# EVGA GTX 780 Superclocked w/ ACX Cooler 3 GB



## W1zzard (May 24, 2013)

EVGA has engineered a new cooler for their GeForce GTX 780 called ACX--Active Cooling Xtreme. This dual-fan design delivers temperatures and noise levels that match the quiet NVIDIA reference design. The GTX 780 SC ACX is also overclocked, which yields performance higher than the Titan.

*Show full review*


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## dj-electric (May 24, 2013)

This card is a better card than a geforce Titan, there's no other way to put it.


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## IndependenT (May 24, 2013)

Thanks for the review W1z!


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## Jack1n (May 24, 2013)

Great card this is something i would actually consider buying.


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## Animalpak (May 24, 2013)

no game included ? Pffffff almost buy it ...


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## Fluffmeister (May 24, 2013)

Another impressive GTX 780 option, thanks for the review.


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## d1nky (May 24, 2013)

why haven't I seen these benched with 3dmark or heaven yet?

I know itll be a while until 3dmark puts it in their site with results etc.

but I guess I want to see numbers im familiar with and see differences across the board with a level bench field!


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## NeoCrisis (May 24, 2013)

Im not sure if any one realizes and I dont think it should have gotten a thumbs down for. But not one GTX 780 regardless of manufacturer comes with Metro Last Light promo.


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## W1zzard (May 24, 2013)

NeoCrisis said:


> Im not sure if any one realizes and I dont think it should have gotten a thumbs down for. But not one GTX 780 regardless of manufacturer comes with Metro Last Light promo.



Yup. We originally had it listed as plus, which caused confusion. so I clarified with NVIDIA and moved it to negative to make it absolutely clear. I'm not considering it as negative, it's just there for information


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## m1dg3t (May 24, 2013)

Nice review! This card a better buy than Titan 



NeoCrisis said:


> Im not sure if any one realizes and I dont think it should have gotten a thumbs down for. But not one GTX 780 regardless of manufacturer comes with Metro Last Light promo.



Yeah, Nvidia don't like giving stuff away. They are in the business of making $$$


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## Animalpak (May 24, 2013)

W1zzard said:


> Yup. We originally had it listed as plus, which caused confusion. so I clarified with NVIDIA and moved it to negative to make it absolutely clear. I'm not considering it as negative, it's just there for information




What a shame !!!! But in my country you will get Metro last light both if you buy 690 and Titan.




m1dg3t said:


> Nice review! This card a better buy than Titan
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, Nvidia don't like giving stuff away. They are in the business of making $$$



Yeah it su.... s big time !!!


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## Amrael (May 24, 2013)

This one I'll actually consider once it looses the baby fat (maybe the extra 60 dollars). At a lower price like sometimes happen I would definitely would make the effort, I'll keep it in my radar for maybe a fall buy. I know that the product is hot now but we are only seeing chosen cards been reviewed, when the people get their hands on them and it becomes a tried and true product (which I have the impression it will become) then its viable for me. Nonetheless EVGA did a great job on this one, also have to agree with Wiz, c'mon EVGA no backplate? Just in case you didn't notice we are shelling out 650.00 for a commodity product please don't be cheap.


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## Hilux SSRG (May 24, 2013)

Evga's SC has a nice overclock over stock 780.  I wonder if Asus version can top these numbers.


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## Animalpak (May 24, 2013)

Hilux SSRG said:


> Evga's SC has a nice overclock over stock 780.  I wonder if Asus version can top these numbers.



Im waiting the asus Directcu version too ! I think will be slightlty faster than this.


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## d1nky (May 24, 2013)

Hilux SSRG said:


> I wonder if Asus version can *Asus GTX780 DCII TOP* these numbers



fixed lol


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## Animalpak (May 24, 2013)

d1nky said:


> fixed lol



Yeah  !! But wait a moment there is a faster one comes from MSI ... 

MSI GTX780 Lightning they put raw overclocking more than Asus DirectCu 2 you wil get the fastest overlocked out of the box card...

( go check the 680 Lightning is a beast ) 

But is more targetet to overlockers than gamers... Nevermind i want higher FPS possible.


