no its not always. the 780 can easily match and sometimes beat the Titan when both are oced because the Titan can hit the tdp wall quicker. if the Titan could have higher tdp then it could pull away. unless running tri sli and playing with massive resolutions where the 3gb is a problem, its foolish to spend 350 bucks more.
If you're talking out of the box experience, or comparing the worst Titan sample against best 780, then maybe. Titan throttles pretty bad on stock bios. 780 just barely. However, with custom bios, as I showed before, 780 is having helluva hard time matching lower clocked Titan, let alone beating it. My Titan could bench @ 1202/3400 with 1.2v, it will probably take 1300/3500 780 to match Titan at those clocks.
I agree with your last sentiment though, 780 is so close, it's purely academic at this point. But 780 is not beating Titan. It's still #2.
You dont think your SB 2500k had any effect in the outcome, perhaps more CPU would of levelled the results?
Both card were benched in same system, if (and that's a big "if" @ 1440p) my CPU bottlenecks 780, it surely bottlenecks Titan too.