# EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX 4 GB



## W1zzard (Sep 18, 2014)

EVGA's brand-new GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX uses the company's latest ACX cooler, which promises to improve its noise and temperatures over the reference design. It is also overclocked out of the box for that little bit of extra performance it needs to beat the Radeon R9 290X.

*Show full review*


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## Jack1n (Sep 19, 2014)

Will probably upgrade my 7970 vapor-x with a 970, possibly this one, great review.


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## rcarlos243 (Sep 19, 2014)

is this compatible with NZXT G10?


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## Lionheart (Sep 19, 2014)

Holy shit that's an amazing card! 

Do want


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## Fluffmeister (Sep 19, 2014)

These GTX 970 are truly superb, amazing performance and efficiency and all for a great price, seem then selling for around £260.... amazing.


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## bpgt64 (Sep 19, 2014)

That's pretty f-ing impressive.  More competition for AMD!?!


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## Yellow&Nerdy? (Sep 19, 2014)

So AMD is pretty much boned. The GTX 970 is faster, uses much less power, and costs $350 vs.  $450 compared to the R9 290X.


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## burndtjamb (Sep 19, 2014)

With regard to fan noise, was there any attempt at tuning Precision X software values for the fan speeds vs. temperature? I have this video card on the way and I'm a bit nit-picky with fan noise (I'm aware of the ASUS STRIX 970 but I prefer EVGA's warranty). Thanks for the review!


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## W1zzard (Sep 19, 2014)

burndtjamb said:


> With regard to fan noise, was there any attempt at tuning Precision X software values for the fan speeds vs. temperature? I have this video card on the way and I'm a bit nit-picky with fan noise (I'm aware of the ASUS STRIX 970 but I prefer EVGA's warranty). Thanks for the review!


You can use software to adjust the fan speed of course, but I have to review the cards like they are out of the box, not after I manually optimize them, in which case every card would be perfect. I'd hax the BIOS to up the temperature limit, up power limit, increase clocks on memory, increase GPU clock, increase GPU voltage, set fan to 0% at low temps and reduce fan speed so that load temps just edges the newly set temperature limit. Boom, perfect card.


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## Air (Sep 19, 2014)

W1zzard said:


> You can use software to adjust the fan speed of course, but I have to review the cards like they are out of the box, not after I manually optimize them, in which case every card would be perfect. I'd hax the BIOS to up the temperature limit, up power limit, increase clocks on memory, increase GPU clock, increase GPU voltage, set fan to 0% at low temps and reduce fan speed so that load temps just edges the newly set temperature limit. Boom, perfect card.


 
There are cases when that is not possible, arent there? Like, the evga GTX750 ti which fans cannot go bellow 40% max speed.


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## ssdpro (Sep 19, 2014)

I am confused about the picture on the first page on this review (HERE).  That GTX 970 makeup shows the old reference cooler design used in some of the 770's, 780's, TITAN Black, and new 980.  EVGA looks to have gone with some ugly butt reference coolers on the 970.  That grey metallic looking reference cooler is much better than the black plastic one.  I personally prefer reference coolers but not so much the cheap black plastic one.


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## 64K (Sep 19, 2014)

This is the one for me. It's only 8% slower than a reference GTX 980 and $210 cheaper. As far as the noise goes, it's quieter than my GTX 680 which has never bothered me. When I'm immersed in a game I don't even notice the fan noise anyway. I will use this card for a year or so until big Maxwell comes out.


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## possessed (Sep 19, 2014)

This is quite impressive. I think it's time to upgrade my 2 year old gtx670.


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## Covert_Death (Sep 19, 2014)

just ordered this card! cannot wait for it to get here. Am I the only one that is most exited about the VR support?! arma3 in VR !!!!!


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## 64K (Sep 19, 2014)

possessed said:


> This is quite impressive. I think it's time to upgrade my 2 year old gtx670.



Yeah, that will be a very good upgrade.

For anyone interested Newegg has the card for $340 and an $10 rebate from EVGA brings it down to $330. imo that's a hell of a lot of performance for $330. I will be ordering one when I get off work.