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## BigMack70 (May 24, 2013)

Would an open air cooler like this one or a standard stock blower cooler be better for SLI in terms of temps/noise (assuming a slot of space between the cards)?


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## Animalpak (May 24, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> Would an open air cooler like this one or a standard stock blower cooler be better for SLI in terms of temps/noise (assuming a slot of space between the cards)?



This open air cooler will be better in SLI for sure, make sure you have at least one 120mm fan blowing in the middle of the cards and you will be fine with temps and noise.


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## BigMack70 (May 24, 2013)

Animalpak said:


> This open air cooler will be better in SLI for sure, make sure you have at least one 120mm fan blowing in the middle of the cards and you will be fine with temps and noise.



Great thanks. Wasn't sure, as I'd heard some people sing the praises of blower style coolers for SLI/CF setups.

My top 7970 has consistently been 10C hotter than the bottom one even with good case airflow, but I guess that's just par for the course with multi-GPU.

Now I just gotta sell my 7970s and then find a pair of these cards in stock


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## 15th Warlock (May 24, 2013)

Thanks for the review!

This card is a monster, great OC out of the box! And with a killer cooler design to boot, I've always thought of EVGA as one of the top tier Nvidia partners out there, not only are their designs top notch, but their costumer service is probably the best in the whole industry. 

You can't go wrong by buying this card, it's probably going to be the 780 to look for


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## erocker (May 24, 2013)

I'd love this card! I don't bother with Evga anymore though. The three cards I've purchased from them all died within 6 months.... so never again.


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## 15th Warlock (May 24, 2013)

erocker said:


> I'd love this card! I don't bother with Evga anymore though. The three cards I've purchased from them all died within 6 months.... so never again.



Whoa, really sorry to hear that, I hope you were able to replace your card easily, that's some bad luck mate!

One of my 680s was DOA but it was replaced immediately by EVGA, the RMA process was actually the smoothest one I've ever experienced in all my years purchasing hardware. 

Was your experience dealing with their costumer service bad? I would definitely avoid a brand whose products keep constantly dying on me for no reason, so I understand your decision not to purchase their cards no more


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## erocker (May 24, 2013)

Customer service was pretty good! Some of the best, actually. But after my second GTX 580 died right after the warranty expired I had enough.


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## MxPhenom 216 (May 24, 2013)

I haven't had a single EVGA card die on me. Motherboards is a different story though.


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## 15th Warlock (May 24, 2013)

erocker said:


> Customer service was pretty good! Some of the best, actually. But after my second GTX 580 died right after the warranty expired I had enough.



Oh man, really sad to hear that mate, that's like the worst thing that can happen to anyone... that was  a really unfortunate series of events.


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## erocker (May 24, 2013)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> I haven't had a single EVGA card die on me. Motherboards is a different story though.



I'm not saying this happens to everyone. I'm saying it happened to me.. and it sucks. I'd love to use Evga, I think they are a very good company. They just seem to lack in QC when it comes to the hardware I buy from them/get returned from them from another RMA.


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## Hilux SSRG (May 24, 2013)

Animalpak said:


> This open air cooler will be better in SLI for sure, make sure you have at least one 120mm fan blowing in the middle of the cards and you will be fine with temps and noise.



Since you are in the know, what do you think on an sli setup of Gigabyte Windforce 3X coolers?  I currently own a Gigabyte 670 Windforce 3X and am considering adding another.


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## Animalpak (May 24, 2013)

Hilux SSRG said:


> Since you are in the know, what do you think on an sli setup of Gigabyte Windforce 3X coolers?  I currently own a Gigabyte 670 Windforce 3X and am considering adding another.



Same toughts about, that will be a killer SLI setup without any temps issues.... Windorce from Gigabyte is one of the best custom coolers ever made since they started to Mount on all graphics cards models, you will not regret of your purchase.

In a open cooler if air invests the heatsink to the side or from the front are extremely useful in addition to helping the on board 3-fans with fresh air.


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## Crap Daddy (May 24, 2013)

At 25x16 this card dwarfs the 680 and the 7970GE while offering the best performance per watt.
Nice...


