EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Classified review - Introduction

EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Classified gets a review

We review the EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Classified, this graphics card is equipped with NVIDIA's second to best  flagship GPU. Combined with an all custom PCB design and a lot of tweaking features this product will be enticing for a lot of you guys. The EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Classified comes factory overclocked for you, has the latest revision of the ACX cooler and can be connected towards an external POD called the EVBOT. All in all definitely stuff to check out we'd think. 

Now who doesn't like that with a graphics card based on the chip that is embedded in the GeForce GTX titan, eh? Correct as the 780 is making use of the GK110-300-A2 GPU which is packed with 2,304 cores, 192 TMUs and 48 ROPs. The GeForce GTX 780 is NVIDIAs high-end graphics card based off their Flagship product, the GTX Titan. This means it is based on the GK110 GPU and has an whopping 7.1 Billion transistors. That makes it a nice chunk faster opposed to the GeForce GTX 680 GPU. Just like Titan, the GTX 780 is based on the GK110 GPU with the distinctions that the Titan has a GK110-300 GPU and the GeForce GTX 780 a GK110-400 GPU. Same stuff, yet with some things disabled. But we are a bit surprised to see NVIDIA move forward with GK110. See, the GK110 chip is BIG, and that makes it a difficult chip to bake, its recipe is refined though as the product has 2304 Shader Processing Units, 192 TMUs and 32 ROPs on a 384-bit memory interface of fast GDDR5. So yeah, NVIDIA trimmed down that that 45 mm × 45 mm 2397-pin S-FCBGA Titian with its 2688 shader/stream/CUDA processors a bit. Memory wise you are looking at 3GB to over 6GB, that is still a nice amount of memory (384-bit) on there. Combined with GPU Boost 2.0 you will see this product boosting towards the 1100~1150 MHz range once you tweak it. The reference clock is 863 MHz with a boost clock of 900 MHz. Looking at the specs you must think that this product must consume heaps of power, well it's not great, but definitely not bad at all. The maximum allowed board design power draw is roughly 250 Watt, which considering what this product is, is good.

But let's say hello to Titan's little brother first, the GeForce GTX 780 Classified from EVGA in a black accent themed flavor. This is the 3GB model that comes factory clocked for you at 993 MHz (Ref 863) with a Boost clock of 1046 MHz (Ref 900), whilst monitoring the card ran steady at 1100+ MHz though. The 780 Classified features a 14-phase (12+2 phases), the VRM design, the card connects towards two 8-pin power (PCIe PEG) connectors. The one thing that you really can't miss out on is the ACX  cooler which uses two 90mm fans, double ball bearing based.  ACX is short for Active Cooling Xtreme. The GPU is connected towards 7 GT/s memory chips for its framebuffer. Interesting is that the card will also have two BIOSes. One functions as a fail-safe (with reference firmware), the secondary BIOS is used as stock factory OC BIOS.

But have a peek at the product we test today and then lets head onwards into to review.