3D Vision Blog

Today Nvidia has officially announced their new flagship GPU, the first form the 700 series – GeForce GTX 780 based on the GK110 Kepler architecture and manufactured using 28nm process. You can say that the new Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 is a more affordable lite version of the GTX TITAN announced not long ago, based on the same GK110 GPU, but with a little less video memory and a bit less CUDA cores. Other than that the things are looking very similar to what the GTX TITAN offers. You should have in mind though that the new GTX 680 is not here to replace the GTX TITAN, but to succeed the older GTX 680 (GK104) and looking at the specs it does that quite nicely…

Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Specifications:

Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 780 3GB
Graphics Processing Clusters: 4 or 5
Streaming Multiprocessors: 12 ^-4
CUDA Cores: 2304 ⁺⁷⁶⁸
Texture Units: 192 ⁺⁶⁴
ROP Units: 48 ⁺¹⁶
Graphics Clock: 863 MHz ^-134
GPU Boost Clock: 1058 MHz ^-158
Memory Clock (Data rate): 6008 MHz
L2 Cache Size: 1534KB ⁺¹⁰²⁴
Total Video Memory: 3072MB GDDR5 ⁺¹⁰²⁴
Memory Interface: 384-bit ⁺¹²⁸
Total Memory Bandwidth: 288.4 GB/s ^+96.14
Texture Filtering Rate (Bilinear): 165.7 GigaTexels/sec ^+36.9
Fabrication Process: 28 nm
Transistor Count: 7.1 Billion ^+3.56
Connectors: Dual-Link DVI-I, Dual-Link DVI-D, HDMI 1.4 High Speed, DisplayPort 1.2
Form Factor: Dual Slot
Power Connectors: 1x 8-pin, 1x 6-pin
Thermal Design Power (TDP): 250 Watts ⁺⁵⁵
Thermal Threshold: 95 degrees C ^-3
Bus Interface: PCI Express 3.0

* The superscript numbers in green and red show the change as compared to the specs of GTX 680.

What is new here is the GPU Boost 2.0 support that was introduced with the GTX TITAN and even though the new GTX 780 brings higher power consumption and more performance it still manages to operate silently under load. It seems however the silent operation is a somewhat compromise with he Boost performance as the GPU operated with higher temperatures under load and thus can hardly use the maximum GPU Boost. However playing a bit with the fan settings and the GPU Boost 2.0′s 80 degrees default temperature limit for the Boost frequency can help get the full potential from the GTX 780 even if you don’t plan to overclock it.

I’ve been playing with a GeForce GTX 780 card in the last few days, so you can expect some benchmarks about the performance of the card in stereoscopic 3D mode using 3D Vision in the next few days. For now I can tell you that I really like what I’m getting in terms of performance from the GTX 780 and I’m definitely planning to replace my two thrust worthy GTX 580 GPUs running in SLI with it. I’ve decided to skip the GTX 680 in terms of upgrade and while the GTX TITAN was a bit more expensive that it was worth, now the price of the GTX 780 and the performance it offers make it a great product for playing games in high-resolution 2D or in Full HD stereoscopic 3D mode. For multi-monitor setups, both in 2D and in stereo 3D, going for two cards would still probably be a better option in order not to have to eventually make some compromises.

Hopefully the first Full Cover water cooling blocks for the GeForce GTX 780 will not take a lot of time before appearing on the market, because if you combine the new GPU with a good water cooling solution it will turn out to be a perfect combination – silent and cool operation and very high performance as both the GTX 780 GPU and the video memory is very overclocker-friendly, all you need to do is have it cooled properly. But even with the stock air cooling you can get good overclock performance if you don’t mind having the cooling of the card running a bit noisier as the stock cooler has a lot of potential for overclocking if you don’t mind the noise. The new GeForce GTX 780 hits the right spot for a really high-performance GPU that is still quite affordable, ideal solution for the more demanding stereoscopic 3D gamers that already have powerful 3D Vision-ready computers setup for S3D gaming.

