Jacked-Up: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 SC with ACX Cooling

We spent a little time overclocking the EVGA GeForce GTX 780 SC with ACX cooling to see what kind of additional frequency headroom it had left under its hood. For these tests, we used the latest edition of EVGA's Precision X GPU tweaking utility, which is designed to work with the newest GeForces.

Overclocking a Kepler-based GeForce GTX series graphics card requires a bit more tweaking then previous-gen products, due to all of the new options available and the complexities associated with GPU Boost 2.0. Sometimes, you’ll find that increasing a particular voltage or frequency may appear to function properly, when in fact performance decreases due to errors or throttling. You may also find that the actual GPU Boost clock may travel above or below the designated offset value when the power and/or temperature targets are also increased.


EVGA's Precision X Tweaking Utility Running On The EVGA GeForce GTX 780 SC with ACX

We did a few things when experimenting with overclocked speeds on the EVGA GTX 780. First we tried the most basic option available--we simply changed the temperature target from the default 80'C and increased it to 90'C to see what kind of impact it would have on performance. Then, to push things much further, we increased the power and temperature targets to 106% and 94'C, respectively, and also increased the GPU and Memory clock offsets and ran a few tests.

Overclocking The EVGA GeForce GTX 780 SC
Tweakin' The GPU

Ultimately we were able to take our EVGA GeForce GTX 780 SC with ACX cooling up to a 1228MHz GPU clock with 6328MHz (effective) memory. With the card overclocked, it showed a marked improvement in performance in both games we tested, increasing its lead over the Titan and inching closer to the GeForce GTX 690.
 


Marco Chiappetta

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com

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