My new gaming video card

[Tywais]

After 5 years of use my HIS Radeon 4890 has reached its limits for the new games as it only supports up to DirectX 10.0. High end games now want 10.1 or 11.x so decided a replacement was in order. After a lot of research and evaluating my budget I got an EVGA GTX770 SC (Super clocked) ACX (Active Cooling Xtreme) video card. Also upgraded my power supply to a Corsair CX750M (semi modular supply).

The performance and cooling capability of the card is brilliant. Idle temperature 35 C with ambient at 28. 3D benchmarking with GPU at 100% and memory clocked at 97% it hovers around 66 degrees with a brief peak at 70. It comes with an overclocking control panel and can be boosted another 25% and reviews state at that OC the cooling keeps up with no problem. Finally got to play Call of Duty Ghosts Reloaded.

Intel i7 2600k CPU and 8GB Corsair Extreme memory running Win7 64-bit.

Corsair CX760M semi modular supply

Modular connectors and flat cables make for a clean case

The case and much tidier cable runs.

My home brew PWM fan speed controller for the side panel.

A very close fit of the card against the SATA power connector for the SSD.

[bealus]

Impressive configuration and thanks for sharing. Gaming will be as smooth as silk and fast as lighting. One question, when you did your research for the new GPU, did you consider the Nvidia GTX Titan Black? And if so why it didn't make it to your final choice?

Wish you loads of fun with your new gear!

[Tywais]

Impressive configuration and thanks for sharing. Gaming will be as smooth as silk and fast as lighting. One question, when you did your research for the new GPU, did you consider the Nvidia GTX Titan Black? And if so why it didn't make it to your final choice?

Wish you loads of fun with your new gear!

Perhaps I shouldn't referred to it as my 'gaming card' though that is one of the main reasons I bought it as it doesn't live up to the true beasts such as the one you mentioned. But budget was one reason and availability another though the EVGA card I got was not easy to find and selling off the shelves fast. The GTX Titan Black is $999 USD (32,000 Baht) and no telling what it would cost here.

If cost was no object and availability here easy then yeah, the Black would be awesome. But so far this card has shown some very impressive performance for me plus a very nice OC control panel and with the cooling system can boost it at least another 25% in GPU/Memory speed.

Some key differences between Black and GTX770 are more texture mapping units, 6GB vs 2GB (or 4GB depending on choice). A good cross comparison between the two below.

Both GPUs exhibit very powerful performance, so it probably isn't worth upgrading from one to the other, as both are capable of running even the most demanding games at the highest settings.

Game-Debate.com

[bealus]

After reading about your new configuration I kind of got interested about EVGA card and could not resist to do some research on it on the internet. Reading the specs of this card in relation to its price, I agree with you the price/value ratio is very good and both GPU's could master the most demanding games available right now.

Will keep EVGA card in mind when the time comes to upgrade my system as a serious yet more affordable alternative and compare it to its competitors.

[harrry]

From your research for this how would this stand up as a flight simulator....I am looking for a new card at the moment and am looking at changing to the PREPAR3d sim as it is being improved to take advantage of new hardware where FSX is not recieving any real support now and they say they will stop next year. It is looking a bit tired now. Lockheed are signalling some improvements in the future.

I have been trying to see if I can stretch to a R9 290 with 4 gig but I am interested in what your looking will show.

I have a Win 8.2 with AMD 8150 3.9g with 32g ram and a 1000watt Thermaltake power supply.

My graphics card is the weakest part as it is only a HD6670.

(I know it is overkill but I sometimes run several virtual machines.)

Edited June 15, 2014 by harrry

[Pib]

The new video card looks like the radiator/fans cooling system I've seen on some vehicles. Oh, you desktop gamers!!!

[harrry]

The new video card looks like the radiator/fans cooling system I've seen on some vehicles. Oh, you desktop gamers!!!

My desktop has a pump and a radiator and cooling fluid.

[Pib]

The new video card looks like the radiator/fans cooling system I've seen on some vehicles. Oh, you desktop gamers!!!

My desktop has a pump and a radiator and cooling fluid.

Does it help with the gas mileage?

