MSI GeForce GTX 780 Ti GAMING 3G Video Card Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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MSI GeForce GTX 780 Ti GAMING 3G Video Card Review - Today on our test bench we have the MSI GeForce GTX 780 Ti GAMING 3G which is factory overclocked from MSI sporting its Twin Frozr IV cooling solution. We will compare it to the ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC at both stock and overclocked speeds to determine which of these cards will provide the best performance out there.
 
awesome review! Great card! have you ever tested these awesome cards with a custom liquid cooling setup and see how far you can push the cards?

Thank you for the review!
 
Sexy card, but seems only marginally faster than the 780 Lightning when OC'd. Not sure I'd spend the money on one of those, unless I didn't want to OC it myself.

Thanks for the review, further validates my 780 Lightning SLI decision.
 
Pretty embarrassing that the 290X is losing by such a large margin to the 780ti in mantle enabled BF4, which AMD has spent millions in development on.

This statement is coming from a long time AMD supporter. AMD better hit the drawing boards hard for their next release because we all know that their cpu offerings are quickly becoming obsolete also.

I think AMD has invested too heavily in winning the console market and has severely neglected both video card and cpu development. Perhaps their investments will pay off for stockholders as pc sales are predicted to decline, but this lack of competition with intel cpus and nvidia gpus is very troubling news for gamers.
 
Nerdydave said:
awesome review! Great card! have you ever tested these awesome cards with a custom liquid cooling setup and see how far you can push the cards?

Thank you for the review!
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I don't think that liquid cooling was holding this one back - it stayed quite cool, it just didn't want to go any faster.

sleepybp said:
Pretty embarrassing that the 290X is losing by such a large margin to the 780ti in mantle enabled BF4, which AMD has spent millions in development on.

This statement is coming from a long time AMD supporter. AMD better hit the drawing boards hard for their next release because we all know that their cpu offerings are quickly becoming obsolete also.

I think AMD has invested too heavily in winning the console market and has severely neglected both video card and cpu development. Perhaps their investments will pay off for stockholders as pc sales are predicted to decline, but this lack of competition with intel cpus and nvidia gpus is very troubling news for gamers.
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Keep in mind that this card sports a 20% factory OC - NVIDIA's reference 780 Ti trades blows with the 290X while costing $150 more (when compared at MSRP). Thus, a 290X versus a reference 780 Ti at $700 is about a wash for performance - it is the factory OC that put this card way over the top.
 
The power consumption for these high end cards is appalling especially the R9 290X overclocked. It is at the point if one wanted to run a Tri or Quad GPU system they would have to install a dedicated 20amp circuit.
 
Full size TF4 like on this 780Ti is the best GPU cooler in my opinion. Great compromise between cooling performance and silence and there is loads of performance in reserve. Even at 100% fans are not to loud. The best "bang for buck" 780Ti on market. I got 780 Gaming and I love it..
 
sleepybp said:
Pretty embarrassing that the 290X is losing by such a large margin to the 780ti in mantle enabled BF4, which AMD has spent millions in development on.
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Where do you see Mantle is enabled in this BF4 benchmark? It says API: DX11.
 
sleepybp said:
Pretty embarrassing that the 290X is losing by such a large margin to the 780ti in mantle enabled BF4, which AMD has spent millions in development on.
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"During the course of this evaluation, the Battlefield 4 Mantle patch was released. All data collection for this article was performed prior to the patch being released using the DirectX 11 API. We will assess the performance impact of Mantle in future evaluations."
 
Funny that my custom ROM'ed stock 780 TI outperforms this. Once they release a custom ROM for this card though, then we'll talk turkey.

Seriously, the power governors on cards now-a-days just hurts performance and selling new cards. My custom ROM TI defeats this card by over 100mhz and exhausts air OUT of my case.

