Gigabyte GTX 780 Windforce OC