The GeForce GTX 780 arrived in mid-2013 to take second place in the hierarchy of NVIDIA GPUs. Since then, a number of manufacturers introduced custom video cards these models.
The advantage is that the engineers of the companies can create complete solutions around the chip. Even if the GPU is the same as other models, the architecture of the video card causes it to behave in different ways, always looking for the best performance.
The Galaxy is one such company, and the board that we will test is the GeForce GTX 780 Hall of Fame. A differentiated product that comes with some important advantages over the competition. The manufacturer claims that the model is among the fastest GTX 780 already launched. Is that true?
Packing
Within a relatively simple packaging, we found a number of relatively common accessories: a manual of instructions, some adapters for power cable, DVI to VGA adapter, CD with drivers and a warning door. The plate is accommodated in a cradle of antistatic polystyrene, protected against impacts.
Design and cooling system
Most manufacturers employs proprietary technologies in the development of your video. While the chip is the same in all of them, what's around it is almost always different. And the Galaxy invested heavily in this aspect, creating a video card with a very good eye and, above all, efficient.
The main visual highlight can be noticed right away: the PCB is built entirely in white, running from the very traditional black or green standard to which we are accustomed in the video cards.
In practice, you can imagine that the effect is purely aesthetic, but it's not just that. The team designed the Galaxy circuits in a manner designed to best take advantage of the connections between electronic components between the 10 different layers of the PCB. Everything was done to ensure maximum efficiency.
At the top of the plate, you can see two really cool details: a lighted panel illuminates to show the "Hall of Fame" seal and metal pipes (heat pipes) coming out of the steam chamber and go to the ends of the sink heat.
All this combines with part of the casing that covers the two coolers. The pieces are full of details and the set has a great look. When you look at this video card, soon realizes that this is not a traditional piece.
This video card works with greater frequency than other models, and this requires a more robust cooling system to account for everything; was precisely what the Galaxy did.
The two coolers of 90 mm positioned at the top covering most of the heat sink, which is almost the size of the video card. The disadvantage of the large size of the pieces is the space that holds everything in the cabinet: it is necessary to use three slots to accommodate the GeForce GTX 780 inside the PC.
The advantage is that the system is efficient and keeps the plate with a relatively stable temperature; and all this without making much noise. Of course, since you do not activate the Hyper Boost mode. This operating mode can be activated via a physical button located on the faceplate of the connections.
In this panel we also have two DVI, one HDMI and one DisplayPort, plus the button mentioned earlier. This piece even be a nuisance in time to fit the video card in the cabinet. His position is very high and this complicates the plug on the video card.
The back of the video card is covered with a metal plate that has two functions: dissipate heat better components and ensure a little more protection to the set.
Kepler GK110
The chip used in this card is the GK110, the same of the most powerful NVIDIA video cards. When we analyze the GeForce GTX 780 reference, provided by NVIDIA itself, we talked about it, but it's always good to remember.
NVIDIA GPUs not only develops games. With the advancement in technology, it became possible to incorporate accelerators company in machines working in various industries, such as medicine, engineering and science. These areas require powerful computers and able to solve problems efficiently.
That's where the Kepler GK110. The model offers a high data processing power through a new parallel processing technology. The chip is built with 7.1 billion transistors, making him one of the most complex microprocessors ever built. No wonder that the GK110 was chosen to compose the Tesla K20X accelerators, those used in the Titan model - the most powerful computer in the world.
A major advantage with respect to the Fermi Kepler, the previous generation is the processing capacity per watt, which is three times larger, resulting in higher performance with lower fuel consumption.
The features offered by GK110 are vast:
Dynamic Parallelism: Dynamic parallelism allows the GPU to assign work to herself, synchronizing results and controlling processes intelligently, all without resorting to the CPU at any time. Thus, developers can create multiple parallel work routines that can run entirely by the GPU, leaving the CPU free for other more important tasks;
Hyper-Q: Hyper-Q allows multiple cores of a CPU can talk with one GPU at the same time significantly reducing the idle time of the processor and, consequently, increased the performance of the system as a whole by better leverage the GPU ;
Grid Management Unit: GMU, or Grid Management Unit, GPU can help to better balance work routines, such as dynamic parallelism. The GMU is what defines the work of the GPU, organizing grids processes so that they run more efficiently;
NVIDIA GPUDirect: the GPUDirect allows different GPUs on a single machine or GPUs located in the same network to exchange data directly, without the need to resort to the CPU or the system's main memory.
The Kepler GK110 was designed to incorporate the Tesla accelerators, so the goal of NVIDIA to develop the model was to create the microprocessor parallel processing world's most powerful.
GeForce GTX 780 Hall of Fame
The GK110 that moves the GeForce GTX 780 HOF has 12 units with SMX STT 192 each, which means that it has 2304 CUDA cores. Furthermore, the GPU still works at a frequency of 1,006 MHz-base (1.058 MHz in turbo mode).
Although the amount of graphics processors to be the same, this card works with a higher frequency than the reference model. This is one of the highest clocks that exist between the plates of the GTX 780 series, and all this with a traditional air cooler.
The GTX 780 HOF also has 3 GB of memory running with a 384-bit interface and clocked at 6 GHz. This ensures a transfer rate of up to 288 GB per second.
This video card also features support for up to four monitors and can work with a resolution of 4096x2160 pixels. Support for all technologies of NVIDIA is also present in this model.
For the GPU to function properly, you must ensure that the power supply is perfect, and this board this is managed through the chip IR3550 PowIRstage, replacing multiple MOSFETs and can provide a current of up to 60A with up to 90% efficiency. Altogether, the Galaxy GTX 780 HOF is capable of delivering 480 amps of current to the GPU.
