VGA Reviews by stefan @ 2013-06-03
With the coming of the GTX Titan derivation named GTX 780, we have very good performances available at a lower price point. Gigabyte is one of the companies which offer a highly overclocked variant and a custom, compact cooling system which is enough silent when the card is placed in a well ventilated computer case.
At first we would like to thank Gigabyte Taiwan for offering a sample of their GTX 780 3GB (GV-N780OC-3GD) video card for testing and reviewing.
“GIGABYTE was founded in 1986, establishing our uncontested position in continuous technological innovation. By focusing on key technologies and achieving strict quality standards, GIGABYTE has been regarded as an innovative and trusted motherboard leader in the globe. To keep pace in a rapidly changing world, we have offered a comprehensive product line covering Motherboards, Graphics Cards, PC Components, PC Peripherals, Laptops, Slate Devices, Desktop PCs, Network Communications, Servers and Mobile Phones. We are dedicated to building up a full-range digital life, responding promptly and sonorously to consumer needs and desires.”
With the release of the Titan, Nvidia succeeded to defeat all the single-card, single-GPU competition but the sale price is still not very accessible. Later, the company has launched two more cards which are meant to fill the gap between the GTX 680 and the Titan: GTX 770 and GTX 780. The GTX 780 features 50% more cores when compared to the GTX 680 (2304) and also 50% more memory (3GB), with a 384-bit bus, while the GTX 680 had a 256-bit one.
When Nvidia made the introduction of the GTX Titan, they have also updated the GPU Boost technology to the second revision. This method is meant to replace the usual clock speed control so if the GPU feels that an application needs more performance and the TDP is not exceeded, the graphics card will be automatically overclocked.
Besides the TDP, GPU temperature also comes into play when this automatic overclocking system is in effect. Manually, we are also able to adjust the GPU voltage in order to maximize the overlocking speed limits.
The GPU Boost 2.0 feature also comes with an Overvoltage option that is enabled by request. The latest iteration of OC GURU II from Gigabyte supports these technologies including GPU Temperature Target, Overclocking, Unlocked Voltage.
The Gigabyte GTX 780 WindForce OC version we will look upon in this article also features a consistent factory overclock:
The GV-N780OC-3GD card comes with a WindForce 3X 2-slot cooling system able to dissipate up to 450W and features two 8mm and also four 6mm copper heatpipes, inclined fans along with Gigabytes’ “Triangle Cool” technology.
“Triangle Cool” technology combines fin with clip module, the Anti-Turbulence structure of heat transfer, which can increase the efficiency of heat dissipation dramatically. The triangle design also minimizes the flow of turbulence between fans and provides a system with more efficient air flow:
Our sample has arrived without the external packaging layer, which probably was not yet finalized at the time, but inside a black box with the Gigabyte logo on top:
Plenty of protective material was found inside to avoid any damages that may occur during transport:
The card was located in the center, also wrapped inside an anti-static bag, but without any extra accessories (the retail product contains manuals, an installation disk, but also some extra connectivity options):
After collecting the card from the box, we have seen that on the top metallic shroud there was an extra layer of transparent plastic film, which needs to be removed before the first use; the WindForce logo can be clearly seen here:
The custom cooling solution by Gigabyte for the GTX 780 has made its appearance really fast on the market compared to the other manufacturers which launched their products only with the stock Nvidia cooling, so this is a thing to be appreciated. Like we have seen on the Sparkle X580, the tri-fan cooling system permits uniform cooling of the large heatsink, without the need to keep the fans at a high speed:
Gigabyte has made sure to keep the cooling system really compact, so we have a true 2-slot solution:
When looking on the lateral side of the card, we will be able to see some of the internal heatsink components:
The opposite side has a similar appearance, only that the lateral black metallic component with the Gigabyte logo on it is separated from the rest of the shroud and acts as a rib to avoid PCB bending:
Here we will also spot the 6-pin and 8-pin ATX power headers:
The back side of the card shows us a portion of the fan cable and some heatpipe terminations. We can also spot the small distance between the PCB itself and the heatsink:
Here is also a look at the back side of the board. Here we will spot the 7 screws that need to be removed in order to get access to the front PCB:
On the I/O, we have one DisplayPort, one HDMI and two DVIs; here we will also spot some ventilation grills:
To be able to access the rest of the cards’ PCB, we will remove 7 screws from the back, which are provided with springs. For protecting the board against scratches, Gigabyte has also glued some white plastic rings around the holes:
If you will even need to remove the top heatsink, make sure to make gradual pulls from different areas and not from a single place, in order not to damage the PCB or the thermal pads:
