequency of 1550 MHz

MSI GTX 780 Gaming 6 GB

It has a core frequency of 902 MHz and a memory frequency of 1502 MHz

Comparison with competitors

Technical Specifications / Model	AMD Radeon R9 290X	nVidia GeForce GTX 780	nVidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti	nVidia GeForce GTX Titan
GPU	Hawaii xt	GK110 (GK110-300-A1)	GK110 (GK110-425-B1)	GK110 (GK110-400-A1)
Technical process	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm
Number of transistors	6.2 billion	7.1 billion	7.1 billion	7.1 billion
GPU clock speed (base frequency)	—	864 MHz	876 MHz	837 MHz
GPU clock speed (Boost frequency)	1.000 MHz	902 MHz	928 MHz	876 MHz
Memory frequency	1.250 MHz	1.502 MHz	1.750 MHz	1.502 MHz
Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5
Memory size	4.096 MB	3.072 MB	3.072 MB	6.144 MB
Memory bus width	512 bit	384 bit	384 bit	384 bit
Memory bandwidth	320.0 GB / s	288.4 GB / s	336 GB / s	288.4 GB / s
DirectX version	11.2	11.1	11.1	11.1
Stream Processors	2.816	2.304	2.880	2.688
Texture blocks	176	192	240	224
Raster Operations Pipelines (ROP)	64	48	48	48
TDP	\u003e 250 W	250 watts	250 watts	250 watts

Comparing the 780 Ti to the competition, one can understand its pros and cons. For example, the number of streaming processes is not very different from others, but the throughput is still slightly higher. But AMD has a significantly higher amount of video memory, Boost frequency and pixel fill rate. It is PowerTune and GPU Boost that have a major impact on performance right now. And it's not so easy to evaluate it. So comparing all these basic characteristics is not so important.

Overclocking and benchmarks

Overclocking the GTX 780 Ti is something. The video card has significant hidden reserves.

The company's engineers did their best. Due to a more advanced chip and an improved power supply system, you can overclock it by 200 MHz without raising the voltage.

Benchmark tests

Tests in games

Crysis 3

In Crysis 3, the video card showed excellent results, up to 36 fps at maximum settings.

Total War ROME II

This game is simply packed with various modern graphic bells and whistles.

In FullHD resolution fps ranged from 65-99 at maximum settings.

Call of duty ghosts

In FullHd resolution fps ranged from 132 to 148 at maximum settings.

conclusions

We can say that the GTX 780 Ti is a sample of a high quality graphics card that is designed for serious gaming. nVidia has taken a step forward in the evolution of the Kepler GPU family. It can be argued that this architecture has reached its ceiling.

advertising

Let's remember the line of NVIDIA video cards. GeForce GTX 770, GTX 780, GTX Titan and GTX 690 are a slightly incorrect but understandable classification of the company's line of accelerators. But the GTX 780 Ti? What for? Where to? What to compare with? The answer is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. If you think about it, then ...

The sixth GeForce series was very clear: each model next in rank had a large number in the name. And now video cards appear with an index that includes 7x0. At the same time, the GTX 690 has not disappeared; it still remains the fastest dual-core solution. Maybe GTX Titan is in the wrong group? Quite, why not, because he came to the gaming market from the world of calculations and remains the ultimate offer for both games and calculations.

The question arises - is it worth NVIDIA after the release of the GTX 780 Ti to remove it from production? The answer is also simple. What for? Popular with computing and enthusiasts alike, the GTX 780 Ti should be the best choice for gaming. This is because users are finally given a fully functional GPU with 2,880 stream processors. Yes, only now, after certain changes, which will be discussed below, the GK110 GPU is ready to merge into gaming applications and show what it can do.

Probably everyone is wondering why GK110 got a new name, or rather stepping B1, and not A2? It is believed that the numbers indicate fixes to metal joints inside the GPU. The letters indicate changes in the transistors themselves. In any case, there are no radical changes inside the crystal - it's all the same GK110. All NVIDIA needed was to adapt the full version of the GK110 to the required heat dissipation with the calculated frequencies, and this was not easy.

The secrecy of the company's developments is covered with such a veil of secrecy that it is almost impossible to achieve intelligible answers, you will simply be flooded with advertising or general phrases from which it is impossible to find out the technical data. Well, the secrets must be kept undisclosed, even under the sharp questions of the press. For our part, one can only guess what tricks they had to go to to fit the new GPU revision into the allotted power consumption range.

advertising

Technical features

As you already understood, there is no physical change in the basic logic circuits. It is possible that optimizations have appeared inside that reduce the time for passing tasks inside the GPU, which leads to a smaller volume of simultaneously operating transistors. Such a scheme of work has existed for a long time and is called "dark silicon". All 7.1 billion transistors operating at the same time cannot be cooled by any system, which means that you constantly need to monitor the balance, on the one side of which is performance, and on the other - frequency, power consumption and the resulting temperature. The better and more economical the shutters work, and the lower the temperature, the faster the calculations.