It's a great review, but once you enter the world of custom ROMs, you don't see these reviews quite the same anymore.
 
qdemn7 said:
The power consumption for these high end cards is appalling especially the R9 290X overclocked. It is at the point if one wanted to run a Tri or Quad GPU system they would have to install a dedicated 20amp circuit.
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it's the price you pay for performance and the fact that TSMC wasn't on the 8 ball about getting 20nm processing finished in time. the gpu used in the 290(x) was originally developed for 20nm process and then converted over to 28nm which is causing a lot of issues. same thing happened with the 7800/7900 series as well being developed for 32nm but ended up on 40nm.

but seriously though, if you want more performance the only thing it can create is more power usage whether the process size stays the same or gets smaller, you can't have one without the other. espectially not that we are asking GPU's to do a whole hell of a lot more things then they were doing even 5-6 years ago.
 
Nah. It's a great card. If you got it at MSRP you did good. :)

But for a perspective buyer, i'd say this: if it was 550$? Great purchase. If it was 700$? I'd say it was a bad choice. Especially if you factor overclocking into the equation, which heavily favors the 780/780ti - the 780ti at a maximum overclock or even the 780 will easily scale 10-20% past stock (depending on which card you buy). Which is not an issue since the 290X is supposed to be 150$ cheaper, which would be an incredible value by comparison.

That's the entire problem with the custom 290X cards at the moment, the price/performance would be outstanding at MSRP. When the price is that attractive, I can be more forgiving of AMD's less than stellar software/drivers (my opinion). Of course, when the price is jacked 100-150$ beyond MSRP, that quickly makes an attractive price/performance card not so great. IMO.
 
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maboblivion said:
"During the course of this evaluation, the Battlefield 4 Mantle patch was released. All data collection for this article was performed prior to the patch being released using the DirectX 11 API. We will assess the performance impact of Mantle in future evaluations."
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And I'm working on that right now. :D

mekkanic said:
sooooooo should i be mad for buying the xfx 290x DD? lol...
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Depends... how much did you pay for it?
 
Excellent article, thank you, but I was disappointed to see no 4K performance charts. I expect you didn't have time and hope you'll add them later.

One possible issue: does the cooler interfere with SLI?
 
Nerdydave said:
awesome review! Great card! have you ever tested these awesome cards with a custom liquid cooling setup and see how far you can push the cards?

Thank you for the review!
Click to expand...

I have never seen this site do a review of a liquid cooled GPU.
 
Quartz-1 said:
Excellent article, thank you, but I was disappointed to see no 4K performance charts. I expect you didn't have time and hope you'll add them later.

One possible issue: does the cooler interfere with SLI?
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At the current time, 4k testing is not being included in regular video card evaluations. Once it becomes mainstream, I'm sure it'll be added into the mix.

The cooler should not interfere with SLI - it is a very slim and tall card and fits in 2 slots. I'd suggest you have at least a slot in between the cards (that'll depend on your motherboard).
 
mecra said:
Funny that my custom ROM'ed stock 780 TI outperforms this. Once they release a custom ROM for this card though, then we'll talk turkey.

Seriously, the power governors on cards now-a-days just hurts performance and selling new cards. My custom ROM TI defeats this card by over 100mhz and exhausts air OUT of my case.

It's a great review, but once you enter the world of custom ROMs, you don't see these reviews quite the same anymore.
Click to expand...

Yea for noisy stock coolers!
 
David_Schroth said:
The cooler should not interfere with SLI - it is a very slim and tall card and fits in 2 slots. I'd suggest you have at least a slot in between the cards (that'll depend on your motherboard).
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It's not the height that concerns me, but from the pictures, it seems that the cooler partially blocks the SLI connector.
 
is David new to the site? Don't recall seeing his name before, perhaps just not paying close enough attention!
Regardless, very well written review. Good job guys.
 
Review was pretty good... interesting...

I guess with all the price gouging going on from all sides I just can't get exited about $500+ video cards anymore, let alone $700+... from any company... oh well...
 
So happy I bought this card from Newegg last week for $669 w/ free shipping. Cant wait for it to come in tomorrow! Thanks for the review.
 
You're gonna love it. Leaves the ACX and DC2 coolers in the dust. It's so quiet. I only got 1210 boost. Hopefully you get more!
 
