Hardware ZOTAC GeForce GTX 780 Ti AMP! Review

With three fans and an overclocked GTX 780 Ti at its heart, this AMP! card is a beast.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2013/11/28/zotac-geforce-gtx-780-ti-amp-review/1

 

A nice review but nothing unexpected here. A factory overclocked, custom cooled GPU performs slightly better than the nVidia reference card. Well I'll be darned.
I am far more interested in seeing what the ASUS ROG GTX 760 MARS edition can do as that is a dual GPU on a single card and could provide interesting results in a dual card (x4 GPU) SLi setup.

 

"Extreme Ultra?"

Sounds like a badly-translated anime.

 

Surely 'Ultra Extreme' sounds better but then that is too close Centurions' 'Power Extreme'.

 

Would be brilliant to see an "Above Average Edition" or "Really Fast Edition". I would honestly be tempted simply for the novelty value, although it would only really work properly if released by one of the larger OEMs.

 

I think that's why the previous editorial team found it chuckleworthy.

 

They should do the whole range like that, right down to 'You better not be gaming with this' and the ultra affordable 'Won't even play a HD video' card

 

The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 780 Ti AMP! costs around £575, and the AMD 7990 costs around £400, found under that price, and performs excellently. Why would anyone consider buying a 780 Ti (or a 780) in light of the huge price drop of the AMD 7990?

It seems to me that Nvidia seriously need to review the cost of their high end gpu's.

 

Because for some people money is no object, sadly im not one of those people..

 

I disagree. nVidia know that stocks of the 7990 will soon be gone and if you look AMD's current (new) cards, the 290x start at over £420, just about keep up in AMD optimised games such as Battlefield 4 and seriously fall behind with other games. nVidia are keeping pretty much to their own plans, if any questions need asking surely it is why AMD are pricing their new but lower performing cards (290x) above the 7990?

 

I agree with some of what you have posted. But at this moment in time the 7990 is in stock, and offers performance often better than the 780 and 780Ti at a much lower price. Why would anyone buy a 780Ti over a AMD 7990? At this second, would you buy a 780Ti over a 7990? Around £550 Vs around £390: Why spend £160 more?
We can speculate about what might happen when the 7990 stock run out. One thing that is unlikely is that the current prices of these Nvidia and AMD card will remain the same. How they might alter remains to be seen!
Why is the 7990 priced often below the 290x? Seems perhaps to shift stock, and at the same time seriously undercut Nvidia's high end GPU's.

 

Not everyone trusts multi gpu solutions to deliver their high performance in a reliable way, so high end single gpu solutions like the 780ti or the Titan or the R9 290x do very much have a purpose.

 

Undercutting nVidia's high end GPUs while also undercutting their own high end GPUs which is why it seems a little silly to me, but this often happens with the outgoing gen of GPUs, especially the very high end.
Another 'reason' why someone would buy a 780Ti is because it is currently and undeniably the fastest single GPU on the market and I don't think those that spend this sort of money on their hardware are particularly worried about the extra expense. Some would however choose the 7990, and yet again we come to that argument that just because YOU would choose something doesn't mean that everyone else will.
But then you asked me what would I do, and I most certainly would not buy either, even if I had the funds. I am not in to the whole argument of paying over the top premiums for minimal performance gains, especially when said performance gains are practically intangible by anything other than a FPS counter or a statistical benchmark.
This is why I am interested in the ASUS ROG GTX 760 MARS edition as mentioned above as not only should this perform well, be much more suitably priced (although still out of my league) but it is a different approach and should be... interesting.

 

Dual GPU cards are much more heavily reliant on drivers than single ones.

 

Awesome card, but I'm still annoyed at Nvidia for adding more price brackets on top instead of putting their newest cards into the top existing brackets and pushing everything else down as used to be the case. I remember when 400 quid meant you were getting the fastest card possible on its launch date not so long ago (and that's bearing inflation in mind).

 

Yeah agreed, as usual, a very nice review. Only thing missing, in my opinion, is results for 1920x1080. Your test rig is almost identical to my rig but I like most gamers play on a 22" screen which is native 1080 resolution.
Pretty pretty please could you include said resolution in your reviews in the future. ;-)

 

If you can afford to drop nearly 600 notes on a graphics card, then you can afford a better monitor. Spending half this on a new GPU will see you safe at 1080p for a couple of years.

 

Yeah, as Shirty has pointed out, there's a reason they were left out for this review - these cards will obliterate that resolution. We do include 1080p for cards for which it's relevant though, indeed we included it for the review of the reference GTX 780 Ti card to give a complete picture of its performance. Here though, we know what ball park the performance would be in so we knew we could leave it out.

 

Personally I agree with Sgt.Bilko. It's all very well reviewing for the set ups that this hardware is meant for but many people do not have those machines and are interested to relate to an article based on what they have. Call it just a 'point of interest' if you will but would it really kill you to include just one run through at 1080 with everything on Ultra? It would help connect the article to what I would guess is the majority of your readers.