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If you are buying a performance graphics card today to play the latest Direct X 11 games, then Nvidia have a solution to suit. It has been interesting this week to analyse the range of Jetstream cards from Palit.
The Palit GTX760 Jetstream will suit the widest audience. It is currently available in the United Kingdom for around the £210 inc vat mark. As our testing has highlighted today, this solution is very capable and will power the latest games at 1920×1080 with high image quality settings without any trouble.
This Palit version builds upon Nvidia's reference design adding a custom two fan cooling system. This helps to reduce noise levels and enhance cooling performance. The cooler is actually very quiet and even though Palit have boosted the core speed from 980mhz to 1,072mhz there is still a little headroom available if you need to push an extra couple of frames per second in a demanding title.
The GTX760 Jetstream does struggle a little to power some of the latest DX 11 games at 2560×1600, especially if you want to maximise the image quality settings as we have in this review today. There is also a serious challenge in the shape of the last generation GTX670. Several models have dropped well below the £200 mark in the last week – this overclocked Zotac GTX670 for instance is available for £179.60 inc vat from Scan. I don't think I have seen a better deal in the last couple of months.
The Palit GTX770 Jetstream is the direct replacement for the GTX670 and has recently seen some price cuts in the United Kingdom. It is available right now from Amazon for £309.99 inc vat, which is a competitive price especially when factoring in the fantastic three fan high end cooling solution incorporated. I was a little disappointed to see that Palit had not applied a core overclock on this card. We noticed there was a moderate level of headroom after tweaking in MSI Afterburner and we could increase from the default clock speed of 1,046mhz to around 1,122mhz. Even when factoring in that every card will overclock differently, we would say that a 40-50mhz ‘out of the box' core clock increase would be safe enough.
Even in a default clock state the Palit GTX770 Jetstream exhibits excellent performance at both 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions. When the GTX760 starts to struggle at 2560×1600 with higher image quality settings, the GTX770 can power ahead enough to smooth out the frame rates. This was particularly noticeable with Tomb Raider and Total War Rome 2.
The custom cooler on this card is excellent, holding load temperatures at around the mid 70's celcius mark under gaming load. The fans don't have to work too hard either, meaning noise pollution is very acceptable.
The star of the show for us today is the Palit GTX780 Super Jetstream. The company have incorporated a very heavy three fan cooling system which is able to maintain a very impressive load threshold around 67c when gaming. The fan profile has been tweaked to offered a balanced dynamic between low noise emissions and excellent cooling performance.
For the audience who want to game at 2560×1600 with ultimate image quality settings, this card is certainly the best choice. This was particularly evident in our intensive Metro Last Light test when the other cards on test struggled to cope with the increased shader demands.
Impressively the GTX780 Super Jetstream has plenty of additional headroom on the core. A reference GTX780 is clocked at 863mhz and Palit are shipping this Super Jetsteam model overclocked to 980mhz. By the time we had finished we had a stable overclock of 1,076mhz, putting it ahead of the flagship GTX Titan in regards to pure Direct X 11 game frame rate performance. When factoring in the low noise levels, refined thermal curve and performance at ultra high resolutions this is one of the most impressive video cards we have tested to date.
At £559.98 inc vat it certainly isn't a spur of the moment purchase, however if you are chasing the best Direct X 11 frame rates and have the cash, then we feel it is a great purchase. It certainly ranks as one of the finest high performance video cards we have ever tested.
You can also buy all of the video cards on test to day from the ebuyer page here.
All of these cards are deserving of our highest accolade – the MUST HAVE award.
Pros:
- All solutions are top of their respective fields.
- low noise emissions.
- some additional OC headroom on all cards.
- strong thermal performance.
Cons:
- GTX670 prices right now mean the GTX760 and GTX770 look expensive, if you can manage to snag a GTX670 deal before they sell out.
Kitguru says: The current Palit GTX7 series is extremely impressive. We await the new cards from AMD – can they mount a serious challenge?
that 780 looks like gigabyte windforce card you reviewed last week? – looks good mind you. but a rip off?
I have a Palit GTX650Ti, I personally would go with them again.
Great review. And finally, a review that actually turns TressFX on even when using Nvidia GPUs. I wish all reviews did this. Good job Kitguru.
I’ve noticed the 4GB variant of the Palit GTX 770 Jetstream performs worse compared to their GTX 780 and GTX 760 in terms of cooling. I think it’s mainly because of the fins, they’re running the length of the card while using 3 fans. There’s probably some turbulence going on there which lessens the effectiveness of the cooler to expel heat. However, their 2GB GTX 770 Jetstream has the same cooler design of this GTX 780 right here so it’s gonna perform marginally better.