14 DAY TRIAL // The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti graphics card is supposed to be the strongest video card out there, and it is, but Gainward decided to make it better anyway. The result was the GeForce GTX 780 Ti Phantom.
Gainward is one of the oldest partners that NVIDIA has, which means that it's had a long time to perfect its PCB and cooling technologies.
That is why the “Phantom” hardware design exists, because it's based on a tried and true formula of stronger PCB parts and better cooling.
Normally, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti has the Kepler GK110 GPU, 2,880 CUDA cores and all, running at 875 MHz, with 928 MHz being the top GPU Boost threshold.
That much is enough to outdo even the GTX Titan, and run in the same league as dual-GPU cards like NVIDIA GTX 690 and AMD Radeon HD 7990 (though still a bit behind).
Gainward took the GPU and pushed the base clock to 980 MHz, while the top boost setting has been changed to 1046 MHz.
Five 8 mm heatpipes soldered by a copper base take the heat away from the GPU, and the memory chips for that matter.
Said heat is dissipated throughout the large cooler and removed by the three fans, which happen to be removable and, thus, easy to clean.
An 8-phase PWM with DrMOS is present too (extreme overclocking capability and efficiency), along with the "EXPERTmode" feature which, in the EXPERTool software, can really push performance beyond factory parameters (which are already stretched).
On that note, the 3 GB of GDDR5 VRAM are left alone at 7 GHz clock speed. Gainward must have felt it was already more than enough.
All in all, the Gainward GTX 780 Ti Phantom should be about 10% faster than the original and cooler. The price should be of a bit over $700 / €700.