Question 1

Does the GeForce Logo on the side light up on this card?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and there is software that comes with the card that lets you customize the pattern it flashes in. Ex: Breathing/Flashing/etc. You can also change the speed of it flashing and the brightness!

Question 2

Will a Thermaltake 850 watt power supply support this video card?

Accepted Answer

Depending on the number of graphics cards, as one would be fine with a 850  watt power supply. Also, keep in mind that if the power supply is gold, platinum, or bronze it will operate better or worse depending on the temperature in the case  (cooling). If you want to run SLI, I would check if the power supply is NVidia SLI-certified.

Question 3

I am thinking of pairing the 780ti with an i5 4670k Do you think I will have any problems?

Accepted Answer

No problem at all. I run an i7 4770K Haswell in my build and this exact card does a good job of running with the new generation of processors. Very compatible with all builds I've seen. The 780ti is a very good card in my opinion, I've had zero problems since I bought it and sometime in the future I'll purchace a second to SLI. And if you're looking for that beafy power in your system it's the way to go while still being much cheaper than the former flagship cards from Nvidia.

Question 4

Hey guys, I'm relatively new to building pc's. But I was wondering, if i wanted to record, edit, videos as well as have a strong gaming computer, will this do the job? I've heard the gtx 690 is very good for gaming/video editing, but i dont have 1000 dollars to spend.

Accepted Answer

This will card will have no problem doing that, have had it for 1 month now and its great, plus nvidia has this software called Shadowplay that lets you record your game play and even stream to twitch, plus it doesn't put stress on your CPU because all the processing is done on the card it self. The 690 is a dual GPU and while it is good, its is also expensive and you can run into some micro stuttering like all dual GPU cards do. Also this is nvidia's new flagship card so it out performs all single GPU cards that nvidia has out at the moment including the titan. If you want to save a little money though then go with the 780 or 770 they are both amazing cards and you will have no problems running any game or have any problems with video editing and recording.

Question 5

I'm starting to lean towards this card (after looking at the R9 290X and other similar cards). Is the system I have in place now be a good match with this card (and/or if I need to update the PSU or something else)? This is the setup I have right now (minus a GPU):

-Cooler Master HAF X Full Tower
-Corsair Gold 850-Watt Gold Certified
-ASUS Sabertooth Z77 LGA 1155 ATX
-Intel i5 3570K 3.4 GHz
-Noctua 6 NH-D14
-G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 1600 (PC3 12800)
-Samsung Blu-Ray Combo SH-B123L/BSBP
-Samsung 1 TB SATA 3.0 Gb-s 32 MB Cache 3.5-Inch

This was the GPU I had before selling it: XFX HD 7970 Black Edition 3GB 1000MHz

I'm just wanting to make sure I'm not missing anything crucial before making this kind of purchase. Thanks in advance for the advice.

Accepted Answer

Hi.  Nice build you have there. I own this card and have to say it is the most powerful component in my system. I came from having a SLI, then TRI-SLI, then a GTX 580 3gb lightning so I've had my experiences.

Just as an example of the difference in power this thing has 2,880 cuda cores, or as ATI would call them "stream processors" as compared to my GTX580's 512 cuda cores which today can run games at high settings but struggles on ultra.

My 780 Ti is an absolute mammoth. It also overclocks itself and underclocks itself as needed. This card shoots up to 1200 Mhz while still staying quiet and never throttles. Go for it. Plain and simple.

As far as ATI 290x goes, Im not bias.  I made the decision to go with the 780ti because:

1- It IS the most powerful GPU on the planet
2- Shadowplay- Records my games with ZERO performance hit.
3- GPU Boost 2.0- OC's my gpu as needed
4- The reference design is absolutely sexy
5- Can also stream to twitch using Shadowplay with no hit as well.
6- Nvidias drivers, technologies (G-sync, shadowplay,Geforce Experience,GPU boost, PhysX, SLI, 3d,etc..), software and hardware design was just too rich to refuse.
7- Cooling for the 290x would cost you an addition 100-150$ and the card has issues.