Even before Hawaii came from a competitor, NVIDIA introduced several GPU regulations. So, the base frequency is the lowest level of GPU operation, GPU Boost is the average GPU frequency in games. Most often, even after a long stay of the video card under gaming load, GPU Boost kept the frequency of the GPU slightly higher than the declared one. AMD has taken a different path - the only mode in which the video card fully realizes its power is "Normal" or, as it is also called, Uber mode.

But unlike the competitor, NVIDIA believes that the user does not need to deal with either the BIOS switches or the settings in the drivers - the video card will do everything for them, and by itself. And what we can really blame the GeForce developer is that the fixed power consumption limit is too close to the factory setting. It remains to be seen - have engineers really solved the common problem of soaring power consumption?

Specifications

Name	R9 290	R9 290X	GTX 690	GTX 780	GTX 780 Ti	GTX Titan
Codename	Hawaii	Hawaii	GK104	GK110	GK110	GK110
Technological process, nm	28	28	28	28	28	28
Core / cores size, mm 2	438	438	294x2	521	521	521
Number of transistors, million	6200	6200	3540x2	7100	7100	7100
Core frequency, MHz	Up to 950	Up to 1000	915 (1020)	860 (900)	880 (930)	840 (880)
Number of shaders (PS), pcs.	2560	2816	3072	2304	2880	2688
The number of rasterization blocks (ROP), pcs.	64	64	64	48	48	48
Number of texture units (TMU), pcs.	160	176	256	192	240	224
Maximum fill rate, Gpix / s	60.6	64	58.6	41.4	42	40.2
Maximum texture sampling rate, Gtex / s	151.5	176	234.2	165.7	210.2	187.5
Pixel / Vertex Shader Version	5.0 / 5.0	5.0 / 5.0	5.0 / 5.0	5.0 / 5.0	5.0 / 5.0	5.0 / 5.0
Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5
Effective memory frequency, MHz	5000	5000	6000	6000	7000	6000
Memory size, MB	4096	4096	2048x2	3072	3072	6144
Memory bus, bit	512	512	256x2	384	384	384
Memory bandwidth, GB / s	320	320	192x2	288.4	336	288.4
Power consumption (2D / 3D), W	nd / nd	nd / nd	nd / 300	nd / 250	nd / nd	nd / 250
CrossFire / Sli	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Recommended price at the time of announcement, $	399	549	999	499	699	999

Appearance and dimensions

The seventh series of video cards from NVIDIA has ruled the market for a very short time. Only in the spring we were shown the GTX 780, which remains a very fast graphics card today. But recently AMD has released a new line of graphics cards, and NVIDIA could not stand aside. No, we are not offered a new line, yet. We are offered a new video card - NVIDIA GTX 780Ti, let's talk about it. First, we'll look at the slides from the official presentation, and then we'll move on to torturing the video card itself and comparing it with its direct competitor - AMD R9 290X.

What is the GTX 780Ti graphics card? NVIDIA identifies four main factors. Now we have 25% more CUDA cores, namely 2880 pieces. This is nice, since we now have a full-fledged GPU GK110 without locked modules.

The second highlight is the initial clock frequency of the video memory at 7000 MHz. That's really a lot. Apparently, this is how NVIDIA is struggling with the 512-bit memory bus of the competitor AMD R290X. The fact is that monitors with support for 4K resolution (3840 x 2160) have recently appeared. At this resolution, a very high load is applied to the memory bus, and a large bandwidth is required. Of course, it is obvious to everyone that monitors with such a resolution will not be in demand for a very long time, since their price today is about 150 thousand rubles. Even if it drops to 50 thousand in a year, monitors will still not be a bargain. For a very long time, monitors with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 for 20 thousand rubles have been on the market, but even they are too expensive for most buyers. And if the user can somehow save money for a new expensive video card, realizing what exactly such a new thing will give him, then the monitor is not the primary thing for most players. But the arms race for ultra-high definition wrestling has already begun and is unlikely to be stopped.

In addition, NVIDIA offers us GPU BOOST 2.0 technology, which very accurately selects the most stable clock speed. The fourth bonus is the power supply subsystem, which works very precisely, thanks to which we can count on good overclocking potential.

This slide shows us the superiority of NVIDIA GTX 780 Ti over AMD R9 290X. Immediately you pay attention to the "GFLOPS" parameter, which rises above the competitor's result by literally a millimeter. Especially when you consider that the graph is not built from zero.

