In response to AMD’s poorly named but well performing R9-290 and R9-290x, Nvidia finally decided to give the masses what they’ve been itching for since Kepler first launched: a fully enabled GK110 chip. Of course it looks similar to Titan and the GTX780 but the similarities go more than skin deep:
Cores are increased to the full 2880 cores of awesomeness coupled with pushing higher stock and memory clocks high enough for Nvidia to maintain the single GPU crown. Unlike the 780 the 780TI also has official quad SLI support although we expect this to be worthless as scaling is most likely as poor as Titan was. Unsurprisingly there is still 3GB of VRAM. With the exception of Titan Nvidia have never believed in future proofing with extra VRAM even though recent tests show a mainstream game like Battlefield 4 using almost the entire 3GB already. Of course all this was rumored and expected, as was the high MSRP of $699, but what was unexpected was a change in PCB. The voltage regulators have been redesigned, no doubt to deal with the extra power of more cores/higher clocks as well as the memory clocks. Check out this image from EK:
So far EK and XSPC have both confirmed that their Titan/780 blocks will not work on the 780TI. We expect this to be the case for other manufacturers. We therefore expect the new waterblocks to have slightly different VRM thermal results to our Titan/780 block roundup, however core performance should be very similar.
On the other hand cards with upgraded VRMs such as the Lightning, HOF, DC2 and Classified may not have to update their VRMs. The EVGA classified has been confirmed by Jacob as to not be changing it’s PCB so both EK and Swiftech/Hydrocopper 780 Classy blocks will still fit!
