In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Inno3D Ice Dragon Edition are noticeably better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition.

The GTX 680 has a 104 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 780, but the GTX 780 has 64 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 680. As a result, the GTX 780 exhibits a 51.1 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the GTX 680. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 680 has a 104 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 780, but the GTX 780 has 16 more Render Output Units than the GTX 680. As a result, the GTX 780 exhibits a 12.8 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the GTX 680. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GTX 780 was released over a year more recently than the GTX 680, and so the GTX 780 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 680.

Both GPUs exhibit very powerful performance, so it probably isn't worth upgrading from one to the other, as both are capable of running even the most demanding games at the highest settings.

The GTX 680 has 1024 MB more video memory than the GTX 780, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. However, overall, the GTX 780 has superior memory performance.

The GTX 780 has 105.9 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 680, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 780 is massively better than the GTX 680.

The GeForce GTX 780 Inno3D Ice Dragon Edition has 2304 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition has 1536. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 780 is 2410 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 680 is 1806. The GTX 780 having 604 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 780 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 680.

The GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition requires 195 Watts to run but there is no entry for the GTX 780. We would recommend a PSU with at least 600 Watts for the GTX 780 and a PSU with at least 550 Watts for the GTX 680. The GTX 780 has been recommended a PSU with 50 Watts more than the GTX 680. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 780 may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 680.