NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 SLI Video Card Review @ [H]

Brent_Justice said:
Anything single-display resolution isn't demanding enough to show off the potential and performance that high-end SLI can provide. 1080p is useless. You'd have a better argument at 2560x1600 in SOME games, but not many. To really stress the GPUs, and keep everything GPU limited, multi-display must be used. (Until we are all using 4K monitors)

We figure people who have the money to equip $1300 worth of graphics are the ones that are also going to opt for the multi-display experience. We lack the time and resources to cover every resolution. We must stick to one platform generally. Eyefinity/NV Surround is that platform to test out SLI and CrossFire on high-end cards. I think you'd agree 3 GPUs in 3-way 7970 GHz Edition CF might be overkill for a single display.

We base the platform on the cost of the cards and what makes sense. Comparing $1300 worth of graphics on a $150 1080p monitor doesn't make sense. Now when we get to 760 SLI, I may include some 1600p resolutions then, that makes more sense with that level of card. And especially down to 7790 CF and 650 Ti Boost SLI, up to 1600p will be the max.

Performance can be extrapolated.
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This is something that is often repeated here, but it really is questionable. Just because you find these low FPS numbers good enough doesn't mean others do. Many want to be able to do 120 FPS with no tearing (or at least 85 on a CRT) and that is something even the best setups can hardly do on 1080p, let alone higher resolutions. Hell, even mere 60 FPS for 60 Hz vsync is often not possible at highest settings. This is [H]ardOCP after all, not your average Sims player playground.

This low standard for performance isn't helping with performance increases that we should be getting with new generations.

Another thing that reviewers are not pushing at all is proper triple buffering without added latency. That is surely something that deserves more push towards AMD and Nvidia, just as frame pacing did. And it would benefit everyone, not just a small niche.
 
"this is still the cheapest price you can buy these at."

Jesus wept.

So did your English teacher.

Get a truss for your dangling participles. ;)

Next up: Using "begs the question" incorrectly.
 
Meeho said:
This is something that is often repeated here, but it really is questionable. Just because you find these low FPS numbers good enough doesn't mean others do. Many want to be able to do 120 FPS with no tearing (or at least 85 on a CRT) and that is something even the best setups can hardly do on 1080p, let alone higher resolutions. Hell, even mere 60 FPS for 60 Hz vsync is often not possible at highest settings. This is [H]ardOCP after all, not your average Sims player playground.

This low standard for performance isn't helping with performance increases that we should be getting with new generations.

Another thing that reviewers are not pushing at all is proper triple buffering without added latency. That is surely something that deserves more push towards AMD and Nvidia, just as frame pacing did. And it would benefit everyone, not just a small niche.
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I'm with you I don't game on a single 120hz 1080p monitor to get 50-60fps (had a 30inch 2560x1600 before)..I would like to see a 120hz monitor tossed in to see what it takes to get a good solid 120fps on the top games..
 
SixFootDuo said:
I guess since no one is talking about the obviously huge white elephant in the room .. I will.

2 x used 7970's for around $300 each off eBay or Craigslist. Total - $600 all day every day.

12.8 drivers and a $600 pair of 7970's Xfired can't be beat.
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I wouldn't say no one is talking about it. They referenced more than once they went with three cards since the price was closer. As an eyefinity user, I would think you would also understand a user's hesitation to count on frame pacing drivers that are not shown to work above 2560x1440 yet.
 
pandora's box said:
Yes I feel the same way about this. Test with more common resolutions such as 2560x1440 or 2560x1600. Testing at 5760x1200 is nice and all but the data is irrelevant for a good portion of the viewers I would imagine. I think testing 780 SLi at 1920x1080 is not necessary though, its going to max out everything.
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What about testing at 7680x1440 like a number of us are starting to use? I think you underestimate just how many people are doing surround gaming.
 
NoOther said:
What about testing at 7680x1440 like a number of us are starting to use? I think you underestimate just how many people are doing surround gaming.
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agree. i'm shocked at the request for lower rez. things are moving the opposite direction, at least for most users willing to drop 1300+ on a couple gpus.
 
Meeho said:
This is something that is often repeated here, but it really is questionable. Just because you find these low FPS numbers good enough doesn't mean others do. Many want to be able to do 120 FPS with no tearing (or at least 85 on a CRT) and that is something even the best setups can hardly do on 1080p, let alone higher resolutions. Hell, even mere 60 FPS for 60 Hz vsync is often not possible at highest settings. This is [H]ardOCP after all, not your average Sims player playground.

