Introduction

NVIDIA's latest addition to their lineup is the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. Built around a fully unlocked GK110 Kepler GPU, it comes with 2880 shaders, which boosts the card's performance beyond that of the GTX Titan. Unlike the GTX Titan, which has 6 GB, the GTX 780 Ti comes with 3 GB, but that difference won't have an effect on even the latest titles.

The GeForce GTX 780 Ti is designed to be a gamer's card throughout. It has all the muscle any game could possibly need, and has another thing going its way: better thermals. Despite the "GK110" featuring more transistors than "Hawaii" (7.08 billion vs. 6.20 billion) and, hence, a bigger die (561 mm² vs. 438 mm²), GK110-based products are inherently cooler because of higher "Kepler" micro-architecture performance-per-watt figures than AMD's "Graphics CoreNext," which translates into lower thermal density. These should in turn translate into lower temperatures and, hence, lower noise levels. Energy-efficiency and fan-noise are really the only tethers NVIDIA's high-end pricing is holding on to.



Today, we are reviewing the EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti SuperClocked with ACX cooler. As the name suggests, the card is overclocked out of the box, up from GTX 780 Ti's reference 876 MHz to EVGA's 1006 MHz. EVGA uses a GTX 780 Ti reference design PCB, but slapped the ACX cooler we've seen on several other models before on the card. EVGA's ACX cooler should produce better temperatures and noise, and performance, too, since NVIDIA's Boost 2.0 algorithm takes temperatures into account.

With a price of $730, the GTX 780 Ti SC w/ ACX is $30 more expensive than the NVIDIA reference design. Read on to find out if the card is worth the price increase.

Packaging

Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Driver CD + documentation
• DVI adapter
• 2x PCIe power cable

The Card

The EVGA ACX cooler does look nice, but I still don't think it can compete with the NVIDIA reference design cooler and its large shiny metal surfaces. Dimensions of the card match those of the GTX 780, so 26.5 x 11.5 cm.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include two DVI ports, one HDMI port, and one DisplayPort. You may use all outputs at the same time, so triple-monitor surround gaming is possible with one card.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support.


The GeForce GTX 780 Ti supports SLI with up to four cards (confirmed by NVIDIA). This then makes the GTX Titan and GTX 780 Ti the only highest-end products from NVIDIA that can use quad-SLI as the GTX 780 non-TI only supports Triple-SLI.


Pictured above are the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods, etc., please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.