NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 Review: The $400 Fight

As spring gets fix to roll over to summer, concluding week we saw the first phase of NVIDIA ’ s annual desktop intersection agate line freshen, with the launching of the GeForce GTX 780. Based on a cut-down GK110 GPU, the GTX 780 was by most metrics a Titan Mini, offering a meaning operation boost for a mid-generation separate, albeit a part that forwent the common $ 500 price grade in the work. With the launch of GTX 780 the stage has been set for the rest of the GeForce 700 series freshen, and NVIDIA is wasting no meter on getting to the adjacent part in their batting order. So what ’ s up next ? GeForce GTX 770, of class .
In our close thoughts on the GTX 780, we ended on the subject of what NVIDIA would do for a GTX 770. Without a modern mid/high-end GPU on the horizon, NVIDIA has rather gone to incremental adjustments for their 2013 refreshes, GTX 780 being a prime model through its habit of a cut-down GK110, something that has constantly been the most legitimate choice for the company. But any likely GTX 770 is far more nebular, as both a 3rd tier GK110 separate and a top-tier GK104 partially could conceivably fill the function barely american samoa well. With the launch of the GTX 770 now upon us we last have the answer to that question, and the answer is that NVIDIA has taken the GK104 option .
What is GTX 770 then ? GTX 770 is basically GTX 680 on steroids. Higher kernel clockspeeds and memory clockspeeds give it performance exceeding GTX 680, while higher voltages and a higher TDP allow it to clock higher and for it to matter. As a result GTX 770 is still very a lot a product cut from the same fabric as GTX 680, but as a fastest GK104 circuit board yet it is a potent successor to the outgoing GTX 670 .

  GTX 770 GTX 680 GTX 670 GTX 570
Stream Processors 1536 1536 1344 480
Texture Units 128 128 112 60
ROPs 32 32 32 40
Core Clock 1046MHz 1006MHz 915MHz 732MHz
Shader Clock N/A N/A N/A 1464MHz
Boost Clock 1085MHz 1058MHz 980MHz N/A
Memory Clock 7GHz GDDR5 6GHz GDDR5 6GHz GDDR5 3.8GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 320-bit
VRAM 2GB 2GB 2GB 1.25GB
FP64 1/24 FP32 1/24 FP32 1/24 FP32 1/8 FP32
TDP 230W 195W 170W 219W
Transistor Count 3.5B 3.5B 3.5B 3B
Manufacturing Process TSMC 28nm TSMC 28nm TSMC 28nm TSMC 40nm
Launch Price $399 $499 $399 $349

With GTX 780 based on GK110, GTX 770 gets to be the flagship GK104 based video card for this genesis. At the lapp time to far differentiate it from the outgoing GTX 680, NVIDIA has basically given GK104 their own adaptation of the GHz Edition discussion. With higher clockspeeds, a new turbo hike mechanism ( GPU Boost 2.0 ), and a higher world power specify, GTX 770 is GK104 pushed to its specify.

The end leave is that we ’ re looking at a fully enabled GK104 part – all 32 ROPs and 8 SMXes are present – clocked at some very high clockspeeds. GTX 770 ’ south base clock is set at 1046MHz and its boost clock is at 1085MHz, a 40MHz ( 4 % ) and 27MHz ( 3 % ) increase respectively. This alone doesn ’ t amount to much, but GTX 770 is besides the first desktop GK104 share to implement GPU Boost 2.0, which further min-maxes NVIDIA ’ s clockspeeds. As a leave being that GTX 770 reaches its highest clocks more often, making the effective clockspeed increase greater than 4 % .