This low standard for performance isn't helping with performance increases that we should be getting with new generations.

Another thing that reviewers are not pushing at all is proper triple buffering without added latency. That is surely something that deserves more push towards AMD and Nvidia, just as frame pacing did. And it would benefit everyone, not just a small niche.
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What about x, what about y, what about z, etc......

There are a ton of different evaluation configurations and methodologies that could be done. Anyone who does reviews, including our peers, has to stick to a standard configuration and methodology, the time and resources do not exist to cover every permutation in each review.

Our methodoligy is simple, play games, find what's playable, report the experience and gameplay settings to you, and compare cards by price in that way. We sit down, play games, and find what level of performance is playable in a game, with the goal of always keeping the image quality and in-game settings as high as possible as the game developer intended the experience of the game to be.

Now, some games can be experienced just fine with lower fps, some need higher fps to get that right. We take all that into consideration while playing. Often times today we are finding an average of 40 FPS to be just fine in modern games. However some can tolerate lower, and some higher, depending on the game, or even a specific level in a game. Our "red line" is 30 FPS as the recognized standard for fluid motion in gaming, this can be compared to 24 FPS as the performance movies are shown in. We always make sure the performance, in the end, stays above 30 FPS.

When we game, we don't even look at the FPS. FPS is misleading a lot of times. We just play the game as the gamer does. When we find what's playable, then we do our run-through. We don't need to look at FPS to do this.

What you are asking us to do is to make FPS the most important thing, and lock games at 120 FPS and then find what's playable. That puts the importance on FPS, which is not everything when it comes to gaming. We want to push image quality up, raise the settings, and as gamers experience the game as the game developer intended. We will continue to play games in this way.
 
wadec22 said:
agree. i'm shocked at the request for lower rez. things are moving the opposite direction, at least for most users willing to drop 1300+ on a couple gpus.
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I am as well, I don't get it. Mainstream gaming resolution is moving away from 1080p and toward 1440p (2560x1440) right now, with those displays being more and more affordable. We already test above that at 2560x1600, which lets you know for sure if 1440p will be playable.

And now there is a lot of talk and discussion about 4K monitors, a resolution of 3840x2560, that's the next big step, and it's a big step up in resolution. We already test at 5760x1200 in 3-display setup, which is technically more pixels than 4K, so what's playable at 5760x1200 is more than playable on a 4K display.
 
We can agree to disagree on minimum performance levels, but don't you get screen tearing regardless of your percieved adequate performance?
 
Great article.

Makes my decision to go Titan or 780 very difficult.

I will be moving to triple 2560x1440, so a higher resolution than in the article.

The article only shows 1 game where memory comes into play, but at 1440px3 it could be more games.

The safe choice is of course triple Titans with all that memory love, but that would be something like $1000 price difference from triple 780s. $1000 in London will get you a half decent russian hooker in Mayfair.

Another option is of course dual Titans for about the same price as triple 780s. So maybe lower the settings and keep the options open on the Russian.

As a side note, the only thing that might be worth giving up on the "lady" would be a 8 Core IB-E, but that is pretty much going to be a wet dream according to rumours. :(
 
Brent_Justice said:
And now there is a lot of talk and discussion about 4K monitors, a resolution of 3840x2560, that's the next big step, and it's a big step up in resolution. We already test at 5760x1200 in 3-display setup, which is technically more pixels than 4K, so what's playable at 5760x1200 is more than playable on a 4K display.
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Quick correction: 4k is 3840x2160, for a total of 8.3MP, while 3x1920x1200 is 6.9MP, and 3x1920x1080 is 6.2MP. I assume you were quoting the resolution based on bezel correction for the three display setup?
 
Meeho said:
We can agree to disagree on minimum performance levels, but don't you get screen tearing regardless of your percieved adequate performance?
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You get screen tearing in every situation that doesn't involve V-Sync.
 
SpeedyVV said:
Great article.

Makes my decision to go Titan or 780 very difficult.

I will be moving to triple 2560x1440, so a higher resolution than in the article.

The article only shows 1 game where memory comes into play, but at 1440px3 it could be more games.

The safe choice is of course triple Titans with all that memory love, but that would be something like $1000 price difference from triple 780s. $1000 in London will get you a half decent russian hooker in Mayfair.

Another option is of course dual Titans for about the same price as triple 780s. So maybe lower the settings and keep the options open on the Russian.