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## Casecutter (Sep 19, 2014)

Have to say the GTX 970 is an amazing, proficient leap in performance & efficiency, all while an astonishing new level in price.  This changes things more than I thought... for AMD, while it ceases any smart buyer from the consideration of any of the 770 (on up) of the product stack.



ssdpro said:


> I am confused about the picture on the first page on this review (HERE).  That GTX 970 makeup shows the old reference cooler design used in some of the 770's, 780's, TITAN Black, and new 980.  EVGA looks to have gone with some ugly butt reference coolers on the 970.  That grey metallic looking reference cooler is much better than the black plastic one.  I personally prefer reference coolers but not so much the cheap black plastic one.


Well, that's truly just an apparition... I’d buy a reference 970 with that grey metallic Titan style cooler.  If that could be bought for the intended MSRP of $330, I'd snatch one up use it till it out-matched (should be a while), and then just keep it for posterity.   But right, IF there’s a reference it will be with the black plastic’ie box with the generic radial blower.



64K said:


> I will be ordering one when I get off work.


I'll beat you won't, they'll be OoS.  I can't say I've ever heard of a rebate "day one" especially EVGA, crazy aggressive!


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## possessed (Sep 19, 2014)

From evga what I saw on EU's site was free backplate (quite nice) for boards registered until the 20th of October (they do refer while stocks last) and free warranty extension to 5 years.


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## 64K (Sep 19, 2014)

Nice perks.


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## WhiteNoise (Sep 19, 2014)

Thanks for this review. It is what swayed me to buy the same card you reviewed; the EVGA GTX 970 SC


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## Air (Sep 19, 2014)

I just noticed how horrible the ACX cooler is compared to the likes of asus/msi.

The ASUS card is quieter at load than EVGA at idle! And its 10 dBA louder under load (more than 700% more sound pressure!) for a diference of 2 °C. I dont think you can make up for that with custom fan profiles. Anyone who cares for silence should stay far away.

Asus GTX970 Load: 29 dBA @ 73 °C
EVGA GTX970 idle: 30 dBA
EVGA GTX970 idel: 39 dBA @ 71 °C

Even the titan/gtx 780ti reference cooler is quieter.


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## 64K (Sep 19, 2014)

Air said:


> I just noticed how horrible the ACX cooler is compared to the likes of asus/msi.
> 
> The ASUS card is quieter at load than EVGA at idle! And its 10 dBA louder under load (more than 700% more sound pressure!) for a diference of 2 °C. I dont think you can make up for that with custom fan profiles. Anyone who cares for silence should stay far away.
> 
> ...



Yeah, if you want quieter then you would be better suited to the ASUS. For me it's not an issue since this card is even quieter than my GTX 680 which never bothered me at all.


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## alexandru512 (Sep 19, 2014)

The fan blades look strange. It looks like they are made for sucking air not pushing it, the curvature is all wrong. ACX v1 vs ACX v2,  they look like they are upside down.






  VS


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## apoe (Sep 19, 2014)

I wonder when the ACX 2.0 cards will release? Currently I only see the ACX 1.0 variants.


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## Hilux SSRG (Sep 19, 2014)

Nice review.

With the sweet pricing of the gtx 970, you have to wonder what the performance of the gtx 960 will bring at a possible $249 sweet spot.


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## Frag_Maniac (Sep 19, 2014)

alexandru512 said:


> The fan blades look strange. It looks like they are made for sucking air not pushing it, the curvature is all wrong. ACX v1 vs ACX v2,  they look like they are upside down.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Looks to me like the one on the top would be quieter but have less static pressure. The one on the bottom more static pressure, more pinpointed airflow, but probably louder.

Basically the one on bottom cupping the air, the one on top spreading it, but when you spread you lose cooling efficiency and dispel more warm air into the case.

As far as the ASUS goes, as always they are quiet, but idle temps are pretty high. That could be changed with a simple fan profile tweak though.

