The GTX 780 Ti card is 26.5cm long and 11cm tall. It is a dual-slot design, which is nothing surprising as the cooler design resembles the GTX Titan. On the upper side we see the GeForce GTX logo with LED backlighting, which was also used on the GTX 690 / GTX Titan and GTX 780.

The cooler sports a silver aluminum casing for the cover and a polycarbonate window. Through the window you can see the heatsink. The secret to good cooling is a good vapor chamber design, which also allows engineers to come up with compact yet powerful heatsinks that don’t have tons of heaptipes sticking out of them.

The fan management is great, so the 75mm fan seems rather docile and won’t surprise you with sudden rpm changes. Nvidia’s Boost technology has matured and version 2.0 takes care of things admirably. The GPU temperature threshold is set at 85 degrees Celsius and the card overclocks automatically until the temperature reaches the threshold, provided the load and power consumption readings are not already maxed out. Note that for the GTX 780 the temperature threshold is set at 80 degrees Celsius

During auto-overclocking the temperature could be kept within the 85C envelope by accelerating the fan, but Nvidia wanted to keep things quiet, so Boost 2.0 tends to reduce the GPU Boost clock instead of speeding up the fan. Users who place an emphasis on low noise should like this approach, but performance freaks might want a bit more. We will demonstrate that it’s possible to get better results simply by revving up the fan, without manual GPU overclocking.

There are no memory modules at the back of the PCB since the GTX 780 Ti has 3GB of memory rather than 6GB used on the Titan.

As far as video outs go, most users will have nothing to complain about since the card features two dual-link DVIs, 1.4a compatible HDMI and DisplayPort. Note that all four video outs can be used simultaneously. Nvidia included an HDMI sound device within the GPU, so there is no need to connect the card to your SPDIF out to get audio and video via HDMI.

The GTX 780 ships ready for multi-GPU action. In addition to standard dual-SLI, it can also be used in triple- and quad-SLI setups, as it features two SLI connectors. The fact that this is a reference dual-slot design also helps.

A combination of 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors is used on the GTX 780 Ti. The GTX 780 Ti, GTX 780 and Titan have a TDP of 250W, although we expect the GTX 780 Ti to consume a bit more than the GTX 780.