Nvidia Geforce GTX 770 Review (after 13 months of usage)

[AlTech]

In June 2014 I bought an Nvidia Geforce GTX 770 with 2GB of VRAM for $349 US dollars. 13 months later it is $329 on Newegg at the time of this review you should not buy it. 6 months ago it was a great deal, it performed well and not like the average high end graphics card today.

 

In many games, I often had major frustrations because of the measly 2GB which force me to use 1080p at high settings with some custom modifications to them. Instead, I would rather play at Ultra settings or at high settings at DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution), which by the way is awesome and I wish every game supported.

 

In 2015, 2 years after its launch, it is still the same price it was released at which makes me wonder why Nvidia even keeps it around even when the successor (Geforce GTX 970) has been out for more than 4 months. The only reason I could find was that they needed something priced the similar to the AMD Radeon R9 285 which costs about $299-$329 while delivering better performance.

 

In battlefield 4, while playing at high settings I had no trouble maintaining more than 60 fps and often got around 90-100 fps with a maximum of 130 fps. However, in minecraft I found that I was getting an average of about 60 fps and got around 130 fps maximum. This result really shocked me as minecraft is supposed to be an easy to run game for even the most mediocre hardware and it led me to believe that minecraft is not at all optimized.

 

All this led me to the conclusion that the Geforce GTX 770 is not worth it anymore and despite being one of my favorite graphics cards of 2014 in terms of value for money, it no longer holds that position and I no longer recommend it. For less money, you can buy a Geforce GTX 960 which features all the new technology in second generation Maxwell architecture like VXGI (Voxel Global Illumination). On the other hand you can also get the new Geforce GTX 970 for the same price. It features double the vram, 4.3% more cuda cores, 10% more performance, 18% less texture mapping units, 75% more render outputs and 37% less power consumption.

 

The Good: Decent performance in AAA titles.

 

The Bad: Value/money and mediocre performance while playing non demanding games.

 

The Ugly: Price and  low vram quantity.

 

Edited September 13, 2020 by AluminiumTech
Fixed text formatting 5 years late

[arvark]

A tip, the Cuda Cores on the GTX 970 aren't only more, but they're more efficient, in fact, the 970 beats the 780, even if it has less cuda cores (1664 vs 2304) they are more efficient, so it takes less cudas on Maxwell to equal Kepler's performance.

[centurion_08]

A tip, the Cuda Cores on the GTX 970 aren't only more, but they're more efficient, in fact, the 970 beats the 780, even if it has less cuda cores (1664 vs 2304) they are more efficient, so it takes less cudas on Maxwell to equal Kepler's performance.

 

Interesting.

 

On a side note, i'm still using the msi gtx 770 2gb myself. Was thinking about 970 or 980ti for 1080 but i guess 980ti is an overkill.

[AlTech]

Interesting.

 

On a side note, i'm still using the msi gtx 770 2gb myself. Was thinking about 970 or 980ti for 1080 but i guess 980ti is an overkill.

I'm waiting for GTX 1070/1080.

[AlTech]

A tip, the Cuda Cores on the GTX 970 aren't only more, but they're more efficient, in fact, the 970 beats the 780, even if it has less cuda cores (1664 vs 2304) they are more efficient, so it takes less cudas on Maxwell to equal Kepler's performance.

 

A tip, the Cuda Cores on the GTX 970 aren't only more, but they're more efficient, in fact, the 970 beats the 780, even if it has less cuda cores (1664 vs 2304) they are more efficient, so it takes less cudas on Maxwell to equal Kepler's performance.

Yeah but many youtubers have complained that fewer cuda cores = worse performance in professional applications.

[AlTech]

Side note - It's hilarious how bad vanilla minecraft runs on this.

 

As for modded minecraft, it's a joke

[Thorium19]

Considering I got mine for cheaper than a 960 the other month, I'm actually quite pleased with it for a "short term" graphics card. It has pretty good performance and OCs decently, and although I haven't ran out of VRAM yet, my usage is quite high. If you can get a 770 for around or less than a 960 then it's a steal if you ask me, but more than a 960 and it becomes worthless.

[BentheMuffin]

Side note - It's hilarious how bad vanilla minecraft runs on this.

 

As for modded minecraft, it's a joke

Minecraft is cpu intensive, I always had above 60 fps 1080p with a 3rd gen i5 and no gpu.

Also my 760 has gone up from $170 when I bought it to over $300.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DIH8OUK/?tag=pcpapi-20

[Silyy097]

Side note - It's hilarious how bad vanilla minecraft runs on this.

 

As for modded minecraft, it's a joke

Minecraft is cpu intensive, I always had above 60 fps 1080p with a 3rd gen i5 and no gpu.

I have a 4th Gen i5, and it stutters when im loading the AMPLIFIED biomes on max render distance. Though it is well above 60 with shaders, GTX 970.

