The GTX 770 arrives to Challenge the HD 7970 GHz Edition – 25 Games benchmarked!

Today Nvidia is announcing its brand new $399 replacement for the GTX 670 as a direct challenge to the HD 7970 GHz edition.  The GTX 770 is the same GPU as the GTX 680 with a few new additions that enable higher performance. These new additions include the Titan’s and the GTX 780’s Boost 2.0 controls, a little more board power which enables higher clocks, and 7GHz memory as an upgrade over the GTX 680’s 6GHz memory to increase the bandwidth of the 256-bit bus.  Contrary to recent rumors, one cannot flash a GTX 680 into a GTX 770.

The GTX 770’s industrial design is very similar to the GTX 780’s as well as comparable to the Titan and to the GTX 690 which preceded it, and it shares its “whisper quiet” cooler with the GTX 780.  Although these other cards are aimed at the very highest end of PC gaming, the GTX 770 is a video card that attempts to exceed the performance of the GTX 680 and is aimed at the upper end of the mainstream PC gamers.

According to Nvidia, the GTX 770 offers “up to a 65% performance improvement” upgrade over the Fermi GTX 580, and it is also supposed to be up to 23% faster than last year’s Kepler GeForce GTX 670. Of course, we shall check out these claims as we have added the GTX 670 and the GTX 570 to our test bed since last week when we compared the performance of the GTX 780 to eight competing video cards.

The specifications of the GTX 770 are quite impressive as Nvidia’s new third card in their lineup.  It is basically the GTX 680 with more added bandwidth due to higher memory speeds and faster core clocks.  Nvidia has also increased the TDP of the GTX 770 to 230W, well over the 195W TDP of the GTX 680 to allow for a faster core and they have supplied better and quieter cooling to handle the extra heat with less noise than the GTX 680.

We have been benching and playing games with the GTX 770 for the past week under NDA and it has been a very good experience that we would like to share with you.

Here is our testbed of competing cards, and we shall test modern 25 games and 5 synthetics using Core i7-3770K at 4.5GHz, EVGA’s Z77 FTW motherboard and 16GB of Kingston “Beast” 2133MHz HyperX DDR3:

• GTX 770
• GTX 770 Overclock
• GTX 780
• GTX Titan (GK110 current special purpose Kepler – gaming multi-display/compute)
• GTX 690 (GK114 – current dual-GPU Kepler flagship)
• GTX 680 (GK114, single-GPU Kepler flagship – now being replaced by the GTX 780)
• GTX 670 (GK114, single-GPU Kepler 2nd in the lineup – now being replaced by the GTX 770)
• GTX 580 (GF110 – former single-GPU Fermi flagship)
• GTX 570 (GF110, single GPU second card in the Fermi lineup)
• GTX 590 (GF110 – former dual-GPU Fermi flagship)
• HD 7970 GHz Edition (Tahiti – current AMD single GPU flagship)
• HD 7970 (Tahiti – mainstream original AMD single-GPU flagship)
• HD 6990 (Cayman – former AMD dual-GPU flagship)

AMD’s Catalyst drivers have shown good performance improvements over the past few months, and the HD 7970 GHz edition has taken the single-GPU performance crown from the GTX 680. Although Titan at $1,000 is much faster than the top single-GPU AMD offering, Nvidia also retook the single-GPU performance crown away from AMD with their new mainstream $650 flagship GTX 780 and is now offering a challenge to the HD 7970 GHz edition with a $399 GTX 770.

This evaluation will primarily pit the stock and overclocked GTX 770 against against our PowerColor reference design HD 7970 at stock and at GHz edition at locked-on boost speeds (1050MHz), using 25 modern games and 5 synthetic benchmarks at 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions.

We will also look very closely at the just-released Metro: Last Light to compare PhysX ‘on’ versus ‘off’

What’s New with the GTX 770?

Nvidia’s marketing buzzwords for the original GTX 600 series launch were, “Faster. Smoother. Richer.” The GTX 770 is also designed for extreme efficiency and high performance and we note that it’s TDP is 230W – way above the 195W of the last Kepler flagship, the GTX 680.  However, one thing that we have noted is that the GTX 770 is noticeably quieter than the GTX 670/680 and its fan speed is more constant.

Faster

The GTX 770’s Kepler architecture is SMX-based with 1536 CUDA cores, the same as the GTX 680. It promises better geometry and texture processing than Fermi thanks to its improved instruction throughput and redesign. In addition, Nvidia brings “GPU Boost 2” – a more dynamic way to boost clocks speeds and maximize performance for each game, now based on temperature also instead of just on assumed power draw as in the original Boost.

Smoother

New kinds of anti-aliasing – FXAA and TXAA – now compete with MSAA in terms of IQ while not sacrificing as much performance. And there is a new “Adaptive VSync” that helps to reduce tearing and stuttering associated with regular VSync.

While average frames per second (FPS) are the most popular and also an important performance measurement for comparing videocards, the smooth delivery of frames is just as crucial. Great hardware needs great software to support it, and Nvidia is also a software company. They claim to give a lot of attention to how the frames are delivered with a special eye on reducing lag and input delay and thus minimizing jitter.

Nvdia now gives more voltage unlocking options with the GTX 770 than with the rest of the Kepler 600 series GPUs.  The new GeForce GTX 700 series GPUs feature their second generation GPU Boost technology – the cooler the GPU operates, the faster it performs. Boost 2.0 also gives gamers more powerful controls for tweaking their GPU.

Now users can set a target temperature, and for enthusiasts who wish to overclock their GPU, Boost 2.0 also supports overvoltage which can stabilize higher clocks for overclocking.

Richer

With GTX 770/780 as with the rest of the GTX 600 series plus Titan, it is possible to play games spanning 3 displays in Surround or in 3D Surround from a single GeForce GPU, something Fermi could not manage. And the GTX 700 series brings two dual-link DVI connectors plus HDMI and a DisplayPort for a 4th accessory display.

There are even more features launched with the GTX 770/780!
Quieter

How about quieter? The 700 series together with Titan introduces a new adaptive fan controller that uses a better algorithm to minimize fan speed fluctuations which result in a quieter experience without the fan constantly revving up and down.

New Software – Shadowplay and GeForce Experience

New software was launched with the GTX 780 last week. The GeForce Experience (GFF) came out of beta and became a regular feature for Nvidia gamers. No longer does one have to (although some of us love to) fiddle with settings to find the best combination for our own particular PC hardware combination.

Just one optimize button customizes the settings for a “best playable experience”Shadowplay is touted as a better alternative to Fraps when it comes to recording video. The compression is much better and the overhead from recording ones own game is much lower.Shadowplay should be available to Kepler owners this Summer and we will bring you details of it.

How does the GTX 770 compare with its rival, AMD’s top single GPU HD 7970 GHz Edition and is it worth $399?

Here is the big question: How does the GTX 770 which is launching at $399 compare with the GTX 680 at $420-$500 and the HD 7970 GHz Edition starting out at about $450?  This is an interesting situation that may prove disruptive to pricing as the GTX 770 appears to promise to beat the GTX 680 and at least match the HD 7970 GE.

First, let’s take a closer look at the new GTX 770 and directly compare it to the GTX 680. First of all, in the “looks” department, the GTX 770 which shares it’s industrial design with the Titan, is an undisputed winner compared to the more traditional-looking GTX 680 (below).

Of course, AMD’s cards have their own look and this is the PowerColor HD 7970 design that we are benching.

However, looks are superficial and we need to look deeper.