Seriously though, I've been getting the urge to maybe build a desktop for my home office where my 8 year old Toshiba Celeron CPU laptop resides as a backup computer to my primarily laptop which is an i7 CPU based machine and moves all around the home. Years back I was always building my own desktops, upgrading desktops for the office and friends, but my mobile work life demanded a laptop which pretty much changed my home computer life also. Plus I'm not a gamer, so I'll probably stick to only laptops and be able to suppress the desktop urge. Cheers.

[rhythmworx]

Make sure you visit the Nvidia website for the very latest drivers, you will gain performance boosts as they constantly tweak the drivers to improve frame rates etc... I run a 770 too was thinking of buying a 2nd one for SLI.

[bealus]

When I wrote research, I meant comparing the specs and prices between the EVGA card and the black titan. I didn't dig deeper than this, maybe just should called it product comparison.

Regarding your questions, I believe Tywais is a far more competent partner to approach as he does install many hardware himself; whereas my PC is build to order.

So perhaps Tywais would be so kind to let his technical light shine on your questions if possible, I hope he doesn't mind mentioning him in this respect and apologise in advance for doing so.

Edited June 15, 2014 by bealus

[Tywais]

Make sure you visit the Nvidia website for the very latest drivers, you will gain performance boosts as they constantly tweak the drivers to improve frame rates etc... I run a 770 too was thinking of buying a 2nd one for SLI.

The Nvidia included software is very good at letting you know when an update is out. After I installed the drivers/software from the DVD it shortly told me an update was available which I performed, that was yesterday morning. This evening had another update announcement showing performance enhancement of 10% with very high res monitors such as 4k. Yes, the card supports triple SLI which would make for a real screamer.

[rhythmworx]

Sign up for origin games there's a few free games to be had and they add new ones from time to time.

I'm Beta testing the new Battlefield Hardline game at the moment.

[Tywais]

From your research for this how would this stand up as a flight simulator....I am looking for a new card at the moment and am looking at changing to the PREPAR3d sim as it is being improved to take advantage of new hardware where FSX is not recieving any real support now and they say they will stop next year. It is looking a bit tired now. Lockheed are signalling some improvements in the future.

I have been trying to see if I can stretch to a R9 290 with 4 gig but I am interested in what your looking will show.

I have a Win 8.2 with AMD 8150 3.9g with 32g ram and a 1000watt Thermaltake power supply.

My graphics card is the weakest part as it is only a HD6670.

(I know it is overkill but I sometimes run several virtual machines.)

Based on the Prepar3D spec they recommend a 2GB + (GDDR5) memory which the GTX770/780 series support, they come in 2GB or 4GB versions. The R9 290 is definitely a very nice card. Now there are some issues with the high end AMDs versus the GTX and they consume a lot of power and run hot. I have a friend with top AMD graphic cards and regularly complaining about the fan noise and how hot they run. Those are a couple of reasons I went back to Nvidia this round (though Nvidia is usually my 1st choice depending on current technology) and another are complaints from gamers about poor performance or issues with the current AMD cards in the new games such as BF4 and COD Ghosts Reloaded.

Now for Nvidia the two GPUs to look for are the GK104 (older version and what the GTX770 is based on) and GK110 (GTX780 uses this) the newer higher performance one. Memory bus on my card is still 256-bit so if you can than the newer cards with 384-bits would be good but depending on your budget.

The bottom line the GTX770, specifically the EVGA SC will not have any problems as far as I can tell. The previous card mentioned, GTX Titan Black, has the 384-bit bus, 2880 CUDA cores versus 1536 on the GTX770, 6 GB memory. Memory speed is nearly equal on each but due to the bus width Black has a memory BW of 336GB/s versus 224GB/s on the GTX770.

If you can afford it the Titan Black would be a fine choice but still sure you will have no issues with a GTX770 OC editions. Plus you can get 3 of them in SLI for the price of the Titan Black.

[harrry]

No way can I get the Titan...I am stretching it to the money a R9 270 will cost. If nothing else goes wrong this month a card will be my next purchase but I said that last month too . Prepar3d does stress the native DirectX11 support needed and that rules out the older cards,.At least the system I bought a few years ago is still relatively current. I am not a great game player but I do like my flight simulator and as I said the system usually runs several virtual machines.

