MSI GTX 780 Gaming 6 GB Review

Name: MSI GTX 780 Gaming 6 GB
Brand: MSI

W1zzard

on Jun 26th, 2014,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: MSI

(18 Comments) »

Introduction

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 780 has been on the market for a little over a year now, offering excellent gaming performance since. In more recent times, NVIDIA released the GTX 780 Ti. Its performance is higher due to its increased shader count, but it also comes at a higher price.

NVIDIA carved the GeForce GTX 780 out of the GK110 by enabling 12 out of 15 streaming multi-processors on the die, which works out to 2,304 CUDA cores. This sets the texture memory unit count to 192, a 50 percent increase over its predecessor's 128. At 384-bit width, the memory bus is the same, and the GPU still packs five graphics processing clusters and comes with 48 ROPs, which is yet another 50 percent increase. The reference design card we're putting under the knife in this review features 6 GB of GDDR5 memory.

MSI decided to create a GTX 780 with 6 GB VRAM instead of the 3 GB usually found on the GTX 780. The company also has increased the MSI GTX 780 Gaming 6 GB's clock speeds to beyond those of a Titan, which should definitely result in interesting numbers.

With a price of $589, the card retails for around $100 more than a 3 GB GTX 780 and for around $80 less than a GTX 780 Ti.

GeForce GTX 780 Market Segment Analysis
	GeForce GTX 770	HD 7970 GHz Ed.	Radeon R9 280X	GeForce GTX 680	GeForce GTX 780	MSI GTX 780 Gaming 6G	Radeon R9 290	Radeon R9 290X	GeForce GTX Titan	GeForce GTX 780 Ti
Shader Units	1536	2048	2048	1536	2304	2304	2560	2816	2688	2880
ROPs	32	32	32	32	48	48	64	64	48	48
Graphics Processor	GK104	Tahiti	Tahiti	GK104	GK110	GK110	Hawaii	Hawaii	GK110	GK110
Transistors	3500M	4310M	4310M	3500M	7100M	7100M	6200M	6200M	7100M	7100M
Memory Size	2048 MB	3072 MB	3072 MB	2048 MB	3072 MB	6144 MB	4096 MB	4096 MB	6144 MB	3072 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	384 bit	384 bit	256 bit	384 bit	384 bit	512 bit	512 bit	384 bit	384 bit
Core Clock	1046 MHz+	1050 MHz	1000 MHz	1006 MHz+	863 MHz+	902 MHz+	947 MHz	1000 MHz	837 MHz+	876 MHz+
Memory Clock	1753 MHz	1500 MHz	1500 MHz	1502 MHz	1502 MHz	1502 MHz	1250 MHz	1250 MHz	1502 MHz	1750 MHz
Price	$320	$470	$270	$400	$480	$590	$400	$530	$1000	$660

Packaging

You will receive:

Graphics card
Driver CD + documentation
PCIe 6-pin to 8-pin adapter
PCIe Molex to 6-pin adapter
DVI adapter

The Card

At first glance, the card looks very similar to the MSI GTX 780 Gaming 3 GB, only the metal bar at the top left of the card has changed. The PCB design remains the same. MSI increased the memory by using higher capacity memory chips. Dimensions of the card are 30 cm x 13 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include two DVI ports, one HDMI port, and one DisplayPort. You may use all outputs at the same time, so triple-monitor-surround gaming is possible with one card.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support.

Two SLI connectors are available, which allows you to combine up to three GTX 780 cards in a Triple-SLI, multi-GPU configuration. NVIDIA decided to disable Quad-SLI on the GTX 780, so that feature is reserved for the GTX Titan only.