GALAXY GTX 780
HALL OF FAME
RRP: $539.99 | Website: www.galaxytech.com
Test Machine
• INTEL Core i7 4960X
• EVGA X79 Dark (v2.05)
• CORSAIR Dominator
Platinum 4x4GB DDR
2666MHZ CL10
• ADATA SX910 128GB SSD
• Cooler Master Silent Pro M2
1500W
• Windows 7 64-bit SP1 (FW
331.58)
HARDWARE
As with most GTX 780s catering
to enthusiasts and overclockers,
the HOF features a somewhat
elaborate cooler featuring
several heat pipes (four to be
exact) combined with a vapour
chamber design to help keep
the GPU cool. How well this
works obviously depends on
your environment but in our
fairly warm testing environment,
we never saw temperatures
passing 68’C. With that said,
when increasing VDDC and
clocks together you may see
temperatures as high as 74
18 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013
to 78’C. This is to be expected
though when pushing clock
speeds past the 1.3GHz mark.
As with other 780s on the
market, the card makes use of
the CHiL CHL8318 controller
with I2C Bus support. The
8+2phase PWM may seem to
be on the low side especially
considering that competing
cards have as much as a
16-phase circuit, but that
shouldn’t be an issue at all as
the card is able to provide up
to 480A to the GPU. As shown
by some results, the GPU is as
equally capable of hitting those
high clock speeds as other
cards which on paper may
seemingly provide more power.
Rounding it all up is the usual
dual BIOS system, operated
via a spring switch at the rear
of the card. When pressed a
secondary BIOS with a high
GPU clock profile is used, but
with that comes a much higher
fan speed (set to 100%) and
noise of course. The other BIOS
is the normal mode, with the
inherent OC that GALAXY set
(1006MHz base).
Value Award
OC Hero Award
THE PERFORMANCE (
AIR OC)
Air overclocking on this card
is a typical GTX 780 affair.
Cards do vary in overclocking
potential, but suffice to say
this particular sample faired
pretty well when it came to the
GPU clocks. Disabling Turbo
will always help the situation
and as such we were able to
finish a slew of Benchmarks
at 1306MHz. Not necessarily
the highest we’ve seen but
certainly respectable. The only
down side is the memory which
wouldn’t really do anything
more than 1652MHz (SDR) or at
the most 1700MHz if you kept
the GPU clock standard. That
is however, nothing to do with
GALAXY or their engineering
efforts, but the ELPIDA
memory which just doesn’t
come to the party. We aren’t
sure if there are any cards
that use different memory, but
suffice to say this clock should
in theory improve under cold
even if it’s by a small margin.
Failing that rest assured that
the GPU core will definitely