Edited June 15, 2014 by harrry

[Tywais]

About flight simulators, I haven't used FSX for a while now and switched to X-Plane 10. I looked at the Prepar3D before and have been thinking about it and looking at proper flight controls for it.

[Tywais]

No way can I get the Titan...I am stretching it to the money a R9 270 will cost. If nothing else goes wrong this month a card will be my next purchase but I said that last month too . Prepar3d does stress the native DirectX11 support needed and that rules out the older cards,.

At least the system

Yes, and in that case the EVGA GTX SC ACX will do the job and cost me 13,100 Baht. Down from 15,500 a month ago. Supports DirectX 11.x and DirectX API for 12.0.

[Tywais]

You might find this interesting as I did a 3DMark benchmark with my GTX770 and came out with a GPU score of 21208 and CPU score of 23612. Below is a link to a list of 3DMark scores for June 2014 and my number is well above any of them on the list. A bit surprising as the list shows the generic GTX770 as number 8. Perhaps the SC (Super Clocked) aspect of the EVGA card coming into play.

http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu

[DogNo1]

Tywais, thats a nice video card. Are you running a 4k monitor? Maximum PC recommends two GTX 780 cards or two R9 290 cards in SLI to run 4k. I am way below that, running HD 6770 or 7750 cards in my various machines. I'll make the jump to 4k when it becomes a bit more affordable. BTW, do you have any heat problems with that case? It looks like a mid-tower and the components are pretty tightly packed in. Have you thought of trading up to one of the neat Cooler Master full towers?

[DogNo1]

Harry: When you say that you are running Windows 8.2, does that mean Windows 8.1 with the upgrade? I've seen Windows 8.1 Pro touted recently but my technet subscription doesn't allow me to download the pro version. I do get a year's trial of Office 365 which carries with it 25 GB of cloud storage and the ability to download the Mobile Office apps for Android when they become available. I'm looking forward to having Mobile Office on my Note Pro.

[manarak]

someone's proud of his rig ;-)

isn't 8 GB RAM a bit light ?

btw, does anyone of you gamers have a good idea about how to keep the VGA card heatsinks and maybe also the CPU heatsink free of dust?

[Tywais]

Tywais, thats a nice video card. Are you running a 4k monitor? Maximum PC recommends two GTX 780 cards or two R9 290 cards in SLI to run 4k. I am way below that, running HD 6770 or 7750 cards in my various machines. I'll make the jump to 4k when it becomes a bit more affordable. BTW, do you have any heat problems with that case? It looks like a mid-tower and the components are pretty tightly packed in. Have you thought of trading up to one of the neat Cooler Master full towers?

Not 4K and probably not for a long time to come. Actually I am using a Cooler Master mid tower case, the photo doesn't show the size well. It has all filtered front and fan for intake air. 4 fans keeps everything comfortable, CPU, chipset, drives, etc. as the inside space is pretty open now and the airflow is quite good. I added the PWM driven fan to boost the airflow up more and can crank the speed up quite a bit. Drives around 35, chipset 38 and idle CPU 43 deg max. That reminds me though, I forgot to clean and reapply heat sink compound while I had it open as it is about time.

[Tywais]

someone's proud of his rig ;-)

isn't 8 GB RAM a bit light ?

Not that often I have the chance to do a significant upgrade. Besides I thought the topic might be useful to others. Considering I just went from 4GB (3GB useable) Win7-32 to 8GB (all useable) and Win7-64, that was a good boost and haven't encountered anything needing more than that yet.

[harrry]

Harry: When you say that you are running Windows 8.2, does that mean Windows 8.1 with the upgrade? I've seen Windows 8.1 Pro touted recently but my technet subscription doesn't allow me to download the pro version. I do get a year's trial of Office 365 which carries with it 25 GB of cloud storage and the ability to download the Mobile Office apps for Android when they become available. I'm looking forward to having Mobile Office on my Note Pro.

8.2 comes as an automatic upgrade with windows update. It happens from all pro versions at least and I think it happens with the lower ones.

[manarak]

someone's proud of his rig ;-)

isn't 8 GB RAM a bit light ?

