Card Layout and Photos

Right out of the box it is clear that the GTX 770 looks basically the same as the GTX 780. In some cases this could be a bad thing, but considering how amazing the GTX 780 looks this is a major plus. The GTX 770 looks amazing, this is one of the rare situations where I doubt there will be any/many aftermarket coolers that can compete with the styling but we are excited to see what everyone will have to offer. The all metal fan shroud combines a heavy duty look with the window peeking in to see the cards heatsink, something you normally don’t get to see with fan shrouds covering them up to focus the air over top of them.

Also to those who are wondering, I know I have mentioned it before but other than the window none of that is plastic. It looks like it could be plastic in the pictures but once you get it in hand will be blown away by its quality. It’s amazing how much of a difference going to a metal fan shroud can do to someone’s impression of quality.

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Even with a window in the side we still have a full sized fan to push the air over the heatsink and keep the GTX 770 cool. I love that Nvidia also machined out a small metal cap that goes on the center of the fan, it ties it into the rest of the metal fan shroud perfectly and gives a nice color contrast against the black fan.

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Really the only difference in the GTX 770’s cooler compared to the GTX 780 or even the Titan is the GTX 770 logo that was cast in it. It’s a small touch but it is MUCH better than a sticker or something similar that I could see some manufactures doing to save costs.

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Even the vented area at the end of that card that gives you an up close view of a small area of heatsink that covers the power circuitry on the GTX 770 looks good. You can also see the three screw holes for adding additional support if you need it.

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Up on the top edge of the GTX 770 we have the Geforce GTX logo to show off what kind of card you are sporting. In a lot of cases this is the only part of the video card you might see. The rest of the pretty fan shroud gets a little hidden when facing down in the case but Nvidia has made sure your new card won’t go unseen. Not only does the green color catch your eye, but it also will light up and really stands out when the lights are turned down.

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Just like its big brother the GTX 770 requires an 8 pin and a 6 pin power connection to power everything. This goes along with its only slightly lower TDP as well so it’s not a huge surprise.

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Just like the GTX 780 the GTX 770 has two SLI bridge connections meaning it is capable of running up to quad SLI if you feel the itch or need the extra power in your rig. That is assuming your motherboard, power supply, and case all will support four GTX 770’s.

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This is just the reference card, but I love that it has a black PCB; it goes great with the front fan shroud design. They could have stepped it up even more with a back plate but it would only be for aesthetics as the shroud already does a good job of keeping the card from bending around.

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Down on the PCI slots we have the same connection configuration as the GTX 780. You get two dual link DVI plugs, one full sized HDMI, and one full sized DisplayPort. Only one of the two DVI ports will allow analog support you can see the one with the support on the bottom here. That means only one DVI to VGA adapter is supported. This is fairly standard but I like to remind people just in case.

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Putting the GTX 770 next to the recently introduced GTX 780 we can finally see how similar the two cards really are. In fact the kick ass looking fan shroud design is exactly the same other than having 770 on it rather than 780. The cards are the exact same length as well. It isn’t until we flip them over and take a closer look at the PCB’s next to each other we can finally see a few differences. If you look where the GPU is you can see the 770 has noticeably less going on. Around the GPU there are 8 memory chips where the GTX 780 has 12 around the GPU to make up its extra gig in frame buffer. There are a lot of things that do match up between the two cards, but they are different where it counts.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #31185 30 May 2013 19:56
One of two reviews that we published today, check out Nvidia's new GTX 770

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