GAMING GEAR AWARD
GIGABYTE GV-N770OC-2GD RRP: $334.99 | Website: www.gigabyte.com
Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 4770K • GIGABYTE Z87X-OC (X04) • CORSAIR Vengeance 2x8GB DDR 2666MHZ C11 • Patriot WildFire 120GB SSD • Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1500W • Windows 7 64-bit SP1 (FW 331.40)
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ardly any competitive overclocker is looking to push GTX 770s on HWBOT or any ranking database for that matter. The GK104’s run as a possible competitive card for top scores is gone. This is pretty much the same thing has happened to the competing GPU from AMD. In their hey days, AMD had the edge for several reasons courtesy of the Tessellation issue, which is more than likely to be repeated again ow that R9 290X is here. However, much like the G92 GPU of years gone, there’s still plenty of life left in this piece of silicon and NVIDIA knew 32 The OverClocker Issue 26 | 2013
exactly how to update it to make it relevant in today’s market. Relevant enough to have it commanding prices in excess of $600 in some instances for the SKUs with water blocks pre-installed. That doesn’t in anyway suggest that, this is a reasonable amount of money to pay for a GTX 770 when a 780 can be had for less. However, it does speak in some ways about the prevalence and somewhat performance of this GPU. As with the other GTX 770 cards we’ve reviewed before, we were continuously impressed with just how well these solutions hold up against the 7970GE and in fact they manage to come out ahead in virtually all the tests. Granted, when it comes to competitive overclocking, the HD7970 will go much further than any GTX 770 for the most part, but having said that. As it stands, the GTX770 is more of a gamer’s card than it is for competitive overclocking. It is within this context and perspective that we examined
the GIGABYTE offering. With a base clock of 1137MHz, it is amongst the higher clocked GTX 770s out on the market. Pair that, together with a truly well spec’d PCB and highly efficient cooler. You have all the right components to make for a truly wonderful graphics card that is a steal at the given price. There are others that have higher base clocks (and subsequently boost clocks), by more than 50MHz, but none of them sell at this price. Add to which, because of the cooling on this card, we constantly recorded a very high boost clock of 1220MHz. much higher than what GIGABYTE claim this card will do. We didn’t’ modify the BIOS in anyway and tested it exactly as we received it. When we began overclocking it, reaching 1.3GHz was very easy, especially with the Boost function disabled as we didn’t do much in the way of VDDC adjustments. Something worth considering if you’re going to be employing these