Not that often I have the chance to do a significant upgrade. Besides I thought the topic might be useful to others. Considering I just went from 4GB (3GB useable) Win7-32 to 8GB (all useable) and Win7-64, that was a good boost and haven't encountered anything needing more than that yet.

aah, that explains it!

64bit and an SSD indeed make a huge difference, I took the plunge about 2 or 3 years ago.

When I work, I run many applications at the same time, so the 16GB RAM are really useful, so I can work without the need for windows to swap.

For anyone in the market for VGA cards, I recommend looking at these charts:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

The 770 is good value at 300 USD, while the Radeon R9 270 is a really hot deal at only 179 USD

Edited June 15, 2014 by manarak

[rhythmworx]

someone's proud of his rig ;-)

isn't 8 GB RAM a bit light ?

btw, does anyone of you gamers have a good idea about how to keep the VGA card heatsinks and maybe also the CPU heatsink free of dust?

Yeah build a Phobya water cooling system.

[keeniau96]

I do a fair amount of gaming and build my own systems. The CPU is the heart, and the Intel i7 series is my favorite for such. The video card is where the action is happening and there is a huge range of price and performance. Two excellent resources here: the price-performance (bang-for-the-buck) rating is well summarized here: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html. The absolute performance for video cards is at: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html and at http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu. Note that both sites are highly regarded by enthusiasts.

I have been yearning for a video card upgrade and am leaning toward the GTX770; the EVGA version is currently at Newegg for US$300. I have had good experiences with various EVGA products, including a very rapid motherboard exchange (SR-2 dual Xeon) with their Taiwan home.

[Tywais]

Ran the PassMark benchmark software and my results were 6383 for 3D. Based on the PassMark website that puts it above the R9 290 (6377) and just below the R9 290X (6739). Their baseline GTX770 was 6203 so the EVGA Super clocked does the job. Boosting the OC slightly would put it above the R9 290X. Boosting 25% would put it at the same level as the GeForce GTX Titan. The GTX Titan is $1399 USD. Oh, and my current card Radeon 4890 - PassMark of 1511. Considering the Radeon 4890 had no problems running BF4 looks like I'm set for a few generations of new games with the GTX770.

[manarak]

Ran the PassMark benchmark software and my results were 6383 for 3D. Based on the PassMark website that puts it above the R9 290 (6377) and just below the R9 290X (6739). Their baseline GTX770 was 6203 so the EVGA Super clocked does the job. Boosting the OC slightly would put it above the R9 290X. Boosting 25% would put it at the same level as the GeForce GTX Titan. The GTX Titan is $1399 USD. Oh, and my current card Radeon 4890 - PassMark of 1511. Considering the Radeon 4890 had no problems running BF4 looks like I'm set for a few generations of new games with the GTX770.

Passmark site.JPG

yes, definitely, the GTX 770 is a very good GPU and if EVGA did their job correctly as well, you shouldn't need an upgrade for quite some years to come.

[JSixpack]

Definitely a nice card!

Not too impressed w/ the cable management, not that you asked. Can't tell whether your case offers much facility--doesn't look like it. In that situation I'd resort to cable ties w/ tie mounting bases (like http://www.cableorganizer.com/adhesive-base/) to help clean up the spaghetti and achieve--well, ah, an infinitesimally better airflow. And a better view through the case window of course if there is one. For anyone interested in the issue, or non-issue, there's a reddit forum here: http://www.reddit.com/r/CableManagement/

Edited June 16, 2014 by JSixpack

[harrry]

Definitely a nice card!

Not too impressed w/ the cable management, not that you asked. Can't tell whether your case offers much facility--doesn't look like it. In that situation I'd resort to cable ties w/ tie mounting bases (like http://www.cableorganizer.com/adhesive-base/) to help clean up the spaghetti and achieve--well, ah, an infinitesimally better airflow. And a better view through the case window of course if there is one. For anyone interested in the issue, or non-issue, there's a reddit forum here: http://www.reddit.com/r/CableManagement/

He may be relying on the separation of the wires to reduce interferance. Making cables run too neat and too close can cause interference between them That's my excuse and I am sticking to it.

My guess is the op knows more about cable management than you will ever learn

Edited June 16, 2014 by harrry