EVGA GeForce GTX 760 w/ ACX Cooling Pro Reviews

The EVGA GeForce GTX 760 2GB Superclocked is a flawless graphics card that has solid performance, tons of overclocking potential and it might even induce a graphicgasim when you are upgrading from an older card!

Only a small number of hardcore gamers can afford to pay more than €/$250 for a graphics card. More powerful cards can deliver more eye candy, but for 1080p gaming the GTX 760 should meet the needs of most consumers. Prices start at a rather modes 220 euro and cards that fall in this this recession friendly price bracket are traditionally viewed as the weapon of choice for most gamers, the tradition continues. The EVGA GTX 760 SC ACX starts at about 240 euro and it is a good example of how a custom design can do a lot for the card and make it more attractive. In addition to good looks, the GTX 760 SC ACX performs better compared to reference cards, thanks to a high factory overclock. In addition, the GTX 760 SC ACX is overclocking friendly and it allowed us to increase the clock to 1162MHz with relative ease. That’s 182MHz above the reference clock. The GTX 760 SC ACX served us well and if you are after 1080p gaming, cranking up the settings to the High in graphics-intensive games should not be a problem for this card, and the scores prove it. The ACX cooler is a good performer, but we expected a bit less noise. The cooler is by no means too noisy and it has a lot of headroom for tweaking. If you’re not going after the highest possible clock, it will be quiet, as it keeps the card roughly 10 degrees Celsius cooler than the reference cooler.

Today, NVIDIA releases their GeForce GTX 760 that uses the same GK104 graphics processor as on cards like the GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670, GTX 680, and GTX 770. EVGA overclocked their GTX 760 SC ACX out of the box to provides a nice 6% performance improvement over the reference design. The new card not only delivers an impressive 25% performance improvement vs. the GTX 660 but is also priced $60 higher. In the product stack, the GTX 760 will replace the GTX 660 Ti against which the EVGA GTX 760 SC provides a 12% higher performance at $20 less. Compared to AMD's lineup, we see the card 14% faster than the Radeon HD 7950 and just 1% behind HD 7970 that is much more expensive. EVGA is using their ACX cooler they introduced with the GTX 700 Series, but I'm a bit disappointed. Cooling performance is just ok, with load temperatures in the 72°C range, but noise levels are simply too high. The NVIDIA reference-design cooler is already noisy, but EVGA's cooler adds even more noise on top of that. I'm not sure how the cooler made it through qualifying, but with 72°C and that much noise I don't have a lot of hope of better fan settings netting an improvent. Remember, the MSI GTX 770 GAMING we reviewed today runs at 69°C and emits less than half(!) the noise. Changing thermal paste didn't improve things; I also talked to other editors who report the same noisy experience. Our sample also suffered from a bit of audible coil noise.