The graphics arena is very dynamic now a days, with the acquirement of ATI in 2006 by AMD its been a constant battle between the Greens and the Reds with both side having their share of the crown. For the last two progressions however we can see both side trumping respectively. With implementation of TSMC 28Nm node the innovation have died down a bit and we are seeing an annual refresh of lineup from both sides. While AMD has kept the best of both worlds in their lineup, Nvidia has fully segregated their lineup with Geforce denoting the gaming segment and Quadro denoting the professional segment. Today we have the flagship Nvidia gaming GPU with us for review.
Presenting the Asus GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II OC
While the 780 in itself is a bit of downer for me(expected more and got less), the card we have is a piece of engineering.
ASUS as always tried to out do themsleves…and they did.
How they did is what we will see in the review
Over the next few pages we would go through a quick look at the features and specs,a little showcase and then dive into numbers…aight?
next page please.
basing on a cut down GK110 core on which its big brother runs the GTX 780 is a replacement for its predecessor the GTX 680. It’s the result of Nvidia’s annual refreshment plans which generally translates into :adding more functional units. For a more clear view refer to the chart below.
| GTX TITAN | GTX 780 | GTX 680 | GTX 580 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stream Processors | 2688 | 2304 | 1536 | 512 |
| Texture Units | 224 | 192 | 128 | 64 |
| ROP | 48 | 48 | 32 | 48 |
| Core Clock | 837Mhz | 863MHz | 1006MHz | 722MHz |
| Shader Clock | N/A | N/A | N/A | 1544MHz |
| Boost Clock | 876MHz | 900MHz | 1058MHz | N/A |
| Memory Clock | 6GHz DDR5 | 6GHz DDR5 | 6GHz DDR5 | 4GHz DDR5 |
| Memory Bus Width | 384-bit | 384-bit | 256-bit | 384-bit |
| VRAM | 6 GB | 3 GB | 2 GB | 1.5 GB |
| FP64 | 1/3 | 1/24 | 1/24 | 1/8 |
| TDP | 250W | 250W | 195W | 244W |
| Transistor Count | 7.1B | 7.1B | 3.5B | 3B |
| Manufacturing Process | 28Nm | 28Nm | 28Nm | 40Nm |
So we can clearly see the GTX 780 is a cut down version of the TITAN for gaming purpose. On the architectural side we’re looking at the same GK110 GPU, this time with fewer functional units like Titan’s 14 SMXes reduced to just 12 SMXes, shaders reduced from 2688 to 2304, and the texture unit count from 224 to 192.
Now with that aside lets see what we have in our hands today.
| Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Model | GTX780-DC2OC-3GD5 |
| Graphics Engine | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 |
| Bus Standard | PCI Express 3.0 |
| Video Memory | GDDR5 3GB |
| GPU Boost Clock | 941 MHz |
| GPU Base Clock | 889 MHz |
| CUDA Core | 2304 |
| Memory Clock | 6008 MHz |
| Memory Interface | 384 bit |
| DVI Max. Resolution | 2560 * 1600 |
| DVI Resolution | 1 x Native DVI-I |
| 1 x Native DVI-D | |
| HDMI Output | 1 x Native |
| DisplayPort | 1 x Native |
| HDCP Compliant | YES |
| Dimensions | 11.3×5.8×1.6 Inch |
Now with that aside its time for a little photo shoot.
So..lets check out a few pictures, then we can dive into numbers.
The boxes are typical Asus packaging..too much info cramped into little space. So nothing much to write about them.
inside we see the classic Asus black box and the card in foam padding.
the accessories package includes
- Driver disk
- Power adapter.
- SLI Cable
- Quick-start guide.
So that take care of the packaging and content part, lets see the card more closely..shall we?
next page please.
I will let the pictures do the talking..
Top view
Back view
the card is secured by a full cover back plate which adds to the strength and the aesthetics of the card.
Now one of the main feature of the card..the new cooltech cooling system. In simple term its like a wide-angle high airflow fan with minimal acoustic footprint. Asus is claiming it to be 20% cooler than reference cooler. Although i was not able to test it fully but throughout our testing we never faced a single thermal shutdown.
The fans
I will close this page with a few more pics and dive into performance data.
So there ends the showcase.
next page please..
The test system used this time consisted of the following :
| CPU | Intel Core i5 2500K |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | Asus Maximus V Extreme (courtesy Asus) |
| Ram | Kingston 1600Mhz 8GB DDr3 |
| Storage | Western Digital 320GB HDD (WD320AAKX) |
| Video Card | Asus GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II OC |
| Cooling | Swiftech H320 |
| Case | Ghetto made bench table |
| Power supply Unit | Corsair AX 1200W |
Drivers used
Nvidia Forceware 320.49
now the part all are waiting for , the benchmark results.
An apology beforehand to all, since i lost a bit of data in a storage crash i couldn’t include the overclocked results. So i will including out of the box results for now. If i get a chance to rebench the card i will include more fresh data.Please bear with me this time.
