This year's war for GPU market dominance is officially underway with Nvidia's recent release of two flagships of their 700 series line-up, the GTX 780 and GTX 770. As always with Nvidia, these 700 series cards would seem to be upgrades of and successors to their 600 series counterparts of similar nomenclature, the GTX 680 and 670.
In truth however, their performance levels suggest that the GTX 780 and 770 are barking up the GTX Titan and 680's alleys. Both cards are based on Nvidia's Kepler architecture, which was outdoored with its 600 series, and manufactured in the 28nm process. Let's have a quick peek under the hood of these bad boys and see just how well they measure up to their main contenders.
GTX Titan | GTX 780 | GTX 770 | GTX 680 | |
| GPU | GK110 | GK110 | GK104 | GK104 |
| Streaming Multiprocessors | 14 | 12 | 8 | 8 |
| Stream Processors | 2688 | 2304 | 1536 | 1536 |
| Texture Units | 224 | 192 | 128 | 128 |
| Raster Operations per second(ROPs) | 48 | 48 | 32 | 32 |
| Core Clock | 837MHz | 863MHz | 1049MHz | 1006MHz |
| Boost Clock | 876MHz | 902MHz | 1085MHz | 1058MHz |
| Memory Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
| Memory Amount | 6144MB | 3072MB | 2048MB | 2048MB |
| Memory Clock | 6008MHz | 6008MHz | 7010MHz | 6008MHz |
| Memory Bus Width | 384-bit | 384-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 288.4 GB/s | 288.4 GB/s | 224.3 GB/s | 192.26 GB/s |
| TDP | 250W | 250W | 230W | 195W |
| Suggested Power Supply | 600W | 600W | 600W | 550W |
| Transistor Count | 7.1 Billion | 7.1 Billion | 3.54 Billion | 3.54 Billion |
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm |
| Retail Price | $999 | $649 | $399 | $449 |
It's quite obvious that the GTX 680 has been left in the wake of these two 700 series powerhouses. The GTX Titan may still be top dog but I strongly doubt that the mediocre performance gap between it and the GTX 780(which is essentially a Titan with some features disabled) will be convincing enough to warrant the $350 price difference, unless gaming at 4K resolutions across multiple displays is an absolute must for you.
The 7Gbps memory chips on the GTX 770 are probably the most novel feature in the cards. Nvidia switched the 770 memory to a 3-phase power design to accommodate the needs of these monster chips. This also allowed Nvidia to step up the memory clock of the GTX 770 to a whooping 7010Mhz, a 1GHz boost from the GTX 680's which translates to the 224.3 GB/s memory bandwidth through the 770's 256-bit bus.
Nvidia's GPU Boost 2.0 technology makes a welcome appearance on both cards after being re-worked to boost the card's clocks based on the current temperature across the card, a more practical solution. This also means cards with better cooling will be able to boost higher and for longer.
AMD have definitely got their work cut out for them. Their 8000 series cards have a tough act to follow as and when they hit the shelves. AMD have always filled the performance gap with impressive pricing but at $399, the GTX 770 enters the market as a very cost-effective high-end solution, offering up a lot of bang without you having to spend as much as you would for another card in its performance bracket(the GTX 680 and AMD 7970 are still hovering in the mid 400s)
The 780 may not be as cost-effective as its smaller brother, but relative to the Titan it provides a great price-to-performance ratio for hardcore gamers who just can't shell out $1000 for a graphics card.
For more detailed information and performance benchmarks for these cards you can follow these links:
GTX 780:
GTX 780 Review and Benchmarks from legitreviews.com
GTX 780 Review and Benchmarks from techoftomorrow.com
GTX 770:
GTX 770 Review and Benchmarks from legitreviews.com
GTX 770 Review and Benchmarks from techoftomorrow.com
Author : Salis Braimah
