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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ThomasS31 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Do you measure the noise in open desk setup?Or in a particular case?
I think (actually sure) that the difference between card coolers, their thermal efficiency heavily depend on the environment they are in. Open desk does not simulate any real case airflow hence you may get false rpm (lower) and noise characteristics vs in a real life in-case scenario.
Ryan Smith - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
All of our GPU testing is in a case, noise testing included. Specifically we use a Thermaltake Speedo (though that's getting retired next week).zlandar - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Be nice to have the Asus 770 card. It has a very large heatsink which makes it ideal for single GPU overclocking IMO. Drawback is the extra slot taken up if you are planning to SLI.maecenas - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...The Asus 770 is two slots, but definitely would have liked to have seen it in this review. I have the Asus 660 - really like that heatpipe system, very quiet and efficient
yodies - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Ryan, great article. EVGA has a 770 with 4GB of VRAM for sale as well. What sorts of differences would the additional RAM make?kwrzesien - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Gigabyte has a 4GB Windforce 3X too. Maybe these could justify another article? It makes me think I would like to see a deeper dive between these three cards plus their 4GB brothers in just one or two games but at multiple resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and something bigger) and quality settings, trying to find where clock rate and memory bandwidth tradeoff as the limiting factor. One of the games should be something that showed a difference in today's test and the other should be one that didn't.Still, I think it is pretty clear that the 770 is a great performer especially for a small chip like the GK104. It makes me wonder what a chip like this would do if they scaled it up to GK110 size and kept it strictly a gaming chip.
DanNeely - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
HardOCP looks at extra ram card regularly, I don't think any they've had in the last few years showed any benefit from the extra memory in gameplay.A5 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Yeah. It'd probably help if you did SLI on a multi-monitor setup, but at single-GPU resolutions the amount of memory isn't going to hurt on you on these.GBHans - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Fwiw, the 4gb version of the evga 770 I have also achieves these same over clocks as Ryan saw on the 2gb model, including on the memory. I run triple 1440x900=4320x900, and as several have commented, it's probably really only on those very high resolutions where the 4gb memory comes into play. In case it helps, when running BF4 with settings at mix of mostly ultra & some on high, afterburner reports VRAM usage in ~2.4gb range on most maps.Taristin - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
It would be awesome to see a review of one of eVGA's niche cards, like the GTX770 Classified Hydro Copper. I'm running one in my system atm, and love it, but would love to see what's said about it from professional reviewers.