In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 6GB are noticeably better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition.

The GTX 680 has a 247 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 23.6 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 247 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 5.9 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 780 has 2048 MB more video memory than the GTX 680, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 780 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 780 has 96.1 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 6GB has 2304 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition has 1536. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 780 is 2078 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 680 is 1806. The GTX 780 having 272 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 780 6GB requires 250 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition requires 195 Watts. 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 requires 55 Watts more than the GTX 680 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 780 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 680.