nVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 Pro Reviews

Our thoughts on the GeForce GTX 770 are somewhat mixed. On one hand, the card is clearly faster than a GeForce GTX 680, the GeForce GTX 770 is outfitted with a quieter more efficient cooler, and it offers support for NVIDIA’s GPU Boost 2.0. On the other hand, the GeForce GTX 770 behaves much like a factory overclocked GeForce GTX 680 would. There are clear distinctions between reference models, and we’d obviously consider reference GeForce GTX 770 cards to be more attractive than reference GeForce GTX 680s in virtually every respect. The lines are somewhat blurry between the custom GeForce GTX 770 cards like those from MSI and Gigabyte, though. The differences between factory overclocked GeForce GTX 680s and GeForce GTX 770s are far more difficult to spot. GeForce GTX 770 cards should be available immediately at a variety of price points. References models with 2GB of memory are expected to be priced at $399, with factory overclocked 2GB cards falling in the $410 - $450 price range. 4GB GeForce GTX 770 cards are expected to be priced about $50 higher than 2GB models, with similar increases for factory overclocked products. With GeForce GTX 680s currently selling for $400 or so and Radeon HD 7970 cards in the $370 - $440 range, NVIDIA is pricing the GeForce GTX 770 fairly well. We’d obviously prefer the GeForce GTX 770 to be even more affordable, of course, but as it stands today, the card is faster, quieter and cheaper than a GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970, so we won’t be complaining.

The nVidia GTX 770 might not quite have the showmanship of the 780, but it is better value for money. It offers strong gaming performance without being extortionately priced. The 2GB memory is a small concern as this may look a little dated two years hence. For use with games today and over the next year or so, though, it's likely to remain a compelling choice.

Nvidia provides more performance at a lower price point and with better reference cooling than available on the GTX 680: these facts alone ensure the GeForce GTX 770 will sell well, though real progress will only present itself on proper next-gen architectures.

This current generation of video cards has been something of a rollercoaster ride in both performance and leadership. In the last 18 months we’ve seen AMD take the lead with Radeon HD 7970, unexpectedly lose it to GeForce GTX 680, gain it again with Radeon HD 7970 GE and greatly improved drivers, and then break even in the end with GTX 770. GTX 780 and GTX Titan make all of this moot with their much greater single-GPU performance, but priced as they are they’re also nowhere near being in the same market segment as the GTX 770 and 7970GE. In any case, more than anything else it strikes us as particularly funny that we’re once again looking at a tie. That’s right: on average GTX 770 and 7970GE are tied. GTX 770 delivers 102% of the performance of 7970GE at both our high quality 2560x1440 and high quality 1920x1080 settings. Of course as with some of the past battles between AMD and NVIDIA in this segment, these cards may be tied in our benchmarks but they’re anything but equal.

Running a pair of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 video cards in SLI will give you a massive performance boost and give you a setup that will perform better than NVIDIA's flagship parts and for less money!

The GTX 770 could cause problems for Nvidia's partners. With the GTX 770 using the same beautiful chassis as the Titan and GTX 780 it already looks like an ultra-enthusiast card for a bargain price. That means any third-party cooling attached to the pricier overclocked cards is going to have to look even better. If not, people are going to be more than happy sticking with the stock, £330 (about AU$515, US$400) versions - which is probably why the 4GB version has been touted from the beginning. But who cares about the problems of add-in board manufacturers when we can get hold of such a second-tier card that looks this good, overclocks this well, and performs better and costs less than either the top single-GPU cards from the last graphics generation. Certainly not us, and when the profits roll in, certainly not Nvidia.

GeForce GTX 770 is a hyper-overclocked GTX 680 with some new tweaks. NVIDIA's Kepler-based GK104 GPU is clocked past the fastest overclocked GTX 680, and the 2GB GDDR5 memory sets records with speeds reaching 7010MHz data rate. With Radeon HD 7970 trailing so far behind in performance while sharing the same price point as GeForce GTX 770, gamers have a good reason to play on team green hardware. GeForce GTX 770 delivers performance beyond the competition, and delivers as much value as it does technology perks.

The GTX 670 is a bit faster?and a bit more expensive?than Nvidia's previous card in this segment.