[BentheMuffin]

I have a 4th Gen i5, and it stutters when im loading the AMPLIFIED biomes on max render distance. Though it is well above 60 with shaders, GTX 970.

Maybe it was because I was playing with normal terrain on normal render distance. Also could be storage related if you are loading lots of land at once.

[WereCat]

I got my 770 2GB for €380 at launch.... Hefty price for 770 but there was Bitcoin craze going around back then and 7970 was almost €500 and GTX 680 also.

[Swndlr]

In terms of price, for the most part if youre in the market for a GTX 770 you should probably be looking at the used market at this point.

Obviously the retailers like Newegg, etc... arent gonna drop the price, if anything theyll raise it to turn you off from buying it, theyd rather sell you a newer card and either way, Nvidia cards really never drop in price when theyre being sold as new anyway.

[AlTech]

I have a 4th Gen i5, and it stutters when im loading the AMPLIFIED biomes on max render distance. Though it is well above 60 with shaders, GTX 970.

I also have a 4th gen i5 but Amplified doesn't stutter a lot

[Daveeede]

Nice review OP. The 2gb limit is really the only reason I would upgrade my 770. It runs great for pretty much every game I play with the exception of the newer AAA memory hog titles. 

[pit5000]

i got a 770 Windforce, it does just fine. If I ever needed more in the short term, I think I might just go for used 770 for SLI (used for around $200) as a stop gap until nvidia has HBM

[FellTheSky]

 

 

The Bad: Value/money and mediocre performance while playing non demanding games.

 

 

 

Would you explain me this? How is bad value when playing "non demanding games"

[Hunter259]

Would you explain me this? How is bad value when playing "non demanding games"

Because you can get similar performance much cheaper or get much better for a small premium.

[FellTheSky]

Because you can get similar performance much cheaper or get much better for a small premium.

 

Well, i dont agree on that. I mean if he is talking of the card being overkill for "non demanding games", i would argue that since DSR is here, almost any game can be hard to run, of course im not saying that counter strike 1.6 on 4k will get 99% gpu usage, but things like skyrim, and suck on 4k can be very demanding

In the other hand, if we are talking on games like hearthstone... well you can run that on a cellphone, so by that argument you might as well get a HD 5450

[Swndlr]

I also have a 4th gen i5 but Amplified doesn't stutter a lot

Same

[alphaproject]

I don't agree simply based on the fact that I bought the 4 Gb version and that I paid $237 with tax and shipping. The card is worth what you decide to pay for it in my opinion. When they first came out, was it worth the money....heck no. I used a 7850 for a long time but I needed some more GPU power in 2015. I think running The Witcher 3 and not dipping below 30 fps using some Ultra settings and some high is perfectly acceptable. I even use Hairworks. I just tweaked the ini file. I got mostly a steady 45-57 and I lock my fps to 57 in rivatuner. It maxes out Bioshock Ultra everything running solid 60fps in 1080p. That's good enough for me.  I really wanted the 780 Ti but I didn't want a 3Gb card, I wanted a 4 Gb card and the 780 Ti when I bought this was WAY too much for what it was worth in my opinion. Some guys wanted $400 for them and the 970 was already out, lol. If not for Ramgate I'd have bought the 970 though.

[Dabombinable]

Side note - It's hilarious how bad vanilla minecraft runs on this.

 

As for modded minecraft, it's a joke

I'm running MC with medium shaders, milleniare and most of the main mods off a GTX 970 and i5 4440, and after a while hovering at 85fps (limit of the monitor) the performance drops to sub 50fps, and I'm only playing at 1024x768. MC just plain sucks now when it comes to what runs it well.

[Silyy097]

I have a 4th Gen i5, and it stutters when im loading the AMPLIFIED biomes on max render distance. Though it is well above 60 with shaders, GTX 970.

I also have a 4th gen i5 but Amplified doesn't stutter a lot

Same

I did not state a lot. I just meant a little, like every 3 seconds or so.

[Elapo]

A tip, the Cuda Cores on the GTX 970 aren't only more, but they're more efficient, in fact, the 970 beats the 780, even if it has less cuda cores (1664 vs 2304) they are more efficient, so it takes less cudas on Maxwell to equal Kepler's performance.

 

Oh my, I didn't know that. I always assumed my old 680 was still better for computing than a single of my new 970's, because it had more cuda cores.

[arvark]

Oh my, I didn't know that. I always assumed my old 680 was still better for computing than a single of my new 970's, because it had more cuda cores.

The 970 still has more cuda cores (1664 vs 1536 of the 680).

[Elapo]

The 970 still has more cuda cores (1664 vs 1536 of the 680).

 

Woops, you're right, I was under the impression the 680 had 2048 for some reason.