Another important component is the digital PWM CHiL CHL8318 which manages 8 + 2 stages and is constructed to ensure the supply of all the energy needs plate. It can also manage overclocking efficiently and without the need for external equipment.
The other components on the board following the same quality standard as the POSCAP capacitors, which have up to 2x more durable than conventional models. Furthermore, inductors 10 Coiltronics are designed to deliver up to 70 amps of current at a temperature of 125 ° C.
NVIDIA resources
This video card also has all the unique features developed by NVIDIA. Among them is the PhysX, a system that performs the calculations of physics to bring the games more realistic effects. Clothes, particles and lighting can get very detailed with PhysX enabled.
Beside him are advanced features anti aliasing, FXAA and the like TXAA, able to ensure optimum visual quality without compromising much performance of the system as a whole. Adaptive V-Sync synchronizes the images with the frequency of the screen to ensure fluidity in animations where the board has power to spare. The effect is turned on and off in real time to ensure a good balance between performance and visual quality.
The GPU Boost is a technology that can increase the clock of GPU in real time offering more firepower while the maximum temperature of the chip is not reached.
Performance tests
To meet all the power of the video card, we conducted a series of practical tests with it. The video settings were maintained in standard mode, except V-Sync, which was disabled. The tests are divided into three different stages: games, synthetic benchmarks and computational power.
Machine Tests
CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K @ 3800 MHz;
Motherboard: EVGA X79 SLI;
Memory: 16 GB quad-channel RAM G.Skill Sniper DDR3 2333;
SSD: Kingston HyperX 3K 480 GB;
HD: Seagate 3TB ST3000M001;
Source: Corsair AX860i.
Games
Batman: Arkham Origins
Batman: Arkham Origins uses a modified Unreal Engine 3 and DirectX 11 combined with various special effects to ensure the visual version. The game also takes advantage of NVIDIA PhysX to bring features more realistic physics.
Battlefield 4
Battlefield 4 uses the new Frostbite 3 engine to bring special effects and larger, more detailed environments, including many particles, high resolution textures and tessellation.
All this through DirectX 11.
BioShock Infinite
The third BioShock uses a highly modified version of Unreal Engine 3 and was completely redone from scratch to ensure optimal visual experience. The game world is large and full of visual effects.
Crysis 3
The engine is the CryEngine 3 Crysis 3, which this time features a number of new graphics features, including smoke and volumetric light and dynamic vegetation and fabrics, textures in high resolution. For all this to be possible, the game runs exclusively with DirectX 11.
GRID 2
GRID 2 uses the EGO 3.0 engine, developed by Codemasters and present in many racing games the developer. The game features stunning visual effects, including beatings, smoke effects, light and shadows.
Metro: Last Light
Metro: Last Light harnesses the power of modern GPUs to bring great graphics, high definition textures and much destruction with incredible special effects. The game is built with the 4A engine and also supports PhysX, NVIDIA.
Total War: Rome 2
Total War: Rome 2 is a strategy game that puts hundreds of characters simultaneously in the same field of battle: huge sets and full of detail, like rivers, rocks and vegetation, need a powerful machine to be rendered to perfection.
Tomb Raider
The reboot of the series came with several new features compared to previous games. The open world has many places to explore, and the title works with high definition textures and TressFX feature that ensures the protagonist's hair incredibly detailed game.
3DMark
3D Mark is perhaps the best known benchmark software market. Worldwide, people use this software to measure the performance of their machines. The version used is divided into three categories, each of which has a different level of complexity.
Valley Benchmark
The Valley uses the Unigine Benchmark to test the limits of the hardware. The software shows a mountainous region with a huge amount of trees and plants of different species in an area of 64 million square meters. The Valley also displays effects of light and weather variations, putting the power of video proof plates.
Heaven Benchmark
The Heaven Benchmark was developed to explore all the features of the video cards, testing the limits of the hardware in specific situations. The test is based on Unigine graphics engine and utilizes the latest in lighting, physics and Tessellation system to determine the power of the video card.
Civilization 5
Civilization 5 offers a tool that uses DirectCompute benchmarks to calculate the rate of decompression of textures in the game. The more frames per second test presents, the better the GPU.
Folding @ Home
The FAHBench is a benchmark that simulates the calculations of Folding @ Home, a research initiative jointly via the internet that aims to assist in finding cures for diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The application uses OpenCL to compute the data.
Luxmark 2.0
The Luxmark belongs to the graphics suite LuxRender. What this test does is simulate a number of effects of ray tracing through the OpenCL language.
Temperature
Temperature measurement, we had a great surprise. The cooling plate that is very efficient and can easily dissipate heat. Even with the cooler in normal operating mode, the results did not reach 80 ° C. With the turbo mode activated, the temperature remained below 70 ° C - very rare feature in video cards of this caliber working with high average heat.
Worth it?
The market is full of different models of GTX 780 and choosing between them is a task that must be done calmly. The Galaxy comes out ahead of other models for bringing a very neat architecture that has quality components. Ready to work even in stressful situations.
The performance difference this to other models is considerable, especially if the plates are in the same price range. She presented results similar to other more powerful video cards like GeForce GTX 780 Ti, which shows an interesting advantage.
Visually speaking, this GPU is also very beautiful, and the only downside of the design is the size: it's not everyone who can sacrifice three slots inside the case for a single video card.
The good part is that this space is not occupied at random. The cooling system can do the trick and still keeps stable even with higher clocks than the standard temperature.
Ultimately this video card is a great investment, even if it costs a little more expensive than other GTX 780 on the market. Outside it can be found for $ 540, a few dollars more than similar video cards. The only problem will be finding the model on sale, since in many shops it is exhausted.
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