NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Video Card Review

NVIDIA's fastest single-GPU video card is being launched today. With the full potential of the Kepler architecture and GK110 GPU fully unlocked, how will it perform compared to the new R9 290X with new drivers? Will the price versus performance make sense? Will it out perform a TITAN? We find out all this and more.

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Far Cry 3

We are using Far Cry 3 as downloaded from and played via UPlay. You can read our video card performance and image quality evaluation here to learn what all the graphics settings mean.

This game takes advantage of some performance demanding options. This game can perform alpha to coverage antialiasing on all vegetation thanks to the alpha to coverage setting. Enabling or disabling this option causes an impact on performance with AA. This game also supports all MSAA levels. Ambient occlusion is supported in SSAO or HDAO, and HDAO demands performance with SSAO costing less. We utilize all ultra settings when possible, but will customize each setting individually as needed. Our run-through consists of running through the open world in demanding areas while taking on gun fire from the enemy.


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In Far Cry 3 we experienced the biggest difference here out of all the games we tested. In this game, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti has a large enough performance advantage that allows 4X MSAA to be playable at 2560x1600 with "Ultra" settings. On the R9 290X and other cards we had to lower the AA setting to 2X, instead of 4X. Therefore, the GTX 780 Ti does offer a better gameplay experience in this game.

The R9 290X matches the TITAN quite well in this game with the same playable settings. Now, we noted in our initial evaluation that this game may be throttling even with 55% fan speed on the R9 290X. A manual fan speed adjustment higher than 55% could give us more performance in this game, matching the 780 Ti.


Apples-to-Apples

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In our first apples-to-apples graph we are comparing at the higher 4X MSAA setting. Remember, we are running the 290X in "Uber Mode" but even that setting may be bottlenecking performance in this game ultimately. At "Uber Mode" the GTX 780 Ti is almost 11% faster than the R9 290X in this game at 4X AA. The 780 Ti is 20% faster than the GTX 780.

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In this second graph we are comparing at a lower 2X MSAA. The GTX 780 Ti is 8% faster than the R9 290X. The GTX 780 Ti is 18% faster than the GTX 780.