The way I look at it though, the EVGA is no louder than my 7970, pretty much equal, and the EVGA slightly outperforms the ASUS and is cheaper.

I've looked at all Wizz's benches and can't see any point to the 980. My only reason to get a higher end card would be in hopes to get better performance in extremely resource intense games, and in those you barely get any more frames. And for 4k gaming one 980 still fails to play those games at acceptable frame rates.

My only worry is the 970 after getting swamped with orders will shoot up in price, because I may wait until end of next year to just go ahead and get ALL my new platform parts, which may or may not be based on DDR4 depending on price and latency drops on the RAM, CPUs and MBs for it.

I tend to keep my core parts quite a while, but I'm skeptical whether hex core will be all that useful for gaming anytime soon.


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## log1c76 (Sep 19, 2014)

Just canceled my r9 290 order and ordered this instead. I usually buy amd, due to price, but there's no way I'm passing up this performance at 339!


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## frag06 (Sep 20, 2014)

None of EVGA's cards available at the moment are ACX 2.0. So that may or may not be a plus for you.

@W1zzard Was there any coil whine or anything like that when you tested the card? At idle or load? I ask because the one other review I found of the EVGA SC 970 says there was a little coil whine. I ordered a SC 970 and it should be here tomorrow, but I will not tolerate any coil whine.

Thanks.


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## apoe (Sep 20, 2014)

ACX 2.0 versions now on newegg, but priced significantly higher ($390 for SC version)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487071

If the prices stay at those levels, maybe review should be updated..


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## CapoCuba (Sep 20, 2014)

when will be the model 970 FTW? will be worth waiting for this model (P4-2978-04G-KR) or buy now Superclocked (P4-0974-04G-KR)?


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## refillable (Sep 20, 2014)

That is such an amazing card... What is more amazing is that 2 and a half years ago the 7870 was priced the same as this... But I won't be tempted to buy anything right now though, as the AMD 300 series are also around the corner and perhaps will rock as well. Great evolution...


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## Lagittaja (Sep 20, 2014)

The GTX 970 is such an amazing card that I'm at a loss for words. I'll definitely be looking into getting one of these.

Also W1zzard, I have a question regarding one of the games you use for testing. That would be Grid 2.
1) I suppose 4xAA = 4xMSAA?
2) "The game also includes a separate binary (which we used) with support for the AVX instruction set found on modern CPUs."
How exactly does that work? What changes? I've tried both of the executables (normal and AVX) but I've seen no difference between them and for both of those the two Intel options (Advanced Blending and Smoke Shadows) remain greyed out and OFF since they're meant for used with iGPU and not dGPU afaik. I also have a 3770K.

Also I did bench my OC'd GTX 670 in Grid 2 just for the heck of it to compare to the GTX 970.
I used the same settings (although my drivers were 344.11) which would be 1920x1080 with everything maxed out and 4xMSAA. And I tried both of the executables.
Using the normal executable I got 70.99/91.25 min/avg
Using the AVX executable I got 70.68/90.67
So roughly 91fps average on a 670 OC'd to 1267 on the core and 1750 mem (7000 effective) compared to the 128.1fps of the 970 (or 137.3fps of the 970 SC ACX).
That's 40-50% more perf in Grid 2. That's quite nice  And I'm pulling more power also, custom bios with raised power limits and so on..


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## W1zzard (Sep 21, 2014)

1) Yes
2) I'm not 100% sure either. I think the AVX binary uses AVX instructions which helps in CPU limited situations, which probably never occur on a 4770K.


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## kiddo (Sep 21, 2014)

I just hope a Vapor-X model will come...


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## seanmac (Sep 21, 2014)

log1c76 said:


> Just canceled my r9 290 order and ordered this instead. I usually buy amd, due to price, but there's no way I'm passing up this performance at 339!



Yeh smart cookie ! Better performance than the R9 290*X* and the GTX 970 card is a great overclocker !


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## Harbear (Sep 21, 2014)

W1zzard said:


> 1) Yes
> 2) I'm not 100% sure either. I think the AVX binary uses AVX instructions which helps in CPU limited situations, which probably never occur on a 4770K.



