Meet The GeForce GTX 780 Ti

When it comes to the physical design and functionality of the GTX 780 Ti, to no surprise NVIDIA is sticking with what works. The design of the GTX Titan and its associated cooler have proven themselves twice over now between the GTX Titan and the GTX 780, so with only the slightest of changes this is what NVIDIA is going with for GTX 780 Ti, too. Consequently there’s very little new material to cover here, but we’ll quickly hit the high points before recapping the general design of what has now become the GTX 780 series.

The biggest change here is that GTX 780 Ti is the first NVIDIA launch product to feature the new B1 revision of their GK110 GPU. B1 has already been shipping for a couple of months now, so GTX 780 Ti isn’t the first card to get this new GPU. However while GTX Titan and GTX 780 products currently contain a mix of the old and new revisions as NVIDIA completes the change-over, GTX 780 Ti will be B1 (and only B1) right out the door.

As for what’s new for B1, NVIDIA is telling us that it’s a fairly tame revision of GK110. NVIDIA hasn’t made any significant changes to the GPU, rather they’ve merely gone in and fixed some errata that were in the earlier revision of GK110, and in the meantime tightened up the design and leakage just a bit to nudge power usage down, the latter of which is helpful for countering the greater power draw from lighting up the 15th and final SMX. Otherwise B1 doesn’t have any feature changes nor significant changes in its power characteristics relative to the previous revision, so it should be a fairly small footnote compared to GTX 780.

The other notable change coming with GTX 780 Ti is that NVIDIA has slightly adjusted the default temperature throttle point, increasing it from 80C to 83C. The difference in cooling efficiency itself will be trivial, but since NVIDIA is using the exact same fan curve on the GTX 780 Ti as they did the GTX 780, the higher temperature throttle effectively increases the card’s equilibrium point, and therefore the average fan speed under load. Or put another way, but letting it get a bit warmer the GTX 780 Ti will ramp up its fan a bit more and throttle a bit less, which should help offset the card’s increased power consumption while also keeping thermal throttling minimized.

GeForce GTX 780 Series Temperature Targets
GTX 780 Ti Temp Target GTX 780 Temp Target GTX Titan Temp Target
83C 80C 80C

Moving on, since the design of the GTX 780 Ti is a near carbon copy of GTX 780, we’re essentially looking at GTX 780 with better specs and new trimmings. NVIDIA’s very effective (and still quite unique) metallic GTX Titan cooler is back, this time featuring black lettering and a black tinted window. As such GTX 780 Ti remains a 10.5” long card composed of a cast aluminum housing, a nickel-tipped heatsink, an aluminum baseplate, and a vapor chamber providing heat transfer between the GPU and the heatsink. The end result is the GTX 780 Ti is a quiet card despite the fact that it’s a 250W blower design, while still maintaining the solid feel and eye-catching design that NVIDIA has opted for with this generation of cards.

Drilling down, the PCB is also a re-use from GTX 780. It’s the same GK110 GPU mounted on the same PCB with the same 6+2 phase power design. This being despite the fact that GTX 780 Ti features faster 7GHz memory, indicating that NVIDIA was able to hit their higher memory speed targets without making any obvious changes to the PCB or memory trace layouts. Meanwhile the reuse of the power delivery subsystem is a reflection of the fact that GTX 780 Ti has the same 250W TDP limit as GTX 780 and GTX Titan, though unlike those two cards GTX 780 Ti will have the least headroom to spare and will come the closest to hitting it, due to the general uptick in power requirements from having 15 active SMXes. Finally, using the same PCB also means that GTX 780 has the same 6pin + 8pin power requirement and the same display I/O configuration of 2x DL-DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort 1.2.

On a final note, for custom cards NVIDIA won’t be allowing custom cards right off the bat – everything today will be a reference card – but with NVIDIA’s partners having already put together their custom GK110 designs for GTX 780, custom designs for GTX 780 Ti will come very quickly. Consequently, expect most (if not all of them) to be variants of their existing custom GTX 780 designs.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review Hands On With NVIDIA's Shadowplay & The Test
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  • will1956 - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link

    troll but true
  • Rajiv Kishore - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    Waiting on 290 with better cooling, will ask my sis to pick 1 up when she's coming back to india. Nvidia 780ti is overkill for my 1080p screen. Gj nvidia can't wait for maxwell! Still single gpu king.
  • HalloweenJack - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    So it uses as much power as the R290X , its thermal load is set lower and its nearly as noisy under load. but its faster and costs a lot more.

    R290 is the winner here - $200 cheaper , add an aftermarket cooler or wait for the AIB to be unleashed , and for less money you`ll have a faster (factory overclocked , or oc yourself) R290 which beats the 780Ti
  • A5 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    1) A 3dB difference means that the R290X in "standard" mode is twice as loud as the 780 Ti.

    2) In "Uber" mode, which is what the 290X has to use to match performance, it is 8dB louder. That is a huge difference.
  • Traciatim - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    A5, that point 1 is incorrect. 3dB is twice the power but not twice as loud. 3dB is about where anyone can perceive a loudness difference, 10dB is generally what is perceived as twice as loud.
  • tedders - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    While the results speak for themselves, I cannot wait to see what a properly air cooled 290X will be able to do against a 780ti. It has pretty much shown that the stock reference cooler on the 290X is its bottleneck. Will you be revisiting the 290X review once the other manufactures come out with their properly cooled cards?
  • pyroHusk - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    Completely agree with you, R9 290X clock rate throttle so much by the crap reference cooler. Reviewer from techspot replace R9 290 reference cooler with HIS IceQ X2 from R9 280X and temperature drop to 60-70C easily.
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    Tom's also replaced the 290 cooler with a tri-fan setup and saw a 20% fps gain without all the noise. Seems to me that a $400 290 + a high quality cooler ($50?) will get you close to the 780ti for $250 less.
  • hoboville - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    Once reviews from both sides come in (when both sides come out with third-party coolers), then we can see how these cards stack up. Right now, the AMD cards can't be realistically overclocked (or in the case of the 290X realistically reach its innate performance). The numbers from Tom's hardware are promising, but who knows what ASUS and the rest will pull out of their hats.

    Hopefully by mid December we can make good informed decisions, but for now, it's just too early to buy. There's still rumors that Never Settle will come into the picture, so waiting is good.
  • IanCutress - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    A high quality VGA air cooler is more like $100-$120. Or strap on a closed loop liquid cooler

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