The GeForce GTX 770 Roundup: EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI Compared
by Ryan Smith on October 4, 2013 9:00 AM ESTSleeping Dogs, Bioshock, & Crysis 3
Moving on to Sleeping Dogs and its resource heavy SSAA implementation, we finally see the factory overclocks on these cards start to spread their wings, and in the process we see the cards separate themselves a bit. The fastest card by a nose is the Gigabyte 770OC Windforce, which picks up 11%. This is actually better than the Gigabyte overclock, which points to thermals also playing a factor. The MSI card follows, also at 11%, and finally the EVGA card 1fps back at 10%. It’s unfortunate for all 3 vendors that their factory overclocks aren’t this potent in every game, as these are the kind of results that help their customized cards stand out.
With Bioshock we’re back into the previous pattern of limited performance gains over a stock GTX 770, again likely due to memory bandwidth limitations. Gigabyte is once more technically the leader of the pack at 4%, but with EVGA and MSI only .2fps back it’s for all practical purposes a tie.
Our final game, Crysis 3 matches our earlier pattern of very limited gains over the stock GTX 770. At 47.7fps, the MSI GTX 770 Lightning takes an insignificant .2fps lead over the other cards in this roundup, with the overall performance gains amounting to just 3% over a stock GTX 770.
What’s clear from all of this is that EVGA, MSI, and Gigabyte are not going to be able to sell themselves on their factory overclocks alone. There are performance gains to be had, but outside of one game (Sleeping Dogs) the gains are only a few percent, which translates into just a frame or two per second in most cases. The fact that EVGA and Gigabyte aren’t charging extra for their designs is in retrospect a wise move here, as it would be difficult to charge anything meaningful for these factory overclocks given the very small performance increases. At least as far as stock performance is concerned, to differentiate themselves all 3 companies will need to rely on differentiation in their coolers, software, and support.
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dtolios - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Downloading evga precision x or msi afterburner is a bit easier than swapping heatsinks me thinks...With this logic reviews should be using only the included drivers, which would dreadfully penalize the card with the older drivers packaged.
In a review that dares to mention "Bios flashing" for a gpu, downloading a universal overclocking utility should be considered as trivial as making sure you have current nvidia or amd drivers.
neaoon - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
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Elijafire - Saturday, March 22, 2014 - link
Everyone's a critic :p Personally I found the reviews of the software management tools to be useful and informative.vailr - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
EVGA also has several GTX 7xx cards with dual or even triple bioses.http://www.evga.com/articles/00767/
Would also be interested in further information on whether any video cards being reviewed include a "UEFI GOP video firmware", which Windows 8 would require for installation and running in UEFI mode.
Ryan Smith - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Our new testbed (coming soon to a review near you) will be UEFI ready. So we'll finally be able to do some UEFI GOP articles.Gast - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
"The end result being that MSI has put together a very good card that’s easily competitive with everything else we’ve seen, but without crossing the line into unofficial modifications, the EVGA’s $35 price premium is hard to justify."Shouldn't that be MSI's $35 price premium is hard to justify?
Ryan Smith - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Whoops. Yes. Thank you for pointing that out.Elijafire - Saturday, March 22, 2014 - link
You are paying for the highest stock overclock.kwrzesien - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Nice review! These are exactly the three cards I was considering, and I think it leaves me leaning in the Gigabyte direction unless I just by the Lightning for the great looks. :)