Chrisv006 said:
So happy I bought this card from Newegg last week for $669 w/ free shipping. Cant wait for it to come in tomorrow! Thanks for the review.
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I did as well. NewEgg emailed me a $20 off coupon that I used and Fatwallet had 2% cash back that day, bringing it essentially down to $635, so I figured why not. :D
 
I also pulled the trigger on Newegg's $669 price. 2 Day shipping was only around $3.50 so I splurged. The card came in today. It's replacing a PowerColor HD 7970 that I bought 2/13. Was able to sell that on Ebay for more than I paid for it (thanks miners :))! So the net out of pocket for me was only about $310.

I did have an initial problem though. I originally deleted the AMD drivers & installed the card over my old Windows 8.1 install with the latest drivers off the NVidia site. Everything seemed to work fine initially, but the card hung up on the start of 3dMark11, test #2. I just blew away that Windows install, reloaded from scratch, installed the new NVidia drivers & 3DMark. Now everything seems to work fine. My 3DMark score increased 50%, & this card was whisper quiet throughout the test. So far I'm really happy about this purchase.
 
Every review i've read indicates that the MSI gamer cards (at least on the NV side) are among the quietest ever tested. The cooler is definitely impressive.

That said, i'm not feeling the overclock too much. But I guess that's just silicon lottery manifesting itself - Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I suppose. It's still an awesome card since it doesn't cost much more than reference, and definitely is better than reference.
 
mekkanic said:
659 :[
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Could be better, could be worse. You also have the current advantage of Mantle and scrypt cryptocoin mining (you'll easily do 800kh while the MSI card clocks in at 500kh).

TaintedSquirrel said:
is David new to the site? Don't recall seeing his name before, perhaps just not paying close enough attention!
Regardless, very well written review. Good job guys.
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I've been around for nearly 2 years now.

xoleras said:
Every review i've read indicates that the MSI gamer cards (at least on the NV side) are among the quietest ever tested. The cooler is definitely impressive.

That said, i'm not feeling the overclock too much. But I guess that's just silicon lottery manifesting itself - Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I suppose. It's still an awesome card since it doesn't cost much more than reference, and definitely is better than reference.
Click to expand...

I was also disappointed by the overclock. I was hoping for at least another 10% out of it, but it simply wouldn't deliver. My initial instinct was to discount the card's capabilities due to the disappointing overclock, but after thinking about the improvement over the reference speeds and the provided game experience, it won me over.
 
I think TechPowerUp's review indicated that thermal pad's were missing from their board. I tried to look in along the edge of my card but couldn't really see anything. Was the card reviewed here checked for the presence of these pads? I assume that the TechPowerUp's review samples missing pads were just a manufacturing oversight on MSI's part.
 
TechBlaster said:
I think TechPowerUp's review indicated that thermal pad's were missing from their board. I tried to look in along the edge of my card but couldn't really see anything. Was the card reviewed here checked for the presence of these pads? I assume that the TechPowerUp's review samples missing pads were just a manufacturing oversight on MSI's part.
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I Too would love to know, before puling the plug on the card:)
 
Great review.
I just bought this card 2 days ago at the Egg for $670. Since this review came out, it jumped up to 710.

I can honestly say, as a guy who started with the Voodoo1, this is the single most impressive video card I've ever owned. I just came off an MSI Lightning GTX 680, and the performance improvement for a single generation jump is unheard of: 40-90% at 2560x1600.

Quiet as a mouse.
Overclocks to 1150/7630, Heaven looping 2560x1600, ultra.
Runs cool at 65 deg.

Nice silicon.
 
TechBlaster said:
I think TechPowerUp's review indicated that thermal pad's were missing from their board. I tried to look in along the edge of my card but couldn't really see anything. Was the card reviewed here checked for the presence of these pads? I assume that the TechPowerUp's review samples missing pads were just a manufacturing oversight on MSI's part.
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I couldn't tell without taking the card apart, so I don't have a direct answer on this. To me, as a card buyer, the fact that it ran as fast and cool as it did tells me that it was likely functioning as designed...

psyside said:
Did you guys run the oc tests again or you used old 290X DCII OC data?
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Tests were rerun - we even tried a different 290X DCII OC card to see if we could beat the OC from the one featured in the last article about it.
 
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