NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Review

When NVIDIA introduced the GeForce GTX Titan a few months back, the company created a huge gap in its single-GPU product line-up. With its GK110 GPU and massive 6GB frame buffer, the GeForce GTX Titan was easily able to outrun the GK104-based GeForce GTX 680 and it hung with the dual-GPU powered GeForce GTX 690 as well. That gap between the GeForce GTX 680 and GTX Titan could have potentially been filled by a scaled down GK110 with a smaller frame buffer, and in fact, one of the first questions we asked of NVIDIA during our briefing on Titan was if a more affordable version of the card was in the works, but company reps were expectedly mum at the time. It’s not like NVIDIA to comment on unannounced products, but we took a shot anyway.

NVIDIA’s talking now, though. Today marks the arrival of the GeForce GTX 780, a graphics card that is essentially a GeForce GTX Titan, with a scaled down GK110 GPU and a smaller, but still relatively large, 3GB complement of video memory. As its name suggest, the new GeForce GTX 780 falls in above the GeForce GTX 680, and below the GTX Titan, but as you’ll see a little later, it’s not all that far behind the Titan overall.

In addition to its latest high-end Graphics card, NVIDIA is also using the occasion to officially launch its GeForce Experience utility announce a new feature to GFE, dubbed ShadowPlay. We’ve got the scoop on the pages ahead...

The GeForce GTX 780

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Specifications & Features

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780's main features and specifications are listed in the table above. Before we get into the specifics of the card and some of the capabilities of the GPU at its core, however, we want to direct your attention to a few past HotHardware articles that lay the foundation for what we’ll be showing you here today.

The GeForce GTX 780 From The Rear...

If you paid attention to the transistor count in the chart above and are on top of the high-end GPU scene, you're probably aware that the GeForce GTX 780 is built around NVIDIA's GK110 GPU, the same chip that powers the GeForce GTX Titan. Though the GK110 is a different piece of silicon than the GK104 that came before it, it leverages technologies previously introduced on older NVIDIA products. As such, we’d recommend checking out these articles for more detailed coverage of many of NVIDIA’s existing technologies that carry over to the new GeForce GTX 780:

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan: Yes, It Can Play Crysis
• GeForce GTX 690 Review: Dual NVIDIA GK104 GPUs
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Kepler Debuts
• NVIDIA TXAA Brings Movie CGI Rendering To PC Games
• GPU Tech: NVIDIA Talks Fermi, Unveils Nexus
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480: GF100 Has Landed  
• NVIDIA GF100 Architecture and Feature Preview
• NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround is Here
• NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 and The Asus VG278H LCD Review

In our Fermi and GF100 architecture previews we discuss the GPU architecture and its CUDA cores, and Polymorph and Raster engines, among many other features. In our GeForce GTX 480 coverage, we dig a little deeper into Fermi, and discuss the first graphics card based on the technology. And in our 3D Vision Surround, 3D Vision 2, and TXAA related articles, we cover NVIDIA’s multi-monitor, stereoscopic 3D technologies, and anti-aliasing technologies, which are all integral parts of the GeForce GTX 780. In our GeForce GTX 680 and GTX 690 articles, we discuss the Kepler GPU architecture and its many features in detail. And finally, in our GeForce GTX Titan review, we explain GPU Boost 2.0 and Display Overclocking, among other things, which are also available on the GeForce GTX 780.