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## Amrael (May 24, 2013)

Hilux SSRG said:


> Since you are in the know, what do you think on an sli setup of Gigabyte Windforce 3X coolers?  I currently own a Gigabyte 670 Windforce 3X and am considering adding another.



I think you would do well to do that. 2 670's in Sli pulverize almost everything you throw at it and I have heard great things from the windforce 3. I personally have two EVGA 4GB FTw +'s and can't complain but they do get hot, really hot. Even with that drawback i have been able to play everything (every new game) on max settings with little to no fuss. Although word of caution, games like Alan Wake, Farcry 3 and Arkham City don't work well with multi card setups so learn the "manage 3d settings" section of the Nvidia control panel so that you can get the max out of it. For example in Alan wake you need to run msaa@ 8x Sli so that one of the cards is just used as an ati aliasing processor and the game doesn't recognize them as Sli otherwise Flicker fest. Farcry 3 doesn't play well with sli (at least not in my machine) so I disable Sli for it and run it on ultra with MSAA set to 2 and Arkham City I run the same as Alan Wake but with maybe Sli 8 or Sli 16 MSAA. Those are the drawbacks but in all other games like Crysis 3 I run it full throttle. And this setup outmatches even Titan by at least 15% for more or less the same price.


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## Amrael (May 24, 2013)

Crap Daddy said:


> At 25x16 this card dwarfs the 680 and the 7970GE while offering the best performance per watt.
> Nice...



This one comes pretty close though and it has some room still for overclocking (and it costs $160 less oh and it has a Lifetime warranty). 

SPARKLE 700021 (CALIBRE -- GTX680) GeForce GTX 680...


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## Casecutter (May 24, 2013)

It's nice and the cooler works great, almost better than what I would've imagine when first seeing the picture of how EVGA did the heat pipes and construction. I didn't see it surpassing the vapor chamber even with two fans.  

I mean in the picture of the backside of the cooler it surprised me it wasn't an actual direct-touch, though would be hard to get all the (5 in this case) H-P stacked against the chip.  The spreader in itself isn't a huge hindrance as long as the spreader plate has good close-fitting contact; although it doesn’t give me that impression looking at the edges.  Plus spreader plate to me apportion amount dead space, and really only 3 H-P's under contact with the chip.  Then note that so much surface of the H-P’s on that one half have partial contact with the fins and appears to also be entirely devoid of air flow (is that some plate underneath?). That half seems fairly inept at aiding any significant heat transfer.  There's that one pipe that loops (U bent), couldn't tell by any of the W!zs' pic's, but found an EVGA rendering that shows it on the outside... _whew they had me worried_. Bottom line it cools better on the same dbA (perhaps better under OC’n), although not near the Gigabyte’s cooler though 3 fans.  

So here's the thing, this cooler performs better they provide a decent OC out of the box, but is the cooler saving EVGA money over the factory Titan with it's glowing GeForce...? I'll wager it‘s more than you could fathom.  Here's the other thing, other than some small etched printing on the edge when installed... is it a GTX780?  From 3 feet away it's hard to know it's a premium card.  EVGA should have done something to absolutely distinguish when in your chassis, because it give the impression of any "generic" $350 enthusiast offering.


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## HumanSmoke (May 24, 2013)

Casecutter said:


> Bottom line it cools better on the same dbA (perhaps better under OC’n), although not near the Gigabyte’s cooler though 3 fans.


Ah, but from 3 feet away it's hard to know the Gigabyte's a premium card !!!!







Casecutter said:


> So here's the thing, this cooler performs better they provide a decent OC out of the box, but is the cooler saving EVGA money over the factory Titan with it's glowing GeForce...?


Who knows? How much do two dual-ball bearing fans cost versus a single blower ? The overall cooler is probably cheaper to produce than the reference item, but then you can't take this one item in isolation. EVGA are charging $10 - a 1.5% premium for a 12% core overclock. Seems like an OK deal when considering the cooler seems to work OK.