Last year when Nvidia released the GeForce GTX 650 Ti it has turned out to be a decent budget card for 720p stereo 3D gaming that could also perform well in 1080p 2D mode, though with some compromises in details and no AA filtering for the higher resolution. Recently Nvidia has released an updated version of the GTX 650 Ti, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost, a new GPU that promises a bit better performance and some extra features. If you remember the GTX 650 Ti did not support Boost Clock and SLI and the new GTX 650 Ti Boost model adds support for these and though the number of CUDA cores remains the same, there are a few extra ROPs, and the GPU is running with a bit higher frequency along with a wider memory bus and faster memory.

Specifications of GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost:

CUDA Cores – 768
Graphics Clock – 980 MHz ⁺⁵⁵
Boost Clock – 1033 MHz
Texture Fill Rate – 62.7 GigaTexels/sec ^+3.5
Standard Memory Configuration – 2048 MB GDDR5 ^+1024MB
Memory Interface Width – 192-bit ⁺⁶⁴
Memory Clock – 3000 MHz (6000 MHz effective) ^{+300 (600)}
Memory Bandwidth – 144.2 GB/sec ^+57.8
Texture Units (TMU) – 64
Raster Operator Units (ROP) – 24 ⁺⁸
Power connectors – 1x 6-pin PEG
Power consumption – 134W TDP ⁺²⁴
GPU Thermal Threshold – 105 degrees Celsius ^-7

* The numbers in red and green represent the upgrade or downgrade of the specific parameter in the GTX 650 Ti Boost as compared to the GTX 650 Ti!

The stereo 3D benchmark results above were achieved on a mid-range computer – Biostar A960A3+ motherboard, AMD FX 4130 quad core processor, 4GB RAM and Windows 7 64-bit, together with a reference GTX 650 Ti Boost graphics card all of which were not overclocked. Testing on a few of the more recent and popular games in both stereoscopic 3D mode at 1280×720 resolution with high details and at 1080p resolution in non stereoscopic mode has shown very promising results, but you should forget about being able to play in 1920×1080 resolution in stereo 3 mode with this video card. I still recommend as a minimum for 1080p S3D gaming a GTX 660 Ti video card in order for you to have a good framerate and get a good overall experience when gaming with 3D Vision. Thanks to the SLI support that the GTX 650 Ti Boost however the option to use two of these cards in SLI might also be an interesting alternative to using a single GTX 660 Ti. Also enabling AA filtering at 720p resolution isn’t as taxing as on 1080p resolution in terms of performance drop, so you can get better quality without significant fps drop in order to compensate for the lower resolution.

As you can see you are also not going to have trouble playing most games in 1080p resolution in non-stereoscopic mode with high detail levels, though in some more demanding games you might have to sacrifice a bit to get more comfortable framerate. So if you are looking for a GPU in the price range of the GTX 650 Ti, then you should go instead for the replacement GTX 650 Ti Boost mode. It has enough performance for stereo 3D gaming at 720p resolution on a 3D HDTV for example and it also works quite well in 1080p 2D resolution for most games with the High detail levels. Again if you want a card capable of providing comfortable framerates for stereoscopic 3D gaming at 1080p resolution for a 3D Vision monitor you should start from something like GTX 660 Ti as a minimum.

Coming up next is to see how does the GTX 650 Ti Boost compare to the competition in the face of the AMD Radeon HD 7790 graphics that is in the same price range of about $150 USD and should be offering very similar performance…

Today while playing with a non-3D Vision ready 3D monitor I’ve noticed something interesting in the Nvidia Control Panel – an option to select Generic CRT display mode for stereoscopic 3D support with 3D Vision. And that 3D monitor worked just fine using both its own 3D glasses as well as with the 3D Vision glasses using the Generic CRT mode. Nvidia has stopped supporting the Generic CRT display mode a while ago, but it seems that they are bringing it back again. Have in mind that you need to have a 3D Vision IR emitter connected to the PC over USB in order for you to see the Generic CRT display option available in the Stereoscopic 3D panel. Also I’m using Windows 8 OS, so it is possible that it is only supported in it, unfortunately I cannot test it under Windows 7 at the moment, but you are welcome to try it out and post your results. I’ve checked that the Generic CRT display mode is present in both the latest WHQL and the latest Beta video drivers and works just fine. This could be good news for owners of Samsung 3D monitors that are not officially compatible with 3D Vision as well as other LCD monitors with support for higher refresh rates as well as for owners of old CRT monitors.