Conclusion

General		+	-
NVIDIA’s brand new GeForce GTX 780 is quite a nice piece of hardware. This reference card gives you a good overview what to expect from the new GTX 780 series, which is basically a scaled down version of the GTX Titan. The twelve activated SMX units are able make the GTX 780 almost 30 percent faster than the GTX 680, which is actually quite something. On another notice you get the same PCB as well as the same cooler NVIDA also puts on the GeForce GTX Titan, this means, that this card is adequately equipped and the noise level is ok.		- Performance	- Cooling
Cooling / Noise Level		+	-
GPU Temperatures weren't that good with a maximum of 81°C under heavy FurMark load with the fans locked at 50 % fan speed. There really are a lot of coolers that perform better. In Idle the noise level is good, but a soon as there is load being applied to the GPU the fan starts to wake up and it makes quite some noise. Overall the reference cooler isn't too bad, but still we're very curious to see what difference for example ASUS' DirectCU II cooler can make. We're definitely hoping that there will be GeForce GTX 780 card with really silent coolers.			- Loud under load
Performance		+	-
A closer look at overall performance shows that the GTX 780 is 27 % faster on average in games than its predecessor, the GTX 680. In case of highly demanding games, the performance difference between those two cards goes all the way up to 40 percent. On the other hand, in games like Borderlands 2 or Bioshock: Infinite, where you get 100 fps with a GTX 680 already, you only see a ten percent performance gain. Taking a look at the clock speed shows that this card clocks at 940 MHz on average, when applying heavy 3D loads. At this point one can really see GPU Boost 2.0 doing it's job, since it always tries to get the maximum clock speeds out of the card, without overstepping the 80°C temperature target.  A closer look at power consumption shows, that our test system, equipped with the GTX 780, burns 52 Watts under idle conditions and 292 Watts under load. Compared to all other cards we have in our test field, idle power consumption is quite good but under load one can really see, that the GTX 780 is a monster and therefore it's quite good at burning a lot of power.		- Performance/Watt - Power Consumption in idle	- Power Consumption under load
Recommendation / Price		+	-
Should you be looking for a seriously quick graphics card, then the GTX 780 is a great choice. Sure, there is the GeForce GTX Titan, which is even faster, but it also costs quite a lot more. Mentioning the price brings us to the last point. As you can see the GTX 780 is almost 30 percent faster than it's predecessor. In our opinion increasing the price by a maximum of 30 pecent would be ok. If you check prices as of today, we see that the card is listed for about 700 US-Dollars. If you stop by at Newegg and check the price of their reference GTX 680 cards and add the additional 30 percent on top, you end up at almost 600 US-Dollar. We're quite sure, that when the first custom GTX 780 hit the shelves, the price of the reference GTX 780 will drop to the 600 US-Dollar mark.		- High-End Gaming
We gave the GeForce GTX 780 from ASUS the good 4 out of 5 stars.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 13 - DIRT Showdown
Page 2 - Technical Data / Specifications	Page 14 - Far Cry 3
Page 3 - Preview & Delivery	Page 15 - Max Payne 3
Page 4 - Test Setup	Page 16 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 5 - 3DMark 11	Page 17 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Page 6 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 18 - Metro: Last Light
Page 7 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 19 - Power Consumption
Page 8 - BattleField 3	Page 20 - Fan Speed / Noise Level
Page 9 - Borderlands 2	Page 21 - Temps - Idle / FurMark / BF3
Page 10 - Bioshock Infinite	Page 22 - Performance/Price & Performance/Watt
Page 11 - Crysis 3	Page 23 - Conclusion
Page 12 - Call of Duty Black Ops 2

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Author: Marc Buechel (rewarder) m.buechel@ocaholic.ch