Casecutter said:


> Here's the other thing, other than some small etched printing on the edge when installed... is it a GTX780? From 3 feet away it's hard to know it's a premium card.


Depends on whether you like understated or bling. If you're the type of person that places the value of hardware on the number of LED's it carries then I guess you'd be looking elsewhere. Personally, I don't spend a lot of time staring at my hardware.


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## Casecutter (May 24, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> Personally, I don't spend a lot of time staring at my hardware.


Everyone has an opinion. I'm just one to say mine with requiring prompting.  I suppose it hardly matters either way... as most of what you’ll notice is just as always a non-stimulating  PCB.


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## manofthem (May 24, 2013)

I like this card!  The price is too high for me,  but it packs a nice punch 

Also,  nice job W1zz!


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## HumanSmoke (May 25, 2013)

Casecutter said:


> Everyone has an opinion. I'm just one to say mine with requiring prompting.  I suppose it hardly matters either way... as most of what you’ll notice is just as always a non-stimulating  PCB.


Well, that's true. I would say that at least EVGA has both options covered since they seem to offer the cards with both the reference cooler and the ACX. The reference blower fan adds some bling and "solidity", but for those using multi GPU I'm picking the ACX version might offer its own advantages.


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## Ed_1 (May 25, 2013)

I have question on the listed power of 300w for 6pin +8pin plugs .

I thought, PCI-E slot =75 , 6pin =75w (each 2 wire(+,-)=25w)
so if you have 2 6pins 150+75 = 225 , how does extra 2 wires = 75 extra watts ?
I come up with 25w per set , so 7 set = 175+75w for slot ,total 250w


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## radrok (May 25, 2013)

The two additional wires on the 8 pin are actually ground.

In theory even a 6 pin could carry 150w (even more to be honest) but that wouldn't be listed as safe by PCIe specs.

Take the 6990 for example, it was double 8 pin (300w) plus pcie slot (75w) for a total of 375w.
When the secondary BIOS was activated the card would raise its TDP to 450w
All this just to say that even if pcie specs list fixed values for connectors they aren't necessarily a physical limit.


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## Xzibit (May 25, 2013)

Ed_1 said:


> I have question on the listed power of 300w for 6pin +8pin plugs .
> 
> I thought, PCI-E slot =75 , 6pin =75w (each 2 wire(+,-)=25w)
> so if you have 2 6pins 150+75 = 225 , how does extra 2 wires = 75 extra watts ?
> I come up with 25w per set , so 7 set = 175+75w for slot ,total 250w



PCI-E 1.0 = 75w
PCI-E 2.0 = 150w
PCI-E 3.0 = 300w
*They are exception with x.1 specs 

6-pin = 75w
8-pin = 150w

Those are the power delivery options depending on your setup. 

You could put the card in a PCI-E 1.0 MotherBoard and still deliver the 300watts.
On a Sandy-Bridge system you could deliver up to 375w to the card if need be and on Ivy-Bridge systems 525w.


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## Ed_1 (May 25, 2013)

Ahh, thanks that clears thing up , I forgot about different slot PCIE versions .
P8Z77 are version 3.0 I think .


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## Rei86 (May 25, 2013)

Great cards, thinking about picking up three of these or wait it out for the FTW/Classified/Lightning models.  Shoved the Titan's I have ATM in the backup rig and piecing together a IVY E build.



erocker said:


> Customer service was pretty good! Some of the best, actually. But after my second GTX 580 died right after the warranty expired I had enough.



Wait...how did your warranty expire on a -AR card?


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## 15th Warlock (May 25, 2013)

Rei86 said:


> Great cards, thinking about picking up three of these or wait it out for the FTW/Classified/Lightning models.  Shoved the Titan's I have ATM in the backup rig and piecing together a IVY E build.
> 
> 
> 
> Wait...how did your warranty expire on a -AR card?



Not interested in Ivy E in the minimum, unless this will be your first LGA2011 build, I'm positive in most tasks (except maybe for highly threaded apps) Haswell will be faster.

