ABT evaluates Galaxy’s GTX 780 V2

Conclusion

This has been quite an enjoyable exploration for us in evaluating the Galaxy GTX 780 V2. It did well performance-wise comparing it to the reference GTX 780 in every way, and when overclocked, it comes in very close to the GTX 780 Ti’s performance. We are totally impressed with this cool-running card which is generally faster than its competitors in a similar price range.

The choice of a Galaxy GTX 780 V2 may come down to aesthetics – do you prefer the silver “industrial design” of the original GTX 780 reference design, or do you prefer black?  Here is the original GTX 780 reference design compared with its twin, the EVGA reference design.

We see good overclockability with excellent quietness at stock voltage and fan profile even when the Galaxy GTX 780 V2 is overclocked beyond Galaxy’s reference clocks, and it scales well in performance with overclocking and also in SLI with another stock reference GTX 780. The Galaxy GTX 780 V2 is as quiet as the reference GTX 780 and yet it is perfectly suited for playing demanding games at maxed-out settings at 1920×1080 and even at 2560×1600.

For its $500 price, the Galaxy GTX 780 V2 fits in well with the other vendor stock and even mildly overclocked GTX 780s, yet it is perfectly suited for SLI with another GTX 780 by virtue of its design. From our results, we can expect the Galaxy GTX 780 V2 is a great reference GTX 780 choice while giving the gamer Galaxy’s excellent support and a premium 3-year warranty as an added value.

If you are looking for a reference GTX 780 V2 in the $500 price range, the Galaxy GTX 780 V2 is a solid choice.

We believe that Galaxy deserves ABT’s Innovation Award for bringing more choice to reference GTX 780 versions.

Pros

• The Galaxy GTX 780 V2 provides excellent performance for a $500 GTX 780 and generally beats the Radeon R9 290X and sometimes matches the more expensive GTX 780 Ti in performance when overclocked.
• Overclockability is excellent with the +200MHz we achieved without adjusting the voltage nor the fan profile. GPU Boost works as advertised and the significant 500MHz memory user overclock we achieved, also helps performance.
• The cooling design is quiet and efficient
• 3-Panel Surround plus an accessory display can be driven off of a single Galaxy GTX 780 V2.
• Galaxy’s excellent 3 year warranty backed by 24/7 tech support.

Cons

• No game bundle

The Verdict:

• If you are looking for a reference version of the GTX 780 and prefer black over silver, the Galaxy V2 is a worthy choice as it performs identically to the reference version with approximately the same level of cooling and quietness.

There are many rumors about a possible new line-up, but we do not know what the future will bring.  For today, the Galaxy GTX 780 V2 is currently a good value and a great performer in the GeForce Kepler family. With great features like PhysX and the second generation of 3D Vision, you can be assured of immersive gaming by picking this card for 1920×1080 or 2560×1600 resolutions.   A second GTX 780 might also be a good upgrade if a gamer wants better image quality and higher frame rates over a single GPU and the Galaxy GTX 780 V2 is an excellent candidate as a second card.

If you currently game on an older generation video card, you will do yourself a big favor by upgrading. The move to a Galaxy GTX 780 V2 will give you much higher performance and it is also excellent for use where larger cards cannot go.

The competition is hot and AMD offers their own set of features for the competing R9 290X including Eyefinity 2.0, as well as a good price to performance card, together with 3 choices from the Never Settle game bundle.

Stay tuned, there is a lot coming from us at ABT including the long-delayed Mercury Pro external Blu-ray drive optical storage evaluation this week.  We also have the aluminum Thermaltake eSports Draconem Mouse pad on deck to be followed up by Kingston’s mSATA drive evaluation.

ABT has received Nvidia’s Frame Capture Analysis Tool and we have set up our second PC with 4 Kingston HyperX SSDs as we are working through the Perl scripts and other complexities necessary to bring you added valuable information about smoothness of video card delivery (and more!).

Please don’t forget to check our forums. ABT forum tech discussions are among the best to be found anywhere!