Conclusion
Surprises are hard to come by in this industry. Performance and pricing of upcoming graphics cards can typically be guessed with great accuracy months ahead of time but the GTX 770 has upended this time honored tradition. While the slightly upgraded GK104’s specifications made its position within our charts a foregone conclusion, NVIDIA’s announced $399 price was a something of a shocker.
Prior to the GTX 770, NVIDIA had been content to parachute the GTX TITAN and GTX 780 into relatively safe segments where there wasn’t any competition. Indeed, there probably wouldn’t have been many vocal complaints had this new card hit the $449 mark, effectively setting it up against the HD 7970 GHz Edition. Instead, NVIDIA nestled it into a more reasonable price point, neatly staying ahead of any cuts AMD may perform on their top-end product. It is a brilliant move and one that will end up making the enthusiast-grade GPU segment infinitely more accessible to gamers.
The GTX 770’s performance isn’t ground breaking in any way but the subtle addition of GPU Boost 2.0 and the implementation of 7Gbps GDDR5 do make a difference. GK104 was already near its limits within the GTX 680 so there wasn’t much room to expand but these two additions have resulted in a ~7% onscreen framerate improvement. More importantly, the GTX 770’s performance has been slightly augmented in bandwidth-limited situations where its predecessor tended to lag behind but the actual visible difference between the two cards is slim to none.
The good amount of overclocking headroom allows for even better performance, narrowing the substantial gap between it and the GTX 780. However, this is tempered by a laughable voltage increase limit which does nothing to help clock speeds along.
Despite the ridiculously fast memory speeds, the GK104 architecture still becomes a slight hindrance when placed directly alongside the AMD's HD 7970 GHz Edition. This causes the GTX 770 to fall ever so slightly behind the Radeon competitor from an average framerate perspective and in some cases it trails by a significant amount.
Even though frame delivery has dramatically improved for the GHz Edition, it does fall behind in Far Cry 3, allowing GeForce cards to deliver a more fluid overall gaming experience. Along with the current $50 price difference, the ability to maintain fluid framerates throughout every game gives the GTX 770 an advantage over a HD 7970 GHz Edition. On the other hand, AMD's enticing game bundle will put them ahead in many people's eyes and with good reason. Even though most gamers likely own several of the included titles, being able to play the latest games on your new purchase without having to fork over more money is certainly advantageous.
Like the GTX 780 before it, NVIDIA's GTX 770 isn’t meant as an upgrade for GTX 670 users, though it does provide 18% higher framerates and a distinct bandwidth advantage. Rather, anyone who is currently using a GTX 580 or GTX 570 and can’t justify the stratospheric $649 cost of a GTX 780 will find a perfect companion here.
Kepler is an inherently efficient architecture and the GTX 770 has a noteworthy performance per watt advantage over the AMD competition. In our tests it did consume a good 30W more than a GTX 680 but that is still 40W less than a GTX 580, while being substantially quieter than any previous reference card. This provides yet more reasons for Fermi users to upgrade.
Before we wrap up here, there's another aspect of this review some may miss: there won't be a "reference" GTX 770. According to board partners, we will likely see many of their overclocked and custom cooled GTX 770s come in at NVIDIA's "reference" price of $399 but performance will likely be slightly higher. This bodes well for value-conscious buyers.
The reign of AMD’s HD 7970 GHz Edition as this generation’s price / performance leader has finally come to an end, albeit by a narrow margin. Now that NVIDIA has thrown down the gauntlet, it’s up to AMD to respond or risk having their entire lineup marginalized by what will soon be a full court GTX 700-series offensive. Until that happens, from performance to power consumption to acoustics and a wide-ranging feature set, the $399 GTX 770 will continue to be the best value available in the enthusiast graphics card market.
lol I had too