To me it's a shame the 2011 platform has fallen so far behind when in comes to updates when compared to mainstream desktop parts, Intel should've skipped Ivy E entirely and released Haswell E, but then again, it wouldn't have been compatible with X79 most likely...

as for the 580, not all models are AR parts, there's KR parts too, but even those have a 3 year warranty, so that doesn't make much sense either....


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## Rei86 (May 25, 2013)

15th Warlock said:


> Not interested in Ivy E in the minimum, unless this will be your first LGA2011 build, I'm positive in most tasks (except maybe for highly threaded apps) Haswell will be faster.
> 
> To me it's a shame the 2011 platform has fallen so far behind when in comes to updates when compared to mainstream desktop parts, Intel should've skipped Ivy E entirely and released Haswell E, but then again, it wouldn't have been compatible with X79 most likely...
> 
> as for the 580, not all models are AR parts, there's KR parts too, but even those have a 3 year warranty, so that doesn't make much sense either....



I knew some where KR but most of EVGA's 580s where ARs

As for the 2011 platform yeah.  When I built my main rig I went with a Z77 1155 i7-3770k.  Now that I'm parting it I decided to go 2011.  So yes its my 1st 2011 build so I'm okay with that EOL Socket.


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## arbiter (May 25, 2013)

d1nky said:


> why haven't I seen these benched with 3dmark or heaven yet?
> 
> I know itll be a while until 3dmark puts it in their site with results etc.
> 
> but I guess I want to see numbers im familiar with and see differences across the board with a level bench field!



I think most people here agree that 3Dmark and heaven Synthetic benchmarks, really they have no bearing on real world use cases. there was one synthetic benchmark that had AMD card at 2x faster but in reality its not.


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## Rei86 (May 25, 2013)

arbiter said:


> I think most people here agree that 3Dmark and heaven Synthetic benchmarks, really they have no bearing on real world use cases. there was one synthetic benchmark that had AMD card at 2x faster but in reality its not.



You mean the 2013 3DMarks FireStrike and FireStrike Extreme that had AMD HD7950 and 7970s destroying Nvidia cards?


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## arbiter (May 25, 2013)

Rei86 said:


> You mean the 2013 3DMarks FireStrike and FireStrike Extreme that had AMD HD7950 and 7970s destroying Nvidia cards?



yea those benchmarks that mean absolutely nothing when it comes to what 99.9% of ppl that use these video cards for. Its like one those linux uptime e-penis contest's.


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## BigMack70 (May 29, 2013)

Just got my order in for two of these off newegg a while ago 

Super excited to be done with CF and onto 780 SLI... the fact that I'm gonna have a setup faster than Titan SLI for 65% of the price makes me laugh at everyone who dropped $2k on Titans for gaming.


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## HammerON (May 29, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> Just got my order in for two of these off newegg a while ago
> 
> Super excited to be done with CF and onto 780 SLI... the fact that I'm gonna have a setup faster than Titan SLI for 65% of the price makes me laugh at everyone who dropped $2k on Titans for gaming.



I have been trying to buy one (maybe two of these) for a couple days now. I had a Newegg notification today that they had stock but by the time I tried to order they were out of them again
You must have got them


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## BigMack70 (May 29, 2013)

HammerON said:


> I have been trying to buy one (maybe two of these) for a couple days now. I had a Newegg notification today that they had stock but by the time I tried to order they were out of them again
> You must have got them



Haha sorry about that 

There's a slight lag on Newegg's auto-notification emails. I use the Check4Change addon with firefox and had it checking every 30 seconds for stock yesterday... I had completed checkout before I even got the auto-notify email and they were out of stock about 10 minutes after that.

I think it's worth the wait though... the cooler looks pretty awesome and it's faster than the Titan out of the box 

Maybe I'm just weird but I don't have the hard-on that most reviewers seem to have for the stock Titan/780 cooler.


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## Amrael (May 29, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> I think it's worth the wait though... the cooler looks pretty awesome and it's faster than the Titan out of the box
> 
> Maybe I'm just weird but I don't have the hard-on that most reviewers seem to have for the stock Titan/780 cooler.



