Nvidia releases GTX 770 based on GTX 680 hardware

GPU-maker Nvidia has unveiled the GTX 770 graphics card, which is set to retail for a recommended price of $399 (£329). The GTX 770 is based on last year's GTX 680 and makes use of the same GK104 Kepler chip. That gives it 8 SMX units and 1536 CUDA cores, but with a slightly higher clock speed of 1046 Mhz. Nvidia's GPU Boost 2.0 technology steps that up to 1085 Mhz.

The GTX 770 will be offered in 2GB and 4GB 256-bit GDDR5 memory configurations. The memory sees a substantial performance boost from the 6.0 Gbps speed of the GTX 680 to 7.0 Gbps, giving the card a total memory bandwidth of 224.3 GB/s.

The card's enclosure also sees an improvement, being based on the same cooling system as the GTX Titan and GTX 780. The thermal design power is 230W, with a requirement of 600W power supply.

Nvidia is promising performance improvements of up to 65 percent over the GTX 570, and 43 percent over the GTX 670.

The GTX 770 is the second card to be launched in the 700-series. The first, the GK110-based GTX 780, was launched last week. GameSpot's review called the GTX 780 a "brilliant graphics card that lets you crank every game to the extreme."