Gigabyte GTX780 Ti GHz Edition Review

Gigabyte GTX780Ti GHz Edition Review

Conclusion

That you should buy a GTX780Ti if you can afford one is hardly news. After all we want the best possible performance whenever we can get it, and the GTX780Ti is a ridiculously capable card, able to break records wherever it finds them and without any weak spots at all. 

It’s not just the stock performance that impresses, but the GK110 certainly takes full advantage of an overclock to ramp up the frame rate to new heights. We know that for many people, ourselves included, finances are tight enough that it’s easy to become nervous when faced with the prospect of overclocking your latest shiny purchase. No matter how easy it is these days, or how hard it is to break your card, nonetheless it’s still a remote possibility and that can lead to people leaving their product at stock and not getting the full benefit of it.

The Gigabyte GTX780Ti GHz Edition perfectly dispenses with all the stress and hassle of that procedure by coming equipped with a very healthy overclock out of the box. It’s the best of both worlds. You get the incredible GTX780Ti, and the extra performance that an increase in clock speed can bring, without any of the worries about warranty voiding or even just the time it takes to get a stable overclock. The benchmark scores and framerates perfectly match the clock speed increase too, with the GHz Edition placing just behind our manual overclocks in nearly every single test, and at the top in one or two.

The only problems are cosmetic. The Windforce cooler never seems to fit any PCB it’s placed upon, and whilst the GHz Edition is just about the best we’ve seen it’s easy to wonder why they didn’t just move it a couple of mm to the left so there wasn’t any overhang. Although left and right aren’t things that appear to exist in the Gigabyte factory as the backplate has the “GHz Edition” screen print backwards. It’s facing the motherboard. To say it’s annoying is an understatement. How this passed even a cursory inspection is beyond us. It very nearly ruins an otherwise outstanding product.

Fortunately the many qualities of the Gigabyte GTX780Ti GHz Edition are enough that this irritating flaw is merely that, not deal breaking, just annoying. If you ignore it then you’re getting a cool, quiet, high performance card with none of the worries or stress that might come from having to manually overclock it. The performance is staggering, and for a “fit and forget” option it’s up there with the best we’ve ever seen, and for that reason the Gigabyte GTX780Ti GHz Edition is awarded our OC3D Performance Award.

     

Thanks to Gigabyte for supplying the GTX780Ti GHz Edition for review. Discuss your thoughts in the OC3D Forums.