We have found that this card comes with 12 Samsung K4G20325F0-FC03 memory chips, which are rated at 1500MHz:
When looking at the back of the DVI connectors, we will spot that the metallic cover is gone, probably to make more space to the heatsink:
By looking carefully in the VRM area, we can spot 6 phases for powering the GPU:
The On Semi NCP4206 controls the power phases and is located on a separate PCB:
Near the On Semi controller and the 8-pin+6-pin ATX power connectors we can find the INA 3221 power sensor from Texas Instruments, which was also found on the Titan cards:
The GK110 graphics processor (561 mm2) is quite huge and it houses 7.1 billion transistors on-die; it was manufactured on a 28nm process at TSMC:
By looking at the bottom side of the cooling system, we can see the separate VRM cooling area, but also the large plate with thermal pads for the memory chips:
The central copper plate makes direct contact with the GPU die and the manufacturer has used quite a big amount of thermal compound:
CPU: Intel I5 3570K Retail @ 4.7GHz
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 OC
RAM: GeIL Black Dragon 2x4GB DDR2133 (@1600)
Video: Gigabyte GTX 780 WF OC 3GB
Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W
SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840
Drivers used: Nvidia - ForceWare 320.18; AMD - Catalyst 13.4
With the help of the GPU-Z 0.7.1 utility, we could extract lots of information regarding the video card clocks,memory type, pixel and texture fill rate and so on:
To extract even more information, we have used the AIDA64 utility:
For finding out the temperatures in both IDLE and Full Load with the fan set on Auto, we left the computer IDLE for about 25 minutes and then started monitoring with HWINFO64 and logged the values obtained while running Heaven 4.0 at 2560x1440 resolution for an additional 40 to 50 minutes, with details at Maximum and Tesselation set to Extreme. During this time, the ambient temperature was held steady at 26.1 degrees Celsius:
Before measuring out the noise the video card was producing, we have first measured the noise inside the room the tests took place and we found out it was 30.9dBA (with everything turned off).
At all times, the sound meter was placed 20cm near the video card.
To help us customize the card performances, Gigabyte comes in our help with an updated version of the OC GURU II utility. The application is straight-forward and allows us to work with most options right from the main, intro screen. Here we have small sections like Monitoring, GPU Clock with adjustments, Memory Clock with adjustments, Fan, Core Voltage Adjustments, Target, Resolution setup, OSD configuration or Online Support:
The Monitoring section can be maximized in order to view live charts regarding GPU Clock, Memory Clock, GPU Voltage, Memory Voltage, Fan Speed and GPU Temperature:
The Fan Profile can be customized with ease from the respective menu:
From the same application we can adjust the display resolution, color mode or frequency:
An OSD can be also enabled by pressing a keyboard combination:
We are reaching the end of the article and it is time to draw some conclusions. We really like the compact 3-fan cooling system proposed by Gigabyte for the GTX 700 series which has also proved to be silent during heavy use, while keeping the temperatures to a decent level. However, we must make sure to have a well ventilated case since we have seen that the card evacuates a lot of hot air on the lateral and this must be evacuated in order to avoid recirculation.
During disassembly, we have seen that the custom cooler can be removed quite easily by removing the bottom screws but we must be careful when lifting it from the PCB since the thermal pads are still a little glued to the memory modules and the VRM components. To avoid PCB bending, Gigabyte has used a metallic rib which travels from one side to the other of the card, which eliminates the need of having a backplate. Something similar we have also seen at the HIS 7850 video card, which was covering only half of the PCB but has proven effective. Using a backplate or a metallic rib is really necessary with many custom cooling solutions since these are heavy and we have seen the impact of a MK-26 cooler on a 7970 without a backplate, where bending caused black screens and restarts.
Without a doubt, during the benchmarks the card has shown its teeth and succeeded to beat the 7970GHz Edition without a lot of effort and sometimes by a large margin. The card is overclocked from the factory only on the GPU core, but with the help of OC GURU II we can customize the card speeds by working with both clocks. Without increasing the core voltage, we have raised the clocks in small steps and achieved quite a consistent overclock; signs of instability were represented by artifacts appearing on screen when the memory clock was pushed over the limit and also driver resets when the GPU clock speed was raised too much. Here is what we have obtained after some tweaking:
What is interesting is the fact that Gigabyte has not decided to raise the price over the stock Nvidia design which is about $649, making this model more attractive considering that it comes pre-overclocked.
We would like to thank again to Gigabyte Taiwan for making this review possible!