Also do yourself a favor and get an SSD. As that would be the biggest upgrade in any system. I boot up in 6 seconds and games load blazing fast with this card, my cpu, and my 960gb SSD.

Hope you find this helpful, and Good Luck!

Question 6

Can I water cool this card?

Accepted Answer

The heatsink is very heavy. You can tell this heatsink was engineered to exacting specifications to cool this card properly. I would wait for EVGA to release their own custom card with waterblocks factory installed, or let someone else convert their stock heatsink to water blocks and post a howto video, along with evidence of a successful conversion (show the card running overclocked past factory speeds at full throttle for some period of time). Besides, this card is so blazingly fast, and runs cooler and quieter than R9 290/290X, I'm happy to leave it air-cooled.

Question 7

What is more future proof? I can't decide between this 780 ti 3gbs or two 770 4 gb cards. Both options come out to about the same price and I think two 770's benchmark higher then the 780 TI. However I've never had SLI in my machine before (though its sli ready)  and can't decide btween the two options. I currently only one one 1080p 120hz monitor, but would like to be 4k ready.

Two 770 4gb cards for around $850, or 1 780 ti 3gb card?

Accepted Answer

The general answer if you have the option of similar performance is to go with the more powerful single card.  At 1080p the 780ti will push 120 frames in all but a handful of games (Crysis, etc).  You also won't have to deal with SLI drivers, which if you don't upgrade  every time a driver releases can be an issue for gaming.

As for 4k, don't worry about it.  Nothing on the market short of two super high end cards (780+) can run it at 60fps.  It's all way too expensive and there won't be native content for it in the next several years.  So even if you intend to buy a 4k monitor in the next 2-3 years you'll just be upscaling.  It will take game makers several years to update their game engines, then a full development cycle (several more years) before anything gets rendered in native 4k.  Right now games are being rendered in 1080p, we don't even have 1440p content.

I personally love the 780ti, I bought two because I want to run 1440p @ 120hz, but if you really wanted to do 4k that's the kind of setup to have.  You can always add a second 780ti, a third 770 won't scale nearly as well and the difference between 3-4gb of VRAM won't matter in the lifespan of these cards.

Finally, keep in mind that benchmarks rarely show overclocking.  A single 780ti can overclock a good way while dual cards are more heat limited and also get synced to the speed of the slower card.  So unless you have great air flow and two golden cards the OC performance of the 780ti would be better.  It's more than powerful enough and ironically is less expensive...

Question 8

Hey there would anyone know if this card would fit well into a alienware aurora R4? I have the 680 at the moment and am looking to upgrade.

Accepted Answer

I have no idea of the size of the Alienware Aurora R4. What I would suggest it that you measure your present video card and compare that to the length of the GTX780 Ti. If the GTX780 Ti is longer, cut a piece of cardboard to match the length of the GTX780 Ti and see if there is enough room for it to fit into your case.

On other thing to keep in mind is that the power cords fit into the top of the GTX780 Ti, while they fit into the back of other cards. If your present card has the cords in the back of the card, there will be a bit of extra room with the GTX780 Ti because the cords won't interfere.

Question 9

Plan on running 3 displays, do you have the cables available to accomplish this?

Accepted Answer

Well, the displays should bring the cables needed for the setup. DVI  cables are the ones you should be using, dual DVI is even better if you have 120hz or 144hz monitors in order to enable those high refresh rates.

Question 10

Is this compatible with a PCI Express 2.0 SLI slot install?

Accepted Answer

If I recall correctly PCI express 2.0 and 3.0 are the same physical size and you can run a 2.0 card in a 3.0 slot and vice versa, however, you will not get 3.0 performance out of the card.  I would strongly recommend upgrading your whole system if you are looking at a video card in that price range since it may be outdated later if you wait to upgrade your motherboard.

My opinion is it's best to either upgrade everything or nothing, sometimes a video card is the exception if you're planning to upgrade the rest soon (less than a year).

Questions & Answers