[Techspot] GTX 780 retrospective - How the Mighty Have Fallen!

[escrow4]

http://www.techspot.com/review/1418-geforce-gtx-780-four-years-later/

"The GTX 780 wasn't much faster than the 1050 Ti in many of the games tested, yet it increased total system consumption by almost 140%. For those running a 780, you will require a 500 watt power supply to avoid running into any problems."

"In the 22 games we tested, the GTX 780 was on average 23% faster than the GTX 1050 Ti but 15% slower than the RX 470 and GTX 970. Not only that, but compared to the R9 390 it was 20% slower."

The death of Kepler is complete.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Pity they didn't run benchmarks of the R9 290, which as they said was its closest competitor at the time. I think the R9 390 had some upgrades compared to the 290 - memory bandwidth if I remember correctly.

There are rumours that Nvidia deliberately cripples older cards via drivers because it isn't really competing with AMD anymore, it is competing with itself. If a 780 still ran games well today, you might not be tempted to upgrade to a 1070.

That being said, this would be easy to test - just test with old drivers and new drivers and see which is faster.

 

[SPBHM]

this is the same test as the hardware unboxed one I guess,
it's interesting how with up to date drivers on older games the 780 holds decently against all the other cards, but on newer games Kepler is awful,
I guess it would be interesting to have a Titan because of the extra vram,

but yes... on the long run the 7970 was a much better buy than the 680, or the 290x against the 780.
as for 390 vs 290 they should perform the same at the same clocks (apart from vram going over 4GB).

 

[Ancalagon44]

The 390 is a little faster.

Source

 

[raghu78]

Kepler aged horribly and starting from 2014 the GCN counterparts started to pull ahead. Today its obvious that Kepler was the most short sighted architecture by Nvidia. Maxwell is doing better in terms of longevity though DX12 performance is slower than GCN due to lack of async compute. imo Vega and Volta should have good longevity.

 

[nathanddrews]

So are you trying to tell me to upgrade my GTX 470?

 

[Yakk]

There are rumours that Nvidia deliberately cripples older cards via drivers because it isn't really competing with AMD anymore, it is competing with itself. If a 780 still ran games well today, you might not be tempted to upgrade to a 1070.

That being said, this would be easy to test - just test with old drivers and new drivers and see which is faster.

It would be too obvious if nvidia decreased performance substantially across the board, instead nvidia just seems to stop manually optimizing the drivers for older cards on newer games. This is much less obvious and would be almost impossible to prove were it not for Radeon cards to test against.

GCN architecture has been backwards compatible since the 7970 cards, so they also get optimizations for the latest games by default. Vulkan DOOM being the most obvious, and impressive, example.

Whereas Kepler would need a lot more support than nvidia seems willing to give their customers.

 

[TheELF]

Or maybe it's just the obvious...you need the best cpu from 4 years in the future O/C'ed to it's limits to overcome amd's driver overhead.

Test System Specs & Memory

• Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.9 GHz

 

[wilds]

Or maybe it's just the obvious...you need the best cpu from 4 years in the future O/C'ed to it's limits to overcome amd's driver overhead.

What? I would argue you just need a modern Intel/Ryzen CPU above 3.6 GHz to overcome AMD's driver overhead. And even that is probably an exaggeration. Isn't the driver overhead pronounced with dual cores mainly?

But Kepler is not doing well at all. I recently got to play with my friends GTX 660M 2 GB and compare it to my GT 650M 1GB. Both chips have 384 cuda cores but the 650M is clocked out of the box higher.

I was shocked to see the same stuttering in all the games despite being out of VRAM on the 650M. I still use my 650M for games though. At 405 mhz the GPU runs at 73 celcius at near idle fan speeds which is really nice for being a server. I wish newer Nvidia cards like Pascal supported forcing pStates like Kepler and Maxwell.

 

[crisium]

Kepler has definitely aged worse than Paxwell and GCN. Still, 780 has quite the OC headroom. 390 not as much, but some as well, so I imagine at max OC both it would still win just by a much narrower margin than 20%.