NVIDIA GTX 780 Ti Performance

Judging by this slide, the GTX 780 Ti unconditionally wins in power consumption. We are told a TDP of 250 watts. That's a bit for a performance card. In addition, the GTX 780 Ti is noticeably colder and, according to NVIDIA, only heats up to 83 degrees. Not bad, we'll check it out.

And here are the measurements of gaming performance. Everything is good here for NVIDIA, and not very good for AMD. In most modern games, the novelty wins from 10 to 50%. This is a serious statement, let's see what happens in reality.

The characteristics look very impressive. The number of stream processors is 2880 pieces, which operate at 875 MHz, and the GPU BOOST increases the frequency to 928 MHz. 384 bit memory bus, GDDR5 memory type. The clock frequency of the video memory is 7000 MHz. TDP 250 W, the card receives power on one six-pin and one eight-pin connectors.

In summary, the NVIDIA GTX 780 Ti is a faster, cooler and quieter graphics card than the AMD R9 290X. We will definitely measure each of these parameters, and now let's move on to the video card itself.

NVIDIA decided not to come up with a new design for the GTX 780 Ti, but to use the same design that NVIDIA TITAN had. On the one hand, when you buy a new product, you want the appearance to be new. Of course, the main thing is covered under the heat-distributing cover, but they still buy with their eyes. On the other hand, NVIDIA has clearly found a very successful design that does not age and, if I may say so, is timeless. He's just smart and stylish.

The entire body is made of aluminum, which gives the graphics card a solid weight. In the center there is a transparent plastic window through which a massive radiator can be seen. True, it is beautiful exactly until the radiator gets clogged with dust. And self-opening of the card for cleaning threatens to void the warranty.

The video card is equipped with four video outputs: one HDMI, one DisplayPort and two DVI. All four connectors can be used simultaneously.

On the top edge of the video card, there are two additional power connectors, one six-pin and one eight-pin. The name of the video card has LED backlighting and glows beautifully in the dark. Another small plus of the design.

There is absolutely nothing interesting on the reverse side of the video card. Perhaps a few tantalum capacitors.

The PCB design has not changed either, almost all elements remain in the same places as in NVIDIA TITAN.

In the center of the board we see the GPU itself, labeled GK110-425-B1. There are twelve video memory chips around it with a total volume of three gigabytes. Why only three? Good question. For this video card, it would be just right to have six gigabytes of video memory, since it is aimed at fighting at high resolutions.

The power subsystem has not changed and operates according to the 6 + 2 scheme, where 6 phases are allocated to the video processor, and two more phases are given to the video memory.

The cooling system is supported by many small screws, which are popularly called asterisks. In the center of the CO, we see a small polished area, which is in contact with the GPU itself. Video memory microcircuits and power subsystem elements transfer their heat to the radiator through thermal spacers.

This concludes the study of the video card and move on to the table of technical characteristics.

Specifications table

		NVIDIA GTX 780	AMD R290X
Nucleus	GK110	GK110	Hawaii
Technological process, nm	28	28	28
Number of stream processors	2880	2304	2816
Number of blocks (ROPs)	48	48	64
Core frequency, MHz	875	863	1000
Memory bus, bit	384	384	512
Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5
Memory size, MB	3072	3072	4096
Memory frequency, MHz	7000	6008	5000
Supported DirectX Version	11.1	11.1	11.2

The differences between the regular GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti are quite noticeable. This includes an increased number of cores, an increased number of texture units and an increased clock frequency of video memory. And if the usual GTX 780 new product from AMD - R9 290X outperformed in almost all applications, then the balance of forces here is likely to change.

Overclocking and temperatures

There have been rumors on the Internet for a long time that a full-fledged GK110 will overclock well. The point is that previous NVIDIA cards usually showed a mediocre overclocking, without outstanding results until a major change in cooling. We'll test the overclocking of the GTX 780 Ti with stock cooling and see if it can surprise us.

So, the stock clock speed of the video processor is 875 MHz. In self-overclocking mode, we are promised up to 928 MHz. But NVIDIA paid special attention to GPU BOOST 2.0 technology. Let's check how the video processor clock speed really is under load. The load was created by the 3DMark 13 benchmark.

The clock frequency was all the time at around 1020 MHz. It is worth noting that this is a very high-quality and serious benchmark that loads the map completely and does not let it relax. Moreover, we ran it in Extreme mode. Therefore, here we got exactly what the card really can, without the influence of the crooked code of any toy.

This result is good news, especially considering that this is a stock cooling system. And the clock frequency of new video processors in auto overclocking also depends on the temperature. Speaking of temperature. We got a maximum of 78 degrees, which is very good.

We will overclock the video processor at standard voltage, without making any changes to the operation of the entire device as a whole.

