EVGA GTX 1070 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 Preview

EVGA GTX 1070 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 – RushKit

 

These days there is little reason to buy a reference GPU, they often run louder and hotter than their non-reference counterparts and water blocks are now made for a large variety of aftermarket models. 

When Nvidia announced their Founders Edition GTX 1070 and 1080 GPUs many of us were outraged at the price, as not many gamers want to pay a price premium when buying what is effectively a reference GPU design. 

This places the EVGA GTX 1070 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 in a rather strange position, which is actually a good thing for EVGA. Right now their GTX 1070 Superclocked has the same price as the reference/Founders Edition in the UK and actually has a lower MSRP in the US, making this GPU faster, quieter and cooler than its reference counterpart at the same, if not lower, price.  

  

        

 

What the EVGA GTX 1070 SC Gaming is designed to offer is a great balance between overclocking and affordability, coming with base and boost GPU clocks that are less than 15MHz off the EVGA GTX 1070 FTW, the companies dedicated overclocking model.  

Inside the box, we get the usual assortment of manuals, user guides, and stickers, with EVGA going so far as to give buyers a free poster with the GPU. This poster shows a knight with a flaming sword that is drawn in a style that is reminiscent of Darkest Dungeon or Dark Souls. 

 

 

We can see that EVGA have used the same basic twin fan cooler design that they have used on their previous generation GPUs, but this time with a very different exterior aesthetic. Personally speaking, I really like what EVGA has done with the design, though I can see a lot of people preferring EVGA’s older more minimalistic design.  

 

    

 

At the rear of the GPU we can see that this GPU comes with the same rear IO as the GTX 1070 Founders Edition, coming with 3 DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 ports, a single HDMI 2.0 port and a single DVI-D port. This should be plenty for almost any monitor configuration, easily allowing users to connect 4 different displays as well as a VR headset. 

 

   

 

Conclusion

When looking at the GTX 1070 Superclocked it is hard to not see great value here, after all, the reference GTX 1070 Founders Edition had already prompted a price decrease of the entire high-end GTX 900 of GPUs. 

EVGA takes things one step further, offering a GPU with stronger, quieter GPU cooler and a factory overclock but comes in at the same price as the GTX 1070 Founders edition in the UK and $10 less in the US. This simply makes this GPU the smarter buy, especially if you do not plan on overclocking your GPU. 

In simple terms, the EVGA GTX 1070 SC Gaming ACX seems to offer everything that you would want from a GPU out of the box, though we will be reserving our full opinions for our full review, which should be out later this month. 

 

You can join the discussion on EVGA’s GTX 1070 Superclocked Gaming ACX 3.0 GPU on the OC3D Forums.