It would be easy to feel disappointed by the GTX 770, given the huge leap in performance of its bigger brother, the GTX 780, over its predecessor. But, with an MSRP of £329, viewed in pure performance per pound terms it’s actually a most excellent purchase, coming out very near the top of our Unigine-based price/performance chart. There is sure to be a bit of reshuffling of prices over the coming days in reaction to this card, so we’ll have to see exactly where the best bargains are once that has happened, but as things stand it’s delivering performance in excess of both the GTX 680 and HD 7970, which are cards that just yesterday cost £50+ more than the GTX 770. To look at it another way, the GTX 680 launched at £429, some 15 months ago, and now this faster card is to be £100 cheaper. Although that performance boost is minimal, you are getting a cooler-running, cooler-looking and quieter card too. Prices for the GTX 680 have already begun to drop with them now readily available for at or below that £329 point but really you should be waiting until they dip to around £300 or below before going that route.

GK104 might be an older GPU, but it’s still a potent piece of gaming hardware. Just ratchet up its clock rates, retrofit it with the best looking and performing graphics cooler we’ve ever seen, and knock its price back $50 from the GeForce GTX 680’s price point as of one week ago. AMD was sitting pretty with its Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition at $450. But GeForce GTX 770 walked into the bar, turned over a table, and showed the same sort of aggression we saw when it launched GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost under $200. And that’s why we’re bestowing Tom's Hardware's Smart Buy award on Nvidia's GeForce GTX 770. Although high-end graphics cards are still expensive, we’re happy to get more performance in a better-built package for $100 less than what we could buy a year ago in GeForce GTX 680.

With the launch of its recent cards, Nvidia seems to be downplaying the importance of game bundles. An Nvidia representative told us that game prices often drop quickly after launch, making their value fleeting, while a graphics card is an investment you’ll enjoy for years. While we don’t necessarily disagree, if the Radeon HD 7970 dips a fair bit below $400, it would be a hard card to ignore, given its similar performance to the GTX 770 at a lower price, along with those free games.

I am definitely walking away from the launch of the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 graphics card more impressed than I did with the GeForce GTX 780 just a seven days ago. Even though the GPU that powers the GTX 770 is identical to that of the GTX 680 (with a couple of firmware changes), the clocks are higher and the price is lower - a combination that is hard to beat. AMD has two options now - respond with a price drop or just let the Tahiti-based HD 7970 GHz Edition stand on its own and continue the Never Settle promotions into the summer. Honestly, either graphics card is going to be a great selection for your new gaming PC but we always force ourselves to pick a winner when we can. The GTX 770 offers on-par performance for most games in single monitor resolutions and does so with less noise, power and heat. And, if you are planning on going down the road of multiple GPUs in the future then you know that NVIDIA has its frame metering technology in order to produce a quality gaming experience. The same cannot be said today of CrossFire.

Following the powerful mini-TITAN GTX 780, Nvidia’s GTX 770 is quite the showman with some damn good performance. It’s capable of beating out even the previous gen GTX 680, while offering some of the fastest default memory we have seen to date. The overclocking of the GTX 770 is amazing, almost hitting 1300MHz on the core and 8GHz on the memory, which is no easy task at all. We do have to wonder how they took the GK104 GPU (which is the same used on the GTX 680) and made this possible, especially with less power draw and such a good memory controller. However, the hardware does not tell the whole story, as Nvidia has gone about releasing many new software packages to complement its outstanding hardware. The aptly named GeForce Experience software improves not just the gameplay, but the overall gaming experience. This software drastically simplifies in-game graphics tuning for the best possible experience during gameplay. This may not seem like much help, but setting each game up correctly for your hardware is harder and more time consuming that it seems. It is very easy to set things up incorrectly, causing suboptimal gameplay experience, which is what Nvidia is trying to help gamers avoid.

The GeForce GTX 770 is another cornerstone for the foundation of a strong GeForce 700 Series. The new card is largely based on last-generation's GeForce GTX 680, but improves upon it by running higher GPU and memory clocks, and adding NVIDIA's GPU Boost 2.0 algorithm. The memory chips have been upgraded to a fast 7 Gbps; this is the first time we see such memory used on a graphics card. Its memory allows NVIDIA to run significantly higher memory clocks, which directly translates into a performance improvement. Visually, NVIDIA has chosen to use a cooler that's similar to the GTX Titan's, which is definitely a pretty sight. In terms of performance, we see the GeForce GTX 770 beat the GeForce GTX 670 by about 10%, and the improvement over the GTX 680 is 4%. Compared to the recently released GTX 780, the card is 15% slower, which still makes the GTX 780 a significant upgrade (at much higher cost, though). The GTX 770 easily beats the more expensive Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition with a 5% performance lead. The new GPU Boost 2.0 algorithm focuses more on operating temperatures, so the card's clocks will be reduced once it reaches 80°C. Custom GTX 770 boards work around that by keeping the card below that limit all the time, which nets them some extra performance over the reference design.