In terms of acoustics, the GeForce GTX 780 is simply awesome. It is easily among the quietest high-end graphics cards we have ever tested. Period. End of story. In real world conditions, the GeForce GTX 780 is somewhat quieter under load than a GTX 680 and is much quieter than a Radeon HD 7970.

Part of the reason for the 780's great acoustics is a new fan speed control alogorithm NVIDIA developed. For the GeForce GTX 780, NVIDIA developed a new fan controller that uses an adaptive temperature filter with an RPM and temperature targeted control algorithm to eliminate unnecessary fan fluctuations that contribute to fan noise. The end result is fewer fan speed fluctuations and a "smoother" acoustic profile.

The performance of the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 graphics card is somewhat mixed in my view. In some cases the GK110 GPU with 2,304 CUDA cores is able to stand out from the Radeon HD 7970 GHz that currently sits on the "not ridiculously priced" graphics card throne and in other cases, it doesn't. Even if we take away the 1920x1080 resolution from our analysis, since no one buying a $650 graphics card should be thinking about buying it if they are only using a single 1080p display, there are some cases where you have to question the performance gaps. At 2560x1600, the GTX 780 is 15% faster in Battlefield 3, 22% faster in Crysis 3, 2% faster in DiRT 3, 18% faster in Far Cry 3, 23% faster in Skyrim and about 1% faster in Sleeping Dogs. Even at 5760x1080, the performance advantage never gets past 21%. For a $220 up charge, that might not seem like huge performance increases.

Interestingly, there is more and more frame time variance creeping up into the results with the GTX 780 and the GTX Titan. This is due to the surge in CPU bottlenecks that occur when you add more and more GPU horsepower to the system. NVIDIA's frame metering technology can really only alleviate the issue when the GPU is the primary bottleneck, so when the other components cause the problem NVIDIA is mostly helpless. AMD's setup seems to have the other problem - when the GPU is the primary bottleneck CrossFire just can't get out of its own way.

In many ways, the GTX 780 is being positioned as a "flagship" device much like the GeForce GTX 690/GTX Titan and the Radeon HD 7990. NVIDIA seems to say "sure it is expensive, but aren't you worth it?" Appealing to enthusiasts' pride is definitely effective and will likely temp quite a few GeForce fans and people that want the best card they can get that is NOT $1000.

If you want talk in terms of percentages, the GTX 780 will run you 44% more than the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition and 47% more than the GTX 680. None of the single card performance results show us a difference in frame rate and gaming experience that quite match up to that so what are we left with? NVIDIA does have better acoustics, they do have better thermals and power consumption, the cards look better (but that is a personal choice) and I do believe that the software stack NVIDIA has is better. From drivers, to multi-GPU support to the new GeForce Experience software, NVIDIA is definitely continuing to invest in PC gaming even if its not on the bundle side.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 isn't the fastest single GPU graphics card on the planet, the GTX Titan is. It isn't the best value in terms of frames per dollar either, that belongs to the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. Instead the GTX 780 sits firmly in between being the best value option and the "best" option so I find it hard to decide who should actually buy it. With a $650 price tag, it doesn't quite hit the "ludicrous" rate of the GTX Titan, GTX 690 and the HD 7990 but the price hike from the GTX 680 and the HD 7970 is not insignificant.

NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 780 is a much harder sell than any previous GeForce launch even though it isn't a bad card in any way. Is it faster than the GTX 680? Yes. Is it faster than the HD 7970? Yup. Is it less expensive than the GTX Titan? Indeed. Those answers, alone, will sell lots of them; but, it can't win the performance per dollar argument that even enthusiasts pay attention to.