Conclusion

Lets take a closer look at the results in the games we tested. In this case we can see, that the performance improvement from the GTX 680 to the GTX 770 varies between 2.4 (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) and 7.3 percent (Far Cry 3). On average the GTX 770 is almost five percent quicker than the GTX 680.

One of the first things you will notice when digging for reasons why theses cards are almost as quick is the fact, that they are basically the same cards. For the GTX 770 NVIDIA is using a new revision of the GK104 chip. In fact, the GTX 680 and the GTX 770 even share the same PCB. The only differences can be found with clock speeds. The GTX 680 comes with a basclock of 1'006 MHz whereas the GTX 770 runs at 1'046 MHz. In case of the boostclock the GTX 680 does 1'059 MHz and GTX 770 is good for 1'085 MHz. Things become a bit more interesting when comparing memory clocks: the GDDR5 chips con the GTX 680 can cope with 6.0 GHz but the GTX 770 comes with some rather juicy 7.0 GHz chips. In this context we noticed that 3DMark Firestrike Extreme scales rather well with memory clocks, since otherwise we cannot explain a 25 percent performance gap between the two cards with this benchmark.
At this point we also want to have a quick look at power consumption. Running our test setup with the GTX 770 made it consume two watt more than with the GTX 680. Under load we notice, that the test setup equipped with the GTX 770 needed one watt less. We explain the increased efficiency of the GTX 770 under load with the new revision of the GK104 chips NVIDIA is using.

Last but not least we answer the initial question: should I upgrade? Well, no. Since the GTX 770 is basically the same card like the GTX 680 we much rather recommend to overclock your GTX 680 a little bit to even outpace a reference GTX 770. We definitely wouldn't waste a few hundred bucks on a new card, that is basically the old card.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 10 - Far Cry 3
Page 2 - Test Setup	Page 11 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 3 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 12 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Page 4 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 13 - Metro: Last Light
Page 5 - BattleField 3	Page 14 - GTA V
Page 6 - Bioshock Infinite	Page 15 - Power Consumption
Page 7 - Crysis 3	Page 16 - Performance Index, price
Page 8 - Call of Duty Black Ops 2	Page 17 - Conclusion
Page 9 - DIRT Showdown