Videocard Buyer’s Guide - It’s All About Looks (Part 3) - Gigabyte GTX 780 Windforce X3 OC

Gigabyte GTX 780 Windforce X3 OC

It’ll blow you away

Price: $849

This is the new flagship consumer core from NVIDIA (based off Titan) and we must say we’re both impressed and disappointed all at the same time. While NVIDIA has managed to cut down the price a tad, they did so by cutting down the GPU. Sure, it still comes with 2,304 shaders, though compared to Titan’s 2,688 it still falls a little short. What this points to is NVIDIA shipping off dud GTX Titan cores as a GTX 780 with a lower shader and ROP count, and with (only) half of the memory capacity.

Gigabyte GTX 780 Windforce X3 OC

Of course, the GTX 780 is still a monster of a card, and realistically a much wiser purchase decision than the bank-busting GTX Titan. Sporting a core clock of 945MHz, this Gigabyte sample isn’t exactly a slouch either, coming in a significant 91MHz higher than the reference GTX 780, and an even larger 118MHz above the core clock found on the GTX Titan. This is enough to put the Windforce X3 about equal with that of the GTX Titan in most PC games today.

Idle temperatures for the card sit on roughly 31C; not too if you consider the power requirements. On average the Windfore X3 cooler managed to keep the card at a more than cool 66C under load, far better than the reference cooler managed, with a recording of 78C. As always, the Windfore X3 operates at a whisper and we guarantee you won’t hear the cards spooling up between load screens or while casually browsing the web. It is, for black of a better word, silent.

To no surprise there is still the stupid 105% TDP restriction present on the GTX 780 as there is on every other Kepler core, meaning we can expect this card to perform almost as well as any other when it comes to overclocking on an unmodified PCB. This particular sample managed to hit a core frequency of 1,013MHz on the core and a fairly respectable 6772MHz on the RAM, though given the higher density chips, and the greater capacity, we were never expecting to match the memory clocks of the GTX 770.

The GTX 780 is still a monster of a card, and realistically a much wiser purchase decision than the bank-busting GTX Titan.

Gaming performance is remarkably similar to the GTX Titan, only deviating by 1-5% above or below the gargantuan GPU. This likely has a lot to do with the factory overclock applied to this video card by Gigabyte, though even when running the card at the true NVIDIA stock speed of 863MHz the difference between the two only rose to 5-10%, hardly worth the extra $400+ for Titan wouldn’t you say? As for bundled features and goodies, don’t expect much. This is very much an enthusiast’s kit, not one targeted towards gamers.

Now for the reality check. This card is $849, there are other GTX 780 options available for $100 less, and given that it’s on a reference PCB, there really is only the cooler to distinguish it from the competition. Is that worth $100? We’ll let you decide.

GTX 780 is still a monster of a card, and realistically a much wiser purchase decision than the bank-busting GTX Titan

If you’re chasing every last frame and only want a single GPU in your system the GTX 780 Windfore X3 from Gigabyte is the only card we’d suggest buying currently, though as more vendors begin the ship custom – cooled cards to the market, Gigabyte had best be prepared to lower the rather large price tag by a few bucks.

Verdict: 8/10

·         The best GTX 780 currently available, though at a price

·         Top-notch single-GPU card

·         Better, quieter cooling

·         Actually takes on the Titan

·         Hard to bite for the price

Hitman Absolution – 2560 x 1440 MSI GTX 770 ·         FPS Minimum: 16 ·         FPS Average: 44 ASUS GTX 770 ·         FPS Minimum: 15 ·         FPS Average: 42 Gigabyte GTX 780 ·         FPS Minimum: 19 ·         FPS Average: 56 Metro Last Light – 2560 x 1440 MSI GTX 770 ·         FPS Minimum: 13 ·         FPS Average: 39 ASUS GTX 770 ·         FPS Minimum: 13 ·         FPS Average: 36 Gigabyte GTX 780 ·         FPS Minimum: 15 ·         FPS Average: 48 Tomb Raider – 2560 x 1440 MSI GTX 770 ·         FPS Minimum: 26 ·         FPS Average: 58 ASUS GTX 770 ·         FPS Minimum: 26 ·         FPS Average: 55 Gigabyte GTX 780 ·         FPS Minimum: 32 ·         FPS Average: 80 Battlefield 3 – 2560 x 1440 MSI GTX 770 ·         FPS Minimum: 22 ·         FPS Average: 48 ASUS GTX 770 ·         FPS Minimum: 22 ·         FPS Average: 44 Gigabyte GTX 780 ·         FPS Minimum: 24 ·         FPS Average: 57