{"id":36964,"date":"2013-08-13T04:44:08","date_gmt":"2013-08-13T03:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=36964"},"modified":"2013-08-25T08:58:42","modified_gmt":"2013-08-25T07:58:42","slug":"evga-gtx-770-sc-4gb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/evga-gtx-770-sc-4gb\/","title":{"rendered":"The EVGA GTX 770 SC 4GB Benchmarked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meet the EVGA GTX 770 SC 4GB, a higher-clocked and cooler-running card than the reference GTX 770, packing 4GB of ram instead of only 2GB.\u00a0We received a EVGA GTX 770 Superclocked video card from EVGA that is markedly different from the reference version, besides having 4GB of ram.\u00a0 Although the reference GTX 770 uses a much higher-quality cooler than that used in the reference GTX 680, there is still room for improvement with EVGA’s dual-fan ACX cooler.\u00a0\"EVGA<\/a> At the end of May, Nvidia released the GTX 770\u00a0as a direct challenge to the HD 7970 GHz edition. At\u00a0the $400 pricepoint, it is replacing the GTX 680.\u00a0 The GTX 770 uses the same GK104 GPU as the GTX 680 with a few new additions that enable higher performance. \u00a0The new additions to 700 series include the Titan’s and the GTX 780’s Boost 2.0 controls and a little more board power which enables higher clocks.\u00a0 The GTX 770 uses 7GHz GDDR5 memory as an upgrade over the GTX 680’s 6GHz memory because the 256-bit bus is narrow for such a highly-clocked GPU.\u00a0 Below is pictured the reference GTX 770 which uses an advanced blower-style cooling fan that is also shared by the Titan and the GTX 780.\"Nvidia<\/a>We are going to focus on the EVGA GTX 770 SC’s performance and especially on overclocking it beyond its base clocks (1111\/7010MHz) which will go beyond the\u00a0highest user Boost overclock to 1215MHz<\/a>\u00a0by nearly 100MHz (to over 1300MHz) that we got from our reference GTX 770 (1046MHz plus 90MHz core overclock).
\n\"EVGA<\/a><\/p>\n

The EVGA GTX 770 Superclocked edition<\/h2>\n

There are going to be many varieties of the GTX 770 with their suggested base price starting at $399 which also include some factory overclocked SKUs. Here are three comparisons of EVGA GTX 770 pricing:<\/p>\n

\u00b7 Reference GeForce GTX 770 2GB – $399.99<\/p>\n

\u00b7 EVGA GeForce GTX 770 2GB Superclocked – $419.99<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00b7 EVGA GeForce GTX 770 4GB Superclocked – $459.99<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Currently the EVGA GTX 770 SC 2GB version is $409.99 after ten dollar mail-in rebate at Newegg<\/a> and at Amazon.\u00a0 <\/a>The 4GB version that we are reviewing today is $459.00 but is out of stock at Newegg<\/a> although it is available for shipping from Amazon<\/a>.\u00a0 We need to ask,\u00a0 is the EVGA GTX 760 SC 2GB worth 20 dollars more than the reference version and is the 4GB version worth forty dollars more than the 2GB version?
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The GTX 770 Comparison in 3 parts – Single-GPU <\/strong>(today), SLI & Tri SLI, and 2GB vs 4GB vRAM
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For this evaluation, you will see us pit the EVGA SC GTX 770 4GB at factory clocks (1111\/7010MHz) and also further overclocked, against our PowerColor reference reference-clocked HD 7970 (925\/1375MHz) and also at GHz Edition Boost speeds of 1050MHz\/1500MHz. We are also going to compare with the reference GTX 770 2GB plus 10 other enthusiast-class cards to give the reader our “Big Picture.\u00a0 For this evaluation, we are benching with 30 modern games and 4 synthetic benchmarks at 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions.<\/p>\n

This particular evaluation is not designed to compare 4GB vRAM versus 2GB.\u00a0 Performance differences are rarely seen even at 2560×1600, but rather at widescreen resolutions using 3 panels such as at 5760×1080. \u00a0 Our comparison of 2GB versus 4GB vRAM will be published later on this month, after we evaluate GTX 770 SLI and Tri-SLI.<\/p>\n

