In this evaluation we have looked at the new GeForce GTX 780 Ti for $699 against the AMD Radeon R9 290X for $549 at Ultra HD 4K display gaming. In our original evaluation of R9 290X, we found that it dominated gaming at Ultra HD 4K display gaming against the GTX 780 and GTX TITAN. The new GeForce GTX 780 Ti changes this.

In our evaluation today we have found out that the new GeForce GTX 780 Ti equalizes the gameplay experience with Radeon R9 290X at Ultra HD 4K display gaming. In most of our games we were able to play at the same gameplay settings on both cards. There were a couple though that were different. In Far Cry 3 the Radeon R9 290X had a clear advantage that allowed us to play at a higher setting compared to the GTX 780 Ti. In Metro: Last Light though we could enable PhysX due to the support on NVIDIA GPUs. If the R9 290X could support this, it certainly had the performance to pull it off.

For the most part, performance was similar between the two video cards. There were a couple cases where the 780 Ti was small percentages faster, and a couple where the R9 290X were small percentages faster. On the whole, both cards are so similar to each other at Ultra HD 4K gaming that it would be impossible to discern between these while gaming on a 4K display. On both cards we had to make image quality sacrifices. Neither are fast enough to max the games out at that resolution. SLI and CrossFire is needed to get the most out of 4K gaming. Even these fast single-GPU video cards cannot pull off high game settings.

GTX 780 Ti 3GB versus R9 290X 4GB

In all of our testing today, we tried to look for the differences between 3GB and 4GB of VRAM while gaming. We encountered no scenarios in these games where the 3GB of VRAM on the GTX 780 Ti was holding it back at Ultra HD 4K gaming. We also encountered no scenarios where the 4GB was an advantage on the R9 290X.

The reason why we aren't seeing the difference between VRAM capacity right now is because these cards aren't fast enough to exploit the kind of game settings that would push the limits of VRAM. At this resolution these just aren't fast enough to exploit the highest in-game settings, and high levels of AA.

We think the difference in VRAM capacity isn't going to show itself until you are running SLI and CrossFire plus you need to be running the right game that loads up the VRAM. Right now, that is few and far between in the games that demand such a large VRAM capacity. BF4 is one game that may show a difference, and we have lots planned for BF4 testing in the future.