NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Steams Ahead On Linux
As some good news for the Linux graphics community after discovering the AMD Radeon R9 290 is currently a big disappointment on Linux (likely due to the Linux Catalyst driver not being kept up as well as the Windows Catalyst version), I was testing the GeForce GTX 780 Ti along with some other new NVIDIA GPUs and it's been a breeze. The GeForce GTX 780 Ti in particular has been a beauty on Linux and is the focus of today's Linux hardware review.
The GeForce GTX 780 Ti was released earlier this month and is what NVIDIA launched as "the best gaming GPU on the planet." The GTX 780 Ti is a more advanced version of the GTX 780 that launched earlier in the year. The GeForce GTX 780 Ti has an 875MHz base clock frequency with 928MHz Boost frequency, 3GB of GDDR5 video memory, and it has 2880 CUDA cores. Like the original GeForce GTX 780 and the more expensive GeForce GTX TITAN with 6GB of video memory, the GTX 780 Ti is based as well on the GK110 GPU. Over the GTX TITAN's GK110, there's more shader and texture units enabled (192 and 16, respectively) along with higher frequencies of 928 over 876 MHz for the Boost frequencies, but only half the video memory capacity albeit at a higher frequency.
The dual-slot NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti graphics card has two dual-link DVI, DisplayPort, and HDMI connections. The GTX 780 Ti supports powering up to four displays with a maximum digital resolution of 4096 x 2160. For powering the graphics card that consumes up to 250 Watts, there's a six-pin and eight-pin PCI-E power connections that are required. Should you be in need of a lot of GPU power and have a lot of money to spare, the GTX 780 Ti can be used in SLI configurations.
At the time of writing, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti is retailing for just about $700 USD while the GeForce GTX TITAN is still command a one thousand dollar price tag. On the AMD Radeon side the R9 290 is going for just above $400 USD and the flagship R9 290X is selling for $550 and up.
We didn't have a launch day review of the GeForce GTX 780 Ti article as the graphics card didn't arrive until last week. It's been very difficult in the past obtaining review samples from NVIDIA for carrying out Linux hardware reviews at Phoronix. Most of the past NVIDIA GeForce reviews on Phoronix were from hardware I purchased myself, from a few of NVIDIA's AIB partners, or even graphics cards that were purchased and sent over by NVIDIA's Linux/Unix driver managers.
Hardware vendors in general tend to be hesitant or uninterested in seeing consumer benchmarks conducted on Linux. Thus it's been very difficult to have Linux hardware reviews out on all new NVIDIA GPUs. Fortunately, since earlier this month I've been in contact again with their media manager for GeForce products and their software/driver development lead. Bryan Del Rizzo was kind enough to send out a batch of new GeForce 700 series GPUs, for which I am very grateful. Up today is the GeForce GTX 780 Ti testing (along with results from other GPUs) while in other forthcoming articles I'll be looking at the other three GPUs independently. There will also be other forthcoming benchmark articles on Phoronix like new NVIDIA Linux vs. Windows performance comparisons, driver analysis/comparisons, etc.