The GeForce GTX 770 Roundup: EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI Compared
by Ryan Smith on October 4, 2013 9:00 AM ESTShogun, Hitman, Far Cry 3, & Battlefield 3
Having taken a look at the specifications and construction of EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI’s cards, let’s dive into the matter of their performance.
As a reminder the MSI GTX 770 Lightning has the highest factory overclock and the greatest power headroom (TDP 260W). However none of these cards has a memory overclock, and therefore performance gains will not always track the GPU overclock.
The fastest card here ends up being the MSI card, but not by much. The 4% gain over the stock GTX 770 is enough to be measurable and repeatable, however it doesn’t come close to MSI’s GPU overclock. Consequently at less than 1fps difference between the MSI, EVGA, and Gigabyte cards, it doesn’t really stand out. We’re likely facing a memory bandwidth limited scenario in our very first benchmark.
Hitman is much the same story as Shogun. The fastest cards are the MSI and Gigabyte cards, which tie for a 5% gain over a stock GTX 770, but they lack the performance gains to match their GPU overclocks. Furthermore with the EVGA card only behind by less than a frame per second despite it being the lowest of the factory overclocks, they’re really no better than tied. So once more we’re looking at some degree of a memory bandwidth bottleneck. Which just goes to show why it was so important that NVIDIA paired GK104 with 7GHz GDDR5 for this card, as extra memory bandwidth is clearly crucial.
Interestingly the Gigabyte card technically takes the lead here despite the fact that it has a slightly lower GPU clock than the MSI card, but at .2fps it’s little more than experimental variation. A 3% performance gain from the factory overclock once again points to a memory bandwidth bottleneck, which prevents these factory overclocks from shining.
Battlefield 3 is generally a repeat of Far Cry 3. Gigabyte once again has ever the slightest lead due to the variation in our test results, while no one is improving on the stock GTX 770 by more than 4%. In the case of the Gigabyte and EVGA cards this is essentially free performance, but it’s not much to talk about.
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MarcHFR - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Hi RyanTwo question
- 38 dBA is very high for idle. What's the measuring distance ? Background noise with computer off ? Noise of the computer with fanless graphic card ?
- What are the model of 7970 and 7970 GHz tested ?
Thans a lot !
Ryan Smith - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
1) It's fairly close; under a foot. The idea isn't so much to measure absolute noise as to compare and rank cards.2) Reference 7970. HIS IceQ X2 7970 GHz Edition.
MarcHFR - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
Thanks, so less than one foot from the closed Thermaltake Speedo, that's it ?And what about background and computer (without active graphic card) noise ? What is the sound-level meter used ? Thanks
PC Perv - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
It is interesting to see how far the custom cooling solutions (and custom PCBs) have come on video cards. I know it is nothing new and obviously marketing-driven, but nevertheless gives consumers more choices and better experiences.Thank you for thorough review, Ryan.
PC Perv - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Even betweein the same OEM's cooler's, I see how they "evolved." For instance, Gigabyte's WindForce had quite a few shortcomings at first - no heatsinks on memory/VRMs, fan rattling and getting worse over time, etc. It's great to see that they are learning and improving.Slomo4shO - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
I would love to see an expansion to the OC section of these reviews and having OC figures for the comparison cards as well (760, 780, 7970, and 7970GE). Can you or whoever is writing up the review the upcoming R9 280X also include the OC benchmarks of the 770s in the overclock section of that review?marraco - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
Something that would be very useful and valuable for differentiation purposes would be a card easy to clean. All of my cards get his radiators completely occluded with dust from time to time, and cleaning them is incredibely annoying.I wish it could be as easy as trowing the radiator and fans to the dishwasher. But it never is as simple. I don't dare to wet my fans, because they are not detachable from the engines. And removing the radiator mean having silicone paste to reinstall them. Frequently I don't ever have silicone paste. I need to buy more, and that's a delay, and an impediment to clean the cards at convenient times.
Same goes for CPU and power refrigeration systems.
ShieTar - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Is there any chance to add an SLI of 2x GTX 760 to this round of benchmarks? This option costs less than a GTX780, but has the potential of out-performing a Titan. Therefore it would be very interesting to see how it performs in reality.The Warden - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Ryan, can you tell me if this GTX 770 would be a good choice to replace my very old ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT for the specific purpose of improving my Final Cut Pro editing processes? I just don't know if the graphics cards play that big a roll in the editing displays and playback for Final Cut, and if I am just fine with what I have.Chloiber - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
I'm really disappointed by the EVGA card. I currently own a 770 SC ACX. It's loud in idle (fan won't go below 1400rpm), it's pretty loud under load. Why do I even buy a custom card? For the 50MHz higher boost?They clearly forgot what a custom card is all about. You can get a silent BIOS from the support which reduces the idle fan speed to 1100rpm. Still way too loud for my taste.
Same goes for the ASUS DC2OC by the way. It's quieter in idle, but fans won't go below 1100rpm.