Hey I am wondering if the logo on the top of the card glows ? I saw on the AXC 2.0 demo video that it does, which is really cool. But the video was showing a GTX 980 FTW.


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## Delta6326 (Sep 22, 2014)

Do you think this card is lacking cooling performance due to reusing a old heatsink? Thus making it louder. You can tell that it only touch's 2 of the heat pipes.


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## frag06 (Sep 22, 2014)

Delta6326 said:


> Do you think this card is lacking cooling performance due to reusing a old heatsink? Thus making it louder. You can tell that it only touch's 2 of the heat pipes.






> Originally Posted by *TEAMEVGA*
> Hello everyone,
> 
> The way the EVGA GTX 970 ACX heat sink was designed is based on the GTX 970 wattage plus an additional 40% cooling headroom on top of it.
> ...


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## Air (Sep 23, 2014)

Touching heat pipes or not, what must really make a diference in this card are the smaller fans and heatsink. The card is a lot smaller in return to more noise.


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## jabbadap (Sep 23, 2014)

As gm204 being pin compatible with gk104, whis card seems to use same pcb as gtx760.


Spoiler



evga gtx760 acx sc:




evga gtx970 acx sc:






There seems to be lot of gtx970 cards out there which are using gk104 pcb:s, might be actually good thing for price point of view. But of course not, if one is buying one for surround gsync.


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## Lagittaja (Sep 23, 2014)

What? This GTX 970 uses the same cooler* and same PCB as the EVGA GTX 760 SC ACX did.
When the 760 came out with the same cooler I asked EVGA the same question and got a similar bullshit answer. They know it's a shit design (and it still is) and they're talking their way out of things.
All they did for this card was tweak a little this and that and drop in GM204 instead of GK104. Voila. Low cost design for them.

Pondering about purchasing GTX 970 but this time around I won't be going with EVGA.

*the fans aren't exactly the same but they're the same size


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## Armagg3don (Oct 11, 2014)

Hello there, first of all I congratulate you for your excellent reviews. I always take as a reference point for my purchases and my perspectives. 

I would also like to make a query: I saw a user asked 4x AA used for tests of Grid 2. 
My question is this: what is the 4x AA that you use each and every one of the tests and games? 

And may I suggest that if possible would be a good idea to specify which type of AA used in each test and game. 

AA is the most suitable for quality is the MSAA, but many novice users could be confused with the omission of that information. 

Thanks again and congratulations for your reviews.


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## rooivalk (Oct 15, 2014)

When the lowest score is 7 (which is minority), scoring 9++ doesn't seem much lol


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## jonathan1107 (Oct 16, 2014)

So how much better is the ACX 2.0 new cooler?


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## Boeing707 (Oct 17, 2014)

jonathan1107 said:


> So how much better is the ACX 2.0 new cooler?


It is worse than the old one. The third heat pipe is not even sealed, rendering it useless.


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## jonathan1107 (Oct 17, 2014)

Boeing707 said:


> It is worse than the old one. The third heat pipe is not even sealed, rendering it useless.


good to know


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## W1zzard (Oct 17, 2014)

Boeing707 said:


> It is worse than the old one. The third heat pipe is not even sealed, rendering it useless.


Oh wow, that's a nice find.


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## OneCool (Nov 13, 2014)

Boeing707 said:


> It is worse than the old one. The third heat pipe is not even sealed, rendering it useless.



First of all WTF!!!!!!!! Thats crazy.

Second. it looks like I can replace my 7850 1gb with this and not have to upgrade my PSU............hmmmmmmmmm I wonder


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## OtherSyde (Mar 30, 2015)

Well I just ordered one of these, so hopefully it still stands up decently 5-6 months after this review. Ifnothing else, it looks like I made the best possible choice as far as the 970 chipset offerings.


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## Casecutter (Apr 1, 2015)

Boeing707 said:


> It is worse than the old one. The third heat pipe is not even sealed, rendering it useless.