But the more breathless change will be found in GTX 770 ’ s memory shape. With GTX 680 already shipping at 6GHz there ’ s only one way for NVIDIA to go – up – so that ’ s where they ’ ve gone. GTX 770 ships with 7GHz GDDR5, making this the very beginning intersection to do indeed. This gives GTX 770 closely 17 % more memory bandwidth than GTX 680, an important increase for the card as the 256bit memory bus means that NVIDIA has no memory bandwidth to spare for GTX 770 ’ mho higher GPU throughput .
We ’ ve talked in length about GDDR5 memory controllers before, noting that 7GHz has constantly been the plan limit for GDDR5. Good GDDR5 memory can hit it easily enough, but GPU memory controllers and memory buses are another matter. After faltering with the Fermi generation NVIDIA was able to hit 6GHz on their first dart with GK104, and now with their second nip and a fresh PCB NVIDIA is quick to certify GK104 as 7GHz capable. Given all the teething GDDR5 has gone through on both sides of the aisle, this is a little but impressive accomplishment for NVIDIA .
Moving on, between the higher GPU clockspeeds, higher memory clockspeeds, and the introduction of GPU Boost 2.0, NVIDIA is besides giving GTX 770 a hearty increase in TDP, for both the benefits and drawbacks that brings. GTX 770 ’ sulfur TDP is 230W versus GTX 680 ’ s 195W, and due to GPU Boost 2.0 the old 170W “ power prey ” concept is going away entirely, so in some cases the difference in effective world power consumption is going to be closer to 60W. Like GTX 780, this higher TDP is a natural consequence of pushing out a faster function based on the lapp manufacture process and architecture, and we expect this to be the same fib across the display panel for all of the GeForce 700 series parts. At the lapp meter however we ’ five hundred point out that the 230W TDP higher than usual for a sub-300mm2 GPU, reflecting the fact that NVIDIA actually is pushing GK104 to its specify hera .

Along with differentiating the GTX 770 from the GTX 680, these little improvements besides serve to further separate the GTX 770 from the GTX 670, which because it ’ s based on the like GPU, makes this to some extent necessary to provide the necessary operation gains to justify the mid-generation refresh. As GTX 670 was a lower clock part with only 7 of 8 SMXes enabled, the performance difference between it and the GTX 770 ends up being due to a combination of those two factors. With a clockspeed dispute of 131MHz ( 14 % ), the theoretical performance deviation between the two cards stands at about 30 % for shading/texturing, 14 % for ROP throughput, and of path 17 % for memory bandwidth. This won ’ triiodothyronine be closely enough to justify replacing a GTX 670 with a GTX 770, but it makes it a estimable increase as a mid-generation part, and very enticing for those GTX 470 and GTX 570 owners on 2-3 year upgrade cycles .
Moving on to the launch and price, unlike the GTX 780 last week, NVIDIA is being far more aggressive on pricing with the GTX 770, catching even us by surprise. From a performance point of view the GTX 770 already makes the GTX 680 excess, and if the performance doesn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate do it then the launch price of $ 399 will. $ 399 besides happens to be the same price the GTX 670 launched at, so this is a fairly aboveboard spec-bump in that deference .
At the same time NVIDIA is going to be phasing out the GTX 680 and GTX 670, thus while these parts may see some sales to clear our stock there won ’ t be any kind of official price cut. As such other than their lower TDPs these parts are basically pleonastic at the moment .
For this reason NVIDIA ’ s very rival will be from AMD, with the $ 399 price chase putting the GTX 770 somewhere between AMD ’ s Radeon HD 7970 and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. The price of the GTX 770 is going to be closer to the erstwhile while the performance is going to be closer to the latter, which will put AMD in a close spot. AMD ’ s saving shed here will be their plot bundles ; NVIDIA international relations and security network ’ t bundling anything with the GTX 770, while the 7970 cards will come with AMD ’ s huge 4 game Level Up with Never Settle Reloaded bundle .
last, today ’ sulfur launch is going to be a hard launch just like GTX 780 death week. Furthermore NVIDIA ’ randomness partners will be shipping semi-custom cards veracious at launch, and in fact we aren ’ metric ton expecting to see any mention cards for sale in North America. This means there will be a great assortment among cards, but not necessarily much in the way of consistency .

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