10 Aug 2021 - Graphics card reviewed

This GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition graphics card is considered budget with poor modern game performance when playing anything more demanding than indie game requirements.

DirectX 11 gaming system requirements will be met by this gpu.

This PC hardware performance game review for the GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition graphics card, when running 2023 more popular games, lets us see what type of FPS this card gets when playing at 1080p, 1440p and 4K screen resolutions and ultra settings. This card runs recommended graphics requirements of 301 games from the top 1000 most demanding games being played today.

With 1080p being the most common gaming resolution at the moment we explored how well the GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition can run Far Cry 6 at 1080p and saw it return weak frame rates at the following graphics settings - Low: 38 FPS, Medium: 30 FPS, High: 20 FPS and Ultra: 15 FPS. For performance contrast we can see that Star Citizen is predicted to return a reasonable 48 FPS at Ultra 1080p.

As the PC gaming masses explore larger screen resolutions we decided to run some game checks at 1440p across a few popular games. We discovered the GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition ran Far Cry 6 to a weak performance level. Results across the graphics settings looked like this, Low: 29 FPS, Medium: 23 FPS, High: 15 FPS and Ultra: 11 FPS. Another game researched was Star Citizen with predictions of L: 96FPS, M: 75FPS, H: 51FPS, U: 36FPS. And then we checked graphics card performance on Battlefield 2042, which returned L: 5FPS, M: 4FPS, H: 3FPS, U: 2FPS at 1440p. After a look at the popular games running at 1440p with the GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition, this is not a first choice gaming resolution. While this graphics card would likely be more suited to 1080p gaming, you may be able to make some graphical tweaks in the game options to improve your stability at 1440p.

How many years will the GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition in your PC? This GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition card has 12 to 18 months of latest AAA game play left in it before upgrading should be considered

Whats a good PC graphics upgrade for the GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition? A good choice when looking to upgrade the GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition would be the RX 5000 Series Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB which meets 716 of the 1000 top game’s recommended system requirements and has 22% better performance. Alternatively we would suggest getting a R-500 Series Radeon RX Vega 64 8GB, as it can run 956 of the top 1000 demanding game requirements today with 72% increased graphics performance.