As a side note, the only thing that might be worth giving up on the "lady" would be a 8 Core IB-E, but that is pretty much going to be a wet dream according to rumours. :(
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The only reason you have to go with Titans is because Nvidia decided to not allow 6GB GTX780's or 8GB GTX690's. 6GB HD7970's exist, and you could get decent framerates out of three of them as stated in the article, if/when AMD gets their new frame-pacing driver fully up to spec.

Also, why not wait for 60Hz 4k monitors to hit the market? Are you planning to use your peripheral panels for something that requires color accuracy?
 
IdiotInCharge said:
The only reason you have to go with Titans is because Nvidia decided to not allow 6GB GTX780's or 8GB GTX690's. 6GB HD7970's exist, and you could get decent framerates out of three of them as stated in the article, if/when AMD gets their new frame-pacing driver fully up to spec.

Also, why not wait for 60Hz 4k monitors to hit the market? Are you planning to use your peripheral panels for something that requires color accuracy?
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Not really, just gaming, and most games I play I would be not as demanding as Crysis 3.

Single monitor gaming is enough for me except when playing driving games. For that I love my triple screen.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
In surround...

(I get that Surround is the context here, but people can get confused)
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No... Catalyst 12.8 don't support frame pacing, period. Person I quoted specified 12.8 for whatever reason (stability?)

Even with the most recent beta drivers from AMD, crossfire still isn't "there" yet, since it only works properly in some DX10 and DX11 games (as long as AMD has specifically optimized for the title and your resolution is set low enough).
 
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IdiotInCharge said:
The only reason you have to go with Titans is because Nvidia decided to not allow 6GB GTX780's or 8GB GTX690's. 6GB HD7970's exist, and you could get decent framerates out of three of them as stated in the article, if/when AMD gets their new frame-pacing driver fully up to spec.

Also, why not wait for 60Hz 4k monitors to hit the market? Are you planning to use your peripheral panels for something that requires color accuracy?
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Actually the problem is that the AMDs like many have said, are lagging behind in the high-res, surround gaming market. I had AMD crossfired cards and they just weren't up to par for surround gaming even at 3x1900x1200. I moved to a single 690 which handled that resolution for lower settings. Now I would love to go triple 780, but as you mentioned there is no 4GB or 6GB for it. So really at 3x2560x1440 which is where I am at now, the only reliable choice is Titan.
 
mrpc9886 said:
"this is still the cheapest price you can buy these at."

Jesus wept.

So did your English teacher.

Get a truss for your dangling participles. ;)

Next up: Using "begs the question" incorrectly.
Click to expand...

Is there a point to your mindless bitchery?

:rolleyes:
 
SixFootDuo said:
I guess since no one is talking about the obviously huge white elephant in the room .. I will.

2 x used 7970's for around $300 each off eBay or Craigslist. Total - $600 all day every day.

12.8 drivers and a $600 pair of 7970's Xfired can't be beat.
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Ya, I think the pricing is a little off. Even right now you can pick up a 7970 Ghz ed new for about $360. And they go on sale quite often.. plus a few months ago, they included the game bundles which if you purchased on a sale and sold the bundle, you are looking at around $300 for a new card.

The 780s have yet to have any sale other than the raku10 points thing... which you could also use on the 7970s if you wanted.

There is no denying that a 780 is faster than a 7970 in most cases.. but it is also over twice the cost, and I don't think a 780 is faster than 2 7970s.

So the real question should have been is 2 780s faster than quadfire 7970s.
 
Kelter said:
There is no denying that a 780 is faster than a 7970 in most cases.. but it is also over twice the cost, and I don't think a 780 is faster than 2 7970s
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Until AMD gets frame pacing working damn near perfect AND they fix tearing on mixed outputs, I'd still pick a single GTX 780 over two HD 7970's.

The single 780 will always be more consistent game-to-game than a multi-card solution, will always draw less power, will always be quieter, does not have frame pacing issues, and does not have tearing issues with spanned resolutions no matter what outputs I use. Also means I can use hardware accelerated PhysX without having to install an Nvidia card below an already hot and heavy crossfire setup, and without using any driver hacks.
 
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What is it about videocards that makes people defend a brand as if it was their grandma...??
 
inglewood78 said:
What is it about videocards that makes people defend a brand as if it was their grandma...??
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Dunno. I just like what's best for my money; that's been Nvidia for quite a while, though, for a number of reasons, and not always price/graphics performance.
 
Unknown-One said:
Until AMD gets frame pacing working damn near perfect AND they fix tearing on mixed outputs, I'd still pick a single GTX 780 over two HD 7970's.

