Move Aside, GTX 680: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 Review

To test graphics cards for both their power consumption and temperature at load, we utilize a couple of different tools. On the hardware side, we use a trusty Kill-a-Watt power monitor which our GPU testing machine plugs directly into. For software, we use Futuremark’s 3DMark 11 to stress-test the card, and techPowerUp’s GPU-Z to monitor and record the temperatures.

To test, the general area around the chassis is checked with a temperature gun, with the average temperature recorded (and thus noted in brackets next to the card name in the first graph below). Once that’s established, the PC is turned on and left to site idle for five minutes. At this point, GPU-Z is opened along with 3DMark 11. We then kick-off an Extreme run of 3DMark and immediately begin monitoring the Kill-a-Watt for the peak wattage reached. We only monitor the Kill-a-Watt during the first two tests, as we found that’s where the peak is always attained.

Note: (xx.x°C) refers to ambient temperature in our charts.

As with the GTX 780 and TITAN, the GTX 770 utilizes GPU Boost 2.0 to limit its temperature to 80°C, which we can see in the chart above. While the GTX 770 did idle at 2 degrees warmer than the GTX 780, it’s likely attributed only to the 1.4°C increase in ambient room temperature.

In the intro, we talked about the GTX 770’s TDP being 35W higher than the GTX 680. In real-world testing, the increase we exhibited was much less, just 16W.