 

[MajinCry]

This has been covered before. NVidia doesn't optimize games' shaders for Kepler anymore, so a large chunk of performance is thrown away.

 

[crisium]

Oh, they used a very beefy 780.

TPU averaged 1114mhz, with 1124 max from that card at stock:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_GTX_780_Super_JetStream/30.html

That HIS 390 runs at 1050MHz.
http://www.techspot.com/review/1019-radeon-r9-390x-390-380/

Probably still a little more relative OC left for the 780 which can typically hit a higher clock rate, but the gap would not shrink by as much as one might think as if both were stock. Looks like 390/290 would still easily win when both pushed to max. Just theory crafting.

 

[aigomorla]

So are you trying to tell me to upgrade my GTX 470?

they are telling you that a 1050ti will probably out fps your 470, while using less watts, and running quiter as well as cooler on top, and not even require those 6/8 pin pci-e power plugs.

 

[Bacon1]

TPU averaged 1114mhz, with 1124 max from that card at stock:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_GTX_780_Super_JetStream/30.html

Curious their OCing page has lower core clocks and higher memory clocks

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_GTX_780_Super_JetStream/29.html

Looks like ~1000 is what 290's hit

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/R9_390_PCS_Plus/33.html

 

[crisium]

Nvidia boost doesn't correlate with GPU-Z that well. In newer reviews they list maximum boost for OCing. Not here, they just list base clock and the GPU-Z boost is probably lower than the peak boost.

Still, the 780 gained 11% performance boost in BF3 over 1114MHz performance, so they are hitting something pretty high.

Here the HIS 390 only gets a 50mhz overclock to 1100MHz resulting in single digit % gains:
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/7296/radeon-r9-390-iceq-x2-oc-8gb-video-card-review/index10.html

But with a 20% lead in this new test, even if the 390 didn't OC at all it would still win (based on 11% 780 gain).

For whatever it's worth.

 

[Face2Face]

Oh, they used a very beefy 780.

TPU averaged 1114mhz, with 1124 max from that card at stock:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_GTX_780_Super_JetStream/30.html

That HIS 390 runs at 1050MHz.
http://www.techspot.com/review/1019-radeon-r9-390x-390-380/

Probably still a little more relative OC left for the 780 which can typically hit a higher clock rate, but the gap would not shrink by as much as one might think as if both were stock. Looks like 390/290 would still easily win when both pushed to max. Just theory crafting.

His was only boosting to 1084Mhz on the core during testing, which is still better than the reference 780 that don't even boost to 1GHz.

Check out 16:60 and beyond - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eNVv2yhDVE

Big Kepler scales amazingly well when overclocked. I remember my reference 780 would only go to 1150 on the core, but my Lightning did 1300MHz without even trying.

Steve did include some older titles and the 780 holds it's own against the 390 and manages a couple wins.

On another note, if anyone follows DudeRandon84 on YouTube, you'll see his 1150Mhz GTX 780 Ti holds it's own quite well, even in newer titles. Often closely reaching RX 480 and GTX 1060 in performance when VRAM isn't a limitation.

 

[crisium]

390 also easily wins in power efficiency too being faster and using less than the aftermarket 780. While Kepler vs GCN was a lot closer than nowadays, interesting nevertheless.

And that HIS 390 is only using 37 more watts than the aftermarket 970 that it beats by 6.6% at 1080p. Not bad. I don't think that's necessarily a typical 390 vs 970 power consumption result though, right?

 

[Bacon1]

Here the HIS 390 only gets a 50mhz overclock to 1100MHz resulting in single digit % gains:
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/7296/radeon-r9-390-iceq-x2-oc-8gb-video-card-review/index10.html

7% OC for 7% performance, its already OC'd out of the box which is why its a small OC.

