The GeForce GTX 760 Roundup: Gigabyte and EVGA Compared

Final Words

Wrapping up this roundup, if GK104 is NVIDIA’s workhorse GPU for this generation, then it’s GTX 760 that is the company’s workhorse video card for enthusiast gamers. It’s well suited for common 1080p monitors, possessing enough power to run most games at near-maximum settings while not reaching ridiculous prices or power consumption levels. It’s for that reason of course that NVIDIA’s partners put out so many variations on the product, as while it’s not necessarily a product line that earns a lot of prestige it’s a product line that’s the bread and butter of their enthusiast offerings.

For that cards we’ve looked at today, Gigabyte’s GTX 770 OC Windforce 3X and EVGA’s GTX 760 Superclocked ACX, we’ve seen both companies take their shot at carving out part of that GTX 760 market for themselves. Though they’re basing their cards on similar design principles – custom boards with open air coolers – as it turns out these cards ended up being more dissimilar than we would have expected based on specifications alone. In this case however that’s less “separate but equal” and more of a one-sided victory for a single party.

As far as gaming performance is concerned the cards are effectively tied, thanks to their near identical factory overclocks. Despite the magnitude of the overclocks however it’s hard to argue that they amount to much in this case; without an equivalent memory bandwidth bump the performance just doesn’t materialize. Granted, 4% better performance is something we’ll gladly take any day of the week, it’s just going to be difficult to justify spending anything extra for it given the limited benefits.

Turning to cooling performance however we have found that Gigabyte’s GTX 760OC is consistently outperforming EVGA’s 760SC ACX on power consumption, temperatures, and noise. It draws less power, operates at a lower temperature, and achieves such effective cooling with less noise generated in the process. By slapping on their full size Windforce 3X cooler Gigabyte has essentially overbuilt their GTX 760OC, but there’s no arguing with the effectiveness of the result. The only drawback here will be Gigabyte’s $10 premium in a crowded market.

EVGA for their part puts up a good fight here, but their 760SC ACX just doesn’t have what it takes to keep up with Gigabyte’s cooling performance. With that said the 760SC still puts in a solid performance for an open air cooler, and it does so in a more compact 9.5 inch size that will no doubt prove useful for smaller cases. EVGA for their part is currently only charging $249 for the card, at-MSRP for the GTX 760 despite the factory overclock, which in this case is likely the right move given the stiff competition.

Hardware aside, on the software and support side EVGA will still have the edge. Gigabyte’s OC Guru II software and 3 year warranty are perfectly adequate, but they will fall short of EVGA’s excellent Precision X software and the options EVGA makes available for extended warranties and stepping up to other EVGA cards. Consequently a choice between the two will ultimately come down to Gigabyte’s acoustic advantage, or EVGA’s slightly lower price and value added features.