Crysis
Crysis is a FPS series developed by German developer Crytek and published by Electronic Arts. The series revolves around a group of military protagonists with “nanosuits,” technologically advanced suits of armor that allow them to gain enhanced physical strength, speed, defense, and cloaking abilities. The protagonists face off against hostile North Korean soldiers, heavily armed mercenaries, and a race of technologically advanced aliens known as the Ceph, who arrived on Earth millions of years ago for unclear reasons, and have recently been awakened. the game uses “cryEngine” which very demanding on the GPU and had made itself a benchmark from the time of its release. The story continues through 3 games.
Setting: Ultra+High res texture (DX 11 patch applied)
Metro Last Light
It’s a first-person shooter video game with survival horror elements. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010. The game is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow. Previously announced as Metro 2034, the game is a sequel to the video game Metro 2033 The game uses 4A Engine which supports Direct3D APIs 9, 10, and 11, along with NVidia’s PhysX and NVidia’s 3D Vision.
Settings:
Quality: Quality: Very High; Texture filtering: AF 4X; Advanced PhysX: Disabled; Tesselation: OFF; Motion Blur: Normal; SSAA: OFF.
DIRT 3
DiRT 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters based on the EGO 2.0 engine.The Ego engine was developed to render more detailed damage and physics as well as render large-scale environments.
Setting:Ultra/MSAA 4X
Bioshock Infinite
BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter video game developed by Irrational Games, and published by 2K Games. based on the UNREAL Engine 3 the game is set in 1912 during the growth of American exceptionalism, the game has protagonist, former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to the floating air-city of Columbia to find a young woman, Elizabeth, who has been held captive there for most of her life. Though Booker rescues Elizabeth, the two are pursued by the city’s warring factions: the nativist and élite Founders that strive to keep the city for pure Americans, and the Vox Populi, rebels representing the common people. Booker finds Elizabeth to be central to this conflict, and learns that she possesses strange powers to manipulate rifts in the space-time continuum that ravage Columbia.
Settings : Ultra+DDOF Enabled
Settings : Ultra
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game. Published by Square Enix, Tomb Raider is the fifth title developed by Crystal Dynamics in the Tomb Raider franchise. As the first entry in a new Tomb Raider continuity, the game is a reboot that emphasizes the reconstructed origins of the culturally influential lead character Lara Croft.
Settings: Ultra preset.
Setting: Ultra +TressFX ON
Hitman Absolution
Hitman: Absolution (HMA) is an action-adventure stealth game developed by IO Interactive and published by Square Enix.It is the fifth entry in the Hitman game series, and runs on IO Interactive’s proprietary Glacier 2 game engine.
One of the key points in this game is the lighting and its ability to render upto 1200 NPC at a time.
Settings: High 4X MSAA Post Processing on High Textures Dynamic Shadows on.
So that takes care of the gaming benchmarks…now before we check out the synthetics in the next page..i compiled a bit of data for you guys and tried to make a chart of lowest frame-rates.
Do let me know if you guys like it or not.
So here ends the gaming performance..next stop..synthetics.
The synthetics result were all in line..although the computing benchmark results were woefully low thanks to NVIDIA’s segregation.
| Benchmark | Settings | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 3DMark Fire strike Extreme | Default | 4241 |
| 3DMark 11 Performance Preset (P) | Default | 10371 |
| 3DMark 11 Extreme preset (X) | Default | 4509 |
| Unigine Heaven DX 11 | Default | 2786.896 |
| Luxmark | Scene:Room | 556 |
| DirectCompute and Opencl benchmark | Default DirectCompute | 8433.2 |
| Default OpenCL | 12074.5 | |
| TessMark | Res:1920×1080(FS) – AA:Off – PostFX:OFF Tessellation level: 64.0 – Map set 4 | 238 |
Overall pretty decent scores except the computing benchmarks.
Next page please
lets keep it short for this one..shall we?
Asus is known to make brilliant computer hardware thanks to their designing team and extensive R&D, here also they manged to churn out a nice piece of engineering in the form of an GPU.
The Asus GTX 780 DirectCU II OC is full non reference design.From the extra layers in the PCB to refined circuitry and software solutions, this card is built to last and to satisfy every gamers dream provided they can pay the price.
Pro’s
- Build Quality.
- Cooling efficiency.
- Titan like gaming performance.
- Good Overclocking potential.
Cons’s
- Potential high price. Although it’s not Asus’s fault but they need to sort it out with Nvidia if they want it to sell this card in good quantities. gamers wanting performance will buy the best, but a lower price will sweeten the deal.
Other than that i don’t see any faults with the product.
Overall an 8/10 from me. A superb product which can only be sweetened by a price discount.
Special thanks to Asus India for the sample and Sanjib ray for helping me out with the Camera and the OCF team for the coöperation.
Signing out
Sumon