The single 780 will always be more consistent game-to-game than a multi-card solution, will always draw less power, will always be quieter, does not have frame pacing issues, and does not have tearing issues with spanned resolutions no matter what outputs I use. Also means I can use hardware accelerated PhysX without having to install an Nvidia card below an already hot and heavy crossfire setup, and without using any driver hacks.
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I think they'll get it. Their first step was a very positive one, and shows that they understand the problem and what fixing it should look like.

As far as tearing on mixed outputs, I know exactly what you mean- but how would they fix that completely? I agree that there's no reason for DP and DVI/HDMI to be out of sync if they're directly connected to the card, but what about people using a DP adapter? What if it's an active adapter?

That's what's got me, and probably catches a lot of people.
 
NoOther said:
Actually the problem is that the AMDs like many have said, are lagging behind in the high-res, surround gaming market. I had AMD crossfired cards and they just weren't up to par for surround gaming even at 3x1900x1200. I moved to a single 690 which handled that resolution for lower settings. Now I would love to go triple 780, but as you mentioned there is no 4GB or 6GB for it. So really at 3x2560x1440 which is where I am at now, the only reliable choice is Titan.
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You're right- a single HD7970 isn't really enough for a single 2560x1600/1440 monitor, thus three HD7970's shouldn't be nearly enough for three of such monitors; you're in Titan territory. Had there been a GTX690 with 8GB of RAM (4GB/GPU), a pair of those would have probably been the best setup for your money, but alas Nvidia chose to put the kibosh on that possibility like they did later with 6GB GTX780's; and that's pretty stupid, really. RAM is cheap.
 
Very nice article, the effort you put in shows.

What interested me the most was the power consumption of the SLI 780 System....590W is much lower than I ever expected. It also leads me to ask is someone (me in this situation) able to run the same test bed with SLI 780 through a 750W power supply?
 
OmidFM said:
Very nice article, the effort you put in shows.

What interested me the most was the power consumption of the SLI 780 System....590W is much lower than I ever expected. It also leads me to ask is someone (me in this situation) able to run the same test bed with SLI 780 through a 750W power supply?
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If it's a decent quality PSU it should handle them just fine. I've got my rig stuffed full of crap and only run an 850w PSU.
 
PC Power and Cooling Silencer MKIII 750W is the PSU in question. (Which I understand is now an OCZ company) SLi hadn't captured my interest until lately and I had already built the system with this PSU.

Thank you for the reply.
 
OmidFM said:
Very nice article, the effort you put in shows.

What interested me the most was the power consumption of the SLI 780 System....590W is much lower than I ever expected. It also leads me to ask is someone (me in this situation) able to run the same test bed with SLI 780 through a 750W power supply?
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I'm running sli 780 on seasonic x750 gold rated psu
 
OmidFM said:
PC Power and Cooling Silencer MKIII 750W is the PSU in question. (Which I understand is now an OCZ company) SLi hadn't captured my interest until lately and I had already built the system with this PSU.

Thank you for the reply.
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You're good; just note that the 'silencer' part of the name was usually a misnomer when you get the PSU under load.

Still, I get away just fine with a pair of GTX670's at 650W (and HD6950's before that). Really never get over ~450W at the wall.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
As far as tearing on mixed outputs, I know exactly what you mean- but how would they fix that completely?
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Easy, go back to the design they used on the HD 5000 series...

The HD 5000 series cards have better output hardware, and have no trouble keeping all output heads in sync across different interfaces.

Tearing and sync were never a problem with Eyefinity 1.0 hardware, it came about with the cost-reduced reference card designs in the HD 6000 series.
 
Unknown-One said:
Easy, go back to the design they used on the HD 5000 series...

The HD 5000 series cards have better output hardware, and have no trouble keeping all output heads in sync across different interfaces.

Tearing and sync were never a problem with Eyefinity 1.0 hardware, it came about with the cost-reduced reference card designs in the HD 6000 series.
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I skipped that generation completely; did they have DP and DVI outputs synced at 2560x1600/1440?
 
Unknown-One said:
Until AMD gets frame pacing working damn near perfect AND they fix tearing on mixed outputs, I'd still pick a single GTX 780 over two HD 7970's.

