The GTX 780 arrives – 25 Games benchmarked!

A look at the GTX 780

Nvidia has redesigned their lighted GEFORCE logo and the GTX 780 joins the Titan and the GTX 690 in what are described as “Exotic Industrial Design”. They are the first “designer” cards from either Nvidia or AMD and the GTX 780’s “looks” are part of the design for efficiency and cooling.

There is a bit more plastic used in the GTX 780 compared to the Titan and to the GTX 690 although the look and the feel is the same. A clear window allows you to see the vapor chamber that plays such a critical role in cooling the GK110 GPUs.

The GeForce GTX logo on the edge of the GTX 780 board is LED backlit. The lettering is laser-etched, ensuring precise design. This LED acts as a power indicator, lighting up when the board is in use. The intensity of this LED can be manually adjusted using tools provided by the AIB manufacturers.

With some cards, the intensity can be based on GPU utilization, so the LED will shine brighter as GPU utilization increases.  We used EVGA’s tool to change the lighting effects but our case does not show off the logo to its full potential because of the case design.

Here are the connectors on the Titan backplate which are identical to the GTX 780’s connectors:

There are two dual link DVI ports, a Display Port and a HDMI port. Only one adapter is needed for 3-Panel gaming using Nvidia’s Surround.

Quiet Gaming

The GeForce GTX 780 uses the same high performance cooler that was first implemented on the GeForce GTX TITAN. This cooler consists of a copper vapor chamber and dual-slot aluminum heatsink along with a blower-style fan.

Nvidia uses an axial fan that has optimized the fin pitch and angle at which air from the fan hits the fin stack as the smoother the airflow, the lower the noise output. The section of the baseplate directly underneath the fan is carved with low-profile channels to encourage smooth airflow, and all components under the fan are low-profile to minimize turbulence and create an efficient airflow.

The gamer using a GTX 780 or Titan gets treated to less-perceptible noise than the GTX 680; it is just about identically quiet to the GeForce Titan. When you listen to the fan alone – even running over 60 percent, it’s clean and smooth – and this is especially contrasted with the HD 6990, a very noisy card, and to a lesser extent even with the GTX 590, and it is even quieter than the GTX 680. At regular fan profiles we never reached an intrusive level over our quiet Noctua case fans – even under maximum load in gaming; we generally did not hear the GTX 780’s fan over our PC’s other cooling fans.

New Adaptive Temperature Controller

With GPU Boost 2.0, the GPU will boost to the highest clock speed it can achieve while operating at 80C. Boost 2.0 will dynamically adjust the GPU fan speed up or down as needed to attempt to maintain this temperature.  Previous generation GPUs has a much more noticeable fan fluctuation.

For GeForce GTX 780, Nvidia has developed an all-new fan controller that uses an adaptive temperature filter with an RPM and temperature targeted control algorithm to eliminate excessive fan fluctuations that contribute to fan noise, providing a smoother acoustic experience.  It is noticeable that the GTX 780 is a very quiet card even compared to other quiet cards such a the GTX 680.

SLI and Tri-SLI

The GTX 780 is set up for Tri-SLI by using three GTX 780 just as Titan is.

The specifications look extraordinary with solid improvements over just about anything else with the exception of the GTX 690 and the Titan. Let’s check out performance after we look at our test configuration on the next page.