For this evaluation, we will compare the performance of the EVGA GTX 770 SC with its main competitor, the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. The HD 7970 GHz edition can be purchased for as little as $375, or for overclocked versions to nearly $500<\/a> without any current game bundle.\u00a0 A coupon for a free digital download of Splinter Cell Blacklist<\/em> is included with the EVGA GTX 770 SC. We will also see if we can overclock our EVGA GTX 770 SC further to narrow the performance gap with the much more expensive GTX 780 ($650).<\/p>\n

Since we do not want any chance of our CPU “bottlenecking” our graphics, we are testing all of our graphics cards by using our Ivy Bridge Intel Core i7-3770K at 4.50GHz<\/a>, 16 GB Kingston “Beast” HyperX DDR3 at 2133MHz<\/a>, and an EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard<\/a>. This EVGA FTW motherboard features 16x + 16x PCIe 3.0 specification for CrossFire\/SLI which we will test in the next article covering the GTX 700 series. \"\" The Core i7-3770K at 4.5GHz is more than enough to differentiate even high-end video cards at high resolution and at high detail settings. \"\"<\/p>\n

Before we look at our test bed and run benchmarks, let’s unbox our EVGA GTX 770 Superclocked edition and look at its specifications.<\/p>\n

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The EVGA GTX 770 SC<\/h2>\n

The EVGA GTX 770 SC is an interesting card but there is nothing fancy to see from the box. The card arrives in large EVGA box that advertises the card without its specifications on its outside other than it is “SC – Superclocked”. It emphasizes 4GB of GDDR5 memory and mentions PCIe 3.o, PhysX, 3-way SLI, DirectX11 and 3D Vision Surround.\u00a0 EVGA is proud to remind everyone that they are Nvidia’s number one partner in the USA.\"Box-cover\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The back of the EVGA box goes into more detail about support for 4 concurrent displays with the card’s connectors and we see the key features of the card as well as EVGA’s premium 3 year warranty is highlighted:\"Box-obv\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Great utilities are included, including EVGA’s PrecisionX overclocking utility<\/a> which includes an improved GPU voltage tuner.<\/p>\n

The video card comes well-protected in anti-static plastic shell. We prefer to reuse, recycle and store static bags although we understand EVGA decision for the dual-purpose packing which keeps the card both safe and static free.\"contents-all\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Inside the box besides the new GTX, we find a driver CD, manual, plastic EVGA decal, DVI to VGA connector and a dual Molex to 6-Pin PCI-E power connector.\u00a0 There is a really nice full-sized poster included which is beyond our ability to photograph and display properly here.\"contents\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The EVGA GTX 770 SC appears to be using the same PCB as the reference version, but we note that it uses GDDR5 modules with double the capacity totaling 4GB instead of the standard 2GB. This promises to work well for widescreen resolutions and we shall follow up with another evaluation.\"SC-obv1\"<\/a>\u00a0 As a comparison, here is the reference version of the GTX 770 2GB card:\"\"The box has the memory specification incorrectly written as 2GB on the GTX 770 SC 4GB box.\u00a0 There are far more details on EVGA’s website<\/a>.\u00a0 The EVGA GTX 770 SC’s dimensions are 4.376 inches wide x 10.5 inches long.\"Productdetail&specs\"<\/a> The SLI connectors and the ports arrive covered with plastic protectors. EVGA’s GTX 770 SC is set up for 3-way SLI with one or two other 770s. You can mix cards from different vendors with different clock speeds but you cannot mix cards with different amounts of cores or different framebuffers (without using Coolbits) as you can with AMD’s competing multi-GPU solution, CrossFire. \"SC-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are the connectors; 2 dual-link DVI, 1 HDMI 1.4a and 1 DisplayPort 1.1a\"SC-connector\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Let’s turn it over.\"SC-obv\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is the card from another angle:\"SC-2\"<\/a>The EVGA GTX 770 SC 4GB with the ACX cooler is a handsome card indeed.\u00a0 However, as a direct comparison to the industrial design of the Titan\/GTX 780\/770, it is perhaps aesthetically inferior.<\/p>\n

Specifications<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Here are Nvidia’s specifications for the reference GTX 770:\"\"<\/p>\n

The difference with the EVGA GTX 770 SC specifications is that the core clock is factory overclocked to 1111MHz, or +65Hz over the Nvidia reference base clocks.\u00a0 We will see how much difference this makes and then we will see how much performance that a further core and memory overclock will give us.<\/p>\n

Here are the dimensions and what you will find in the box:<\/p>\n

Why EVGA?\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at what EVGA offers us over the reference and other partner versions with their Superclocked GTX 770:<\/p>\n