The single 780 will always be more consistent game-to-game than a multi-card solution, will always draw less power, will always be quieter, does not have frame pacing issues, and does not have tearing issues with spanned resolutions no matter what outputs I use. Also means I can use hardware accelerated PhysX without having to install an Nvidia card below an already hot and heavy crossfire setup, and without using any driver hacks.
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I agree with you that a single card solution for most folks is ideal. Ever since I had an nVidia 7950GX2, I have sworn off of any multicard/multiGPU solution. I know the technology has improved, but as you mention, performance is so subjective and dependant on many various factors. Best case scenario, you get the performance of 2 cards.. worst case, you get worse than the performance of a single card.

For the article though, I think the focus was on price vs performance. Not taking into consideration the factors you listed out. Personally, if there was a single card solution that was 80% of the performance of SLI 780s and cost slightly more, I think it would be a better solution than SLI 780s... even though the cost is higher and performance less.
 
Kelter said:
I agree with you that a single card solution for most folks is ideal. Ever since I had an nVidia 7950GX2, I have sworn off of any multicard/multiGPU solution. I know the technology has improved, but as you mention, performance is so subjective and dependant on many various factors. Best case scenario, you get the performance of 2 cards.. worst case, you get worse than the performance of a single card.

For the article though, I think the focus was on price vs performance. Not taking into consideration the factors you listed out. Personally, if there was a single card solution that was 80% of the performance of SLI 780s and cost slightly more, I think it would be a better solution than SLI 780s... even though the cost is higher and performance less.
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In general, that's why many reviewers recommend getting the single fastest card you can, if that's close to fast enough, which it is for many/most.

If not, well, it gets real complicated real fast :cool:.
 
NoOther said:
Now I would love to go triple 780, but as you mentioned there is no 4GB or 6GB for it. So really at 3x2560x1440 which is where I am at now, the only reliable choice is Titan.
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This is why I would have liked to see triple SLI 780's tested as a price comparison point to 2 SLI Titans.

I'm not so sure the lack of memory would make that much of a difference given the extreme performance gained by the three 780's, since dual titans are performance limited before memory limited on high MSAA. Besides just that, FSAA and low MSAA make a really good compromise to me if the memory ever really was THE limiting factor.

As well, I think NVidia cards scale better with more CPU, I'd bet highly clocked 6 core and 8 core Intel CPU's of the present (and/or future) will boost both Titan and 780 performance a lot more than you might imagine.
 
780s Rock! FPS numbers for Crossfire can't be taken at face value yet, even with the "new " driver. Runt frames are still an issue as Hardware Heaven pointed out only this week.
 
trajan2448 said:
780s Rock! FPS numbers for Crossfire can't be taken at face value yet, even with the "new " driver. Runt frames are still an issue as Hardware Heaven pointed out only this week.
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Hm, I wasn't aware of that article... I'll have to go search for it. Still, a 7990 doesn't have much OC headroom whereas a 780 is 75% as fast stock, but can OC up to around 90%+ as fast, while being a single-GPU solution still. Heck, you can buy 780s like the eVGA SC ACX that come with out-of-the-box speeds notably faster than a Titan, which brings it very close to a 7990. Add in that not every game even scales well, and that the frame-pacing stuff only works on DX11 still, and the 780 is an extremely strong competitor still.

I run an X-Star DP2710 @ 110hz 2560x1440 and am able to with slight settings reductions (2x MSAA in new demanding games or, in BF3, I use SMAA with sweetFX... anything older is a cakewalk for my 780) keep it at 95-100+ fps 95% of the time, 115-120+ 3% of the time, and below 90fps 2% of the time pretty much (not literal numbers but you get the concept). I debated selling off my 780 and getting a 7990, but I don't think there's much to gain right now considering the above-listed issues with multi-GPU and the level of performance a 780 is able to put out being pretty close with stock pre-oc'd 780s vs. a 7990 with basically no headroom (some get 1050-1100 from the stock 1000 but that's about it I gather).
 
Nice review guys!

As far as people asking you to wait for this frame pacing patch from AMD... how many damn years now has it been that crossfire has been bugged out with crappy feel? I've been burned by the ati drivers more times than I care to admit. They will have to have a few years of solid performance before I let team red back in the house... so sad.

For the person asking for 1920x1200 reviews, just point them at the single card reviews, as well as the scaling portion of this review. Take the single gpu review values, scale it by the amount found here on a per game basis. Pretty easy to extrapolate how well it would perform. Overkill really.

Adding 770 sli might be interesting, since its gk104 vs the 780's gk110 architectures.

When will nvidia start using a 22nm process, and shrink down that gk110 while speeding up the clock?
 
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