The video processor was able to operate stably at a frequency of 1126 MHz. This is a very good indicator. With respect to the stock 875 MHz, we got an increase of 251 MHz. This is really a very good result, especially considering the stock cooling and native voltage. Let's see what the real frequency is under load. The video memory was overclocked to 8000 MHz. This is also a very high indicator.

The actual clock speed stood firmly at around 1270 MHz. What can I say, this is an excellent result. To be honest, we expected to get no more than 1100-1150 MHz. NVIDIA has really released a great GPU. If we change the cooling system to a more efficient one and increase the voltage to the video processor, the result can exceed all expectations. At the same time, the temperature increased only to 81 degrees.

As for the temperature in the popular FurMark utility, we got the following results. Under load at nominal the card warmed up to 84 degrees, which is only 1 degree more than NVIDIA promised.

Under load in overclocking, we got the same 84 degrees. At the same time, the fan speed increased from 59% to only 61%. Of course, the noise level has not changed, which is very pleasant. It should be noted that the card is absolutely silent under load.

A new version of GeForce Experience - 1.8 is now available on GeForce.com. In addition to new profiles, updated settings, and some other new features, GeForce Experience 1.8 includes the highly anticipated GeForce ShadowPlay in-game capture tool.

A fast, free and simple tool, ShadowPlay is a new approach to game recording, powered by the NVENC hardware H.264 encoder built into GeForce GTX 600 and 700 series GPUs.

Shadow Mode continuously records gameplay, saving 10 to 20 minutes of game play to a temporary hard drive buffer. If you've done something amazing, just press Alt + F10 to save that memorable moment to the folder you want. To prevent video files from cluttering on your hard drive, ShadowPlay only saves the file when you press hotkeys.

The saved material can then be edited in popular editors such as Sony Vegas, Adobe Premier, in the free Windows Movie Maker or any other .mp4-compatible video editor, and immediately uploaded to YouTube. Alternatively, you can upload the raw file to YouTube first and then edit it using the built-in tools. In the next versions of GeForce Experience, ShadowPlay will receive integration with the online service Twitch.tv, allowing ShadowPlay users to upload recorded files directly to Twitch.

ShadowPlay uses the H.264 hardware encoder built into the GeForce GTX 600 and 700 series graphics cards to record at 1920 x 1080 at 60 fps. All games using DirectX 9 or later of this interface are supported. Compared to software solutions that use CPU resources to record gameplay, GPU hardware encoding decreases performance by only 5-10% when recording videos of the highest quality with a bitrate of 50 Mbps. With automatic H.264 encoding, compression and MP4 recording, ShadowPlay prevents huge multi-gigabyte files from clogging up your hard drive.

If you want to record the entire game session, select manual mode using the Alt + F9 key combination - in this mode, the tool works similarly to traditional applications for recording gameplay. In the case of Windows 7, due to the nature of the OS, the file size is limited to 4GB, but in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, the file size is limited only by the availability of hard disk space, so you can easily create videos for hours.

Immediately after the beta release, NVIDIA released an update that includes the following changes / additions:

• In Win7, the 3.8GB file size limitation has been removed.
• Video game recording up to 20 minutes in Shadow mode.
• Unlimited time recording in manual mode.
• When the file reaches 3.8 GB in size, ShadowPlay creates new files.
• Record video without scaling up to 1080p. At higher resolutions, the aspect ratio is maintained.
• Added microphone recording.

  

  

  The NVIDA GTX 780 Ti graphics card won an unconditional victory over the AMD R9 290X. There is no game that 290X has won. Note the huge performance gains in overclocking.

  Conclusion

  The NVIDIA GTX 780 Ti graphics card has proven to be a very high quality product. She is fast, cold and good looking. Performance in all games tested was better than AMD R9 290X. I was especially pleased with the excellent overclocking potential. The video processor was stable at 1270 MHz. This is a very high rate that is rare. It should be noted that the card was overclocked using the stock cooling system and nominal voltage. In light of this, I really want to see something like ASUS GTX 780 Ti DirectCU II TOP. It is quite likely that such a video card will be able to obey the frequency of 1350-1400 MHz.

  I was somewhat surprised by the amount of video memory - only three gigabytes. Although we have to admit that even at UltraHD (4K) resolution, this volume should be enough for all modern games.

  The video card turned out to be very cold and completely silent, which is doubly pleasant. Even FurMark was unable to warm the card above 84 degrees in overclocking.

  All this suggests that soon we will be shown another modification of the GTX 780 Ti video card, the clock frequency of which will be under a gigahertz, the memory capacity will be 6-12 gigabytes and the memory will function at 7500-8000 MHz. If such a video card is released, then we are even afraid to imagine how much they will ask for it. After all, an ordinary GTX 780 Ti costs from 24,000 rubles in Moscow stores today.

  The video card wins the Editor's Choice award.