WTF...FTW!  Simply Amazing!  Just there as a place holder to perhaps provides some structural rigidity.  Seems EVGA has picked up from Nvidia how engineering and marketing communicate.


frag06 said:


> EVGA _ There are *3 heat pipes* on the heatsink – 2 x 8mm major heat pipes to distribute the majority of the heat from the GPU to the heatsink, and a 3rd 6mm *heatpipe* is used as a supplement to the design to reduce another 2-3 degrees Celsius.


I want to see how that tube would assist transferring this additional 2-3 degrees Celsius!


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## irazer (Apr 8, 2015)

sorry for bad english
I have evga 970 acx2 with reference clocks and yesterday change thermal compound. The pipe is sealed, but yes - dont make contact with gpu. You must view from right angle... 
My card also have coil whine    I hope will disappear.


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## Deleted member 156794 (Apr 22, 2015)

possessed said:


> This is quite impressive. I think it's time to upgrade my 2 year old gtx670.



That's what I did!


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## OtherSyde (Apr 24, 2015)

possessed said:


> This is quite impressive. I think it's time to upgrade my 2 year old gtx670.



I just upgraded my 2 year old EVGA GTX 650 TI SSC, and I'm _loving_ this 970 so far!


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## P-40E (May 19, 2015)

Finally got my EVGA SC 970 ACX 2.0 delivered! Love how it performs, And my temps never go past 54c playing GTA 5, But then again My R9 270 never went to 60c either, My Antec 300 has a many fans, Also no coil whine! However I do think it is crap that I do not get a backplate! Other than that I am very pleased with this card! Best GPU I have ever owned! Also has samsung V-Ram I love that! Never overclocking this! I will baby it.


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## P-40E (May 19, 2015)

P-40E said:


> Finally got my EVGA SC 970 ACX 2.0 delivered! Love how it performs, And my temps never go past 54c playing GTA 5, But then again My R9 270 never went to 60c either, My Antec 300 has a many fans, Also no coil whine! However I do think it is crap that I do not get a backplate! Other than that I am very pleased with this card! Best GPU I have ever owned! Also has samsung V-Ram I love that! Never overclocking this! I will baby it.



I spoke too soon, When I ran other games and Unigine it got up to 74c. I do not like it getting that warm, I do not think it was such a great idea to have the fans off until temps go up, I was told 70c is normal temps for the 970. But I still feel uncomfortable. I usually do not buy a GPU that cost over $180, So I am very concerned about not hurting it. I hope this passes overtime.


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## OtherSyde (May 19, 2015)

Ye


P-40E said:


> I spoke too soon, When I ran other games and Unigine it got up to 74c. I do not like it getting that warm, I do not think it was such a great idea to have the fans off until temps go up, I was told 70c is normal temps for the 970. But I still feel uncomfortable. I usually do not buy a GPU that cost over $180, So I am very concerned about not hurting it. I hope this passes overtime.



Yeah, even with the nine total fans in my Corsair Carbide Air 240 case, my 970 still hits the mid 70's when playing Crysis 3 on max settings or running Unigen Heaven maxed out. I don't even sweat it - it never gets over 78 or so, and if you're worried about keeping it a little cooler then just download EVGA's free PrecisionX 16 software and use it to set the fan threshold lower. That helps as well.


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## P-40E (Jun 6, 2015)

OtherSyde said:


> Ye
> 
> 
> Yeah, even with the nine total fans in my Corsair Carbide Air 240 case, my 970 still hits the mid 70's when playing Crysis 3 on max settings or running Unigen Heaven maxed out. I don't even sweat it - it never gets over 78 or so, and if you're worried about keeping it a little cooler then just download EVGA's free PrecisionX 16 software and use it to set the fan threshold lower. That helps as well.



Yeah I downloaded afterburner, And I set a fan profile, When you set the fans to run like any normal GPU it never gets past 55c, And the fan speed never has to go past 32%. And at that speed the fans are not loud at all. It makes no sense that they did not set a normal fan profile. I thought about flashing the bios with my own fan profile, But I better not risk it.


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