NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Offers 2,304 Cores For $650

Vigile writes "When NVIDIA released the GTX Titan in February, it was the first consumer graphics card to use the GK110 GPU from NVIDIA that included 2,688 CUDA cores / shaders and an impressive 6GB of GDDR5 frame buffer. However, it also had a $1000 price tag that was the limiting specification for most gamers. With today's release of the GeForce GTX 780 they are hoping to utilize more of the GK110 silicon they are getting from TSMC while offering a lower cost version with performance within spitting range. The GTX 780 uses the same chip but disables a handful more compute units to bring the shader count down to 2,304 — still an impressive bump over the 1,536 of the GTX 680. The 384-bit memory bus remains though the frame buffer is cut in half to 3GB. Overall, the performance of the new card sits squarely between the GTX Titan ($1000) and AMD's Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition ($439), just like its price. The question is, are PC gamers willing to shell out $220+ dollars MORE than the HD 7970 for somewhere in the range of 15-25% more performance?" As you might guess, there's similarly spec-laden coverage at lots of other sites, including Tom's, ExtremeTech, and TechReport. HotHardware, too.

Comments

I can get an entire laptop for that cost

[MetalliQaZ]

I must have crossed the border into adulthood somewhere back there because I would never pay that much for a performance uptick in a video game. I can get myself a nice new laptop for that cash, and it would be still be proficient at 90% of today's games.

Re:I can get an entire laptop for that cost

[MachineShedFred]

The good news is that all the "I've got to have the latest and best to make all my friends and e-buddies drool" crowd will start unloading their barely-used last generation cards on eBay, and those of us that want good performance at a good price will benefit.

Re:Still?

[MetalliQaZ]

Is anyone else getting real tired of companies purposely crippling their high end products in order to sell them for less money? It's like openly broadcasting that their cards cost way too much to begin with.

It's a question of tolerances. The chips that come out of the fab are not 100% perfect. The designs are amazingly complex, and they usually contain some defects in the manufacturing process. If they don't meet the high-end specs, maybe they can disable the broken cores, relabel it as a mid-range chip, and sell for less money. It allows the yield to be higher and it lowers the price for ALL of the products.

Re:More Coors is always better

[fibonacci8]

But then you have to drink something to forget you were drinking Coors.