I think the card is pretty powerful all right, I still have my doubts about the price though. My problem is not it specifically but that card makers have been ramping up the prices of video cards every year and thats worrying, not because some people can buy them because thats a right everyone has, but because I find it ludicrous to ask for so much money for something nobody really needs. With that out of the way I have to say that the EVGA cooler looks awesome and performs really well. I have to agree with you on this one, I don't care that much about the stock cooler and I don't see what the fuss is about. Just saw the specs for the GTX 770 and the price is acceptable, the clocks are amazing lets see how they stand up to the flagship; oh and they look almost the same.


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## BigMack70 (May 29, 2013)

Oh there is no question that the 780 is overpriced. I'm fully aware I paid about a $100-150 "lulz AMD can't touch this" price premium per card.

I was just tired of the noise and stutter I was having to always deal with on my 7970s, and wanted to sell them before they lost $50-100 resell value each once the 770 etc get released, since I think they stood to lose more resell value over the next two months than they were going to make in BTC. I figure the fact that I could sell them at $440/ea covers the current 780 price premium.


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## Amrael (May 29, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> Oh there is no question that the 780 is overpriced. I'm fully aware I paid about a $100-150 "lulz AMD can't touch this" price premium per card.
> 
> I was just tired of the noise and stutter I was having to always deal with on my 7970s, and wanted to sell them before they lost $50-100 resell value each once the 770 etc get released. I figure the fact that I could sell them at $440/ea covers the current 780 price premium.



That was really well sold that's how its done. Thats mainly how I do my builds but sadly I will probably have to skip this whole generation because I frankly have no need. My two 4GB 670's in sli are monsters and I'm still getting more performance on most games than what one single 780 would bring and two of those would be out of my mental price range. What this means is that I think I have a stable enough setup to carry me over Nvidia 7 series, AMD 8 or 9 series and maybe over Haswell too (which quite frankly has nothing new to offer me).


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## Vlada011 (Jun 5, 2013)

Nicest GTX780 on market deserve award.







I like when card is cubic and wide and can't see heat pipes.
Heat pipes spoil look of graphic.


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## Asuka26x (Jun 7, 2013)

Sexy cooler with damn hot performance,but not available in india??? cmon evga get some tricks from zotac and asus.


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## Vlada011 (Jun 7, 2013)

It's not available in Serbia too but that will not stop me to buy one.
Distributor when I ask for import EVGA GTX780 Classified say me I will give you Gainward Titan for only little more price. But I don't want that. 
I would change Titan for this card always. 
I didn't like non reference cards before but I don' like example look of Titan and GTX690 too - silver. 
780 OC better and have much better PCB and design for OC than any Titan. 
And I was thought when I saw ACX teaser how that will look, something new totally.
But this is serious, design is cubic and wide, almost closed but again much better cooling than stock. 

Important is 8+8 pin and this two fans are serious 14+3 phase is advantage for people who use LN2 and watercooling but it's not bad to know you have something like that inside PC. 
I would rather smash my whole PC and both console than pay so expensive money for someone what I don't like only to work. 
Why I have window side panel and look on everything and than to buy graphic card only to have any 780.
I don't want that. Money is hard to earning today, no options, no compromise...for hardware.
You have lot of option for order in India work and PayPal and everything. 
EVGA service is best on the world you have option from Europe, Germany I think or USA.
But lot of online shop in different countries sell their graphic cards because that is best NVIDIA on world. This card didn't launch, for few weeks they say.

And I think 780 is exactly what people need with one card. Metro Last Light Benchmark is around 50-55fps with highest settings. I don't want card to play with video settings half hour.
GTX780 or SLI GTX770 for 2560 resolution is exactly for good playing. GTX780 for 2560 is not enough if you want to play 12-24 months. I mean with all filters that is more important than resolution.


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## Vlada011 (Jun 14, 2013)

EVGA ACX Cooler is nicer than stock 780 definitely I look close every cm of card. 
I love stock cards, but these ACX are really nice.
I think now If show GTX780 ACX SC in Serbia I would buy and that.
I will not wait Classified. But If I go on import than I will choose what I like most.
I'm ready to pay 100e more for EVGA than ASUS.


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