I agree with you there, the 780 with a heavy overclock performs just a little above an 290 and right around a 290X where as the 780ti with its ghz edition cooler is a nice step up from its stock version and performs really well for a strong single GPU card (Ironically in Crysis 3 it was the best). My favorite part of the review was reading the GTX 780ti OC (Overclocked) part, seemed funny reading that it was an overclocked card that was overclocked
.
I bought a 780 lightning not long ago...
I am annoyed.
Live and learn...
Meh, just overclock the life out of it, you've got an excellent performing card that will overclock with ease. Honestly no one saw this coming, I mean they slaughtered one of their own cards priced 350 bucks higher on a whim.
Sorry my bad, I rephrased the comment incorrectly. 100 bucks more for 10% extra performance?
"Cons: Pricey, pricier and priciest they are, too. At $500+ or more, you can expect to pay a serious premium over AMD's $400 Radeon R9 290, which is often similarly fast".
Well you have to look at it this way, the card is the "Single Fastest GPU Money can buy" at the moment. With that overclocked GHz version and cooler, its a very fair amount of power and performs beyond well in most games. Yea a 290X is a significantly better price point card and performed close to it without being overclocked, but its still not as fast as a 290X. The price point will of course scare most people off because its such a premium, most people if they want a single GPU and read benchmarks will probably grab a 290 and like stated above grab an aftermarket cooler for some overclocking headroom and a much more silent run.
This windforce edition cooler is so nice, its probably in my top 3 favorite coolers (Air) for years now because it has such a nice cooling system and allows for such robust overclocks. Great review as always.
Edit: You know, thinking about this more and more, you know what coolers I miss seeing
These Bad Boys, I mean I had 2 of these and man were they great. I wish PNY would do some of these on some of the 780ti. I was able to get 980mhz core clock on both cards and still maintain a very cool card (Though I hate letting a card run warm and told the fans to spin up to 100% at either I think 65 or 70 Celcius. Even though I Went back to custom loops, I felt cards like this were just a great idea for those who wanted serious overclocking without having to go to extremes.