 

[EXCellR8]

i never would have guessed an older card would be slower than a newer one.

can't wait to see the GTX 980 version of this article in 5 years compared to whatever the hell Volta II or something

 

[Bacon1]

Or maybe it's just the obvious...you need the best cpu from 4 years in the future O/C'ed to it's limits to overcome amd's driver overhead.

You should try reading the article:

The GTX 780 remained king of the hill for six months until the GTX 780 Ti shipped, though it was AMD's Radeon R9 290 series that proved to be the real issue as its arrival forced Nvidia into hefty price cuts, slashing the GTX 780 from its introductory MSRP of $650 to $500, where it was still a somewhat weak proposition against the cheaper, quicker R9 290.

According to the tests we ran in 2013, the R9 290 was slightly faster in Battlefield 3, Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, Medal of Honor Warfighter, Metro Last Light and BioShock Infinite. Meanwhile, the R9 290 was a good bit quicker in Battlefield 4, Dirt 3, Max Payne 3, Sleeping Dogs and Hitman Absolution. In fact, the only game where the GTX 780 came out on top was Tomb Raider.

Since then, the GTX 780 has been on its back foot while the R9 290 has been as fast or often slightly faster, with many gamers complaining that Kepler-based graphics cards such as the GTX 780 have continued to fall away. Whereas the R9 290 and its reincarnation the R9 390 are still able to hold their ground today, it's said that the GTX 780 has crumpled into a heap, putting out performance on par with today's entry-level GPUs.

AMD was already faster in 2013.

 

[nathanddrews]

they are telling you that a 1050ti will probably out fps your 470, while using less watts, and running quiter as well as cooler on top, and not even require those 6/8 pin pci-e power plugs.

Thanks, it wasn't clear. LOL

 

[wilds]

One redeeming quality I can say for Kepler is the overclocking. My 650M in my Macbook Pro can overclock really well.

I used to game with an external monitor with the logic board exposed and a fan blowing directly on the CPU and GPU giving me absurdly low temperatures.

Long story short I could OC the core from 775 MHz to 1050 MHz and the memory from 2000 MHz to a whopping 3000 MHz (limit in Asus GPU Tweak) with pure scaling. All while remaining below 70 celcius. This got me to play at 1080p60. The last game I played doing this was Assassin's Creed Black Flag for benchmarking. Now with the Macbook together, I only game at 1000 mhz core, 2000 mhz memory and only with the CPU below 2 ghz.

If the 650M could run at 2 GHz under LN2 in any game I play today it would still be a slug. I will always have a place in my heart for my 650M as the best overclocking GPU I will probably own.

Running the entire system as a game server with the GPU at 405 mhz core 205 mhz memory and the CPU at 2.6 ghz only uses up to 50w from the wall. Kepler will remain powering my gaming servers for years!

 

[dogen1]

Pity they didn't run benchmarks of the R9 290, which as they said was its closest competitor at the time. I think the R9 390 had some upgrades compared to the 290 - memory bandwidth if I remember correctly.

There are rumours that Nvidia deliberately cripples older cards via drivers because it isn't really competing with AMD anymore, it is competing with itself. If a 780 still ran games well today, you might not be tempted to upgrade to a 1070.

That being said, this would be easy to test - just test with old drivers and new drivers and see which is faster.

It's already been done. But it doesn't look like it's performance is that out of place here. Wasn't it always a bit behind the 970?

 

[TheELF]

You should try reading the article:



AMD was already faster in 2013.

Ahh so it's a click-bait article,it's not "How the Mighty Have Fallen!" but "how a card that was slower in 2013 is still slower today"...big surprise there.

 

[beginner99]

I think the R9 390 had some upgrades compared to the 290 - memory bandwidth if I remember correctly.

Not really. It got 4 Gb more vram but that mostly doesn't matter. The difference is that 290 reference sucked as in throttled and was loud. This was fixed with custom cards. The 390 does not have a reference. 390s are faster than reference 290s but if you compared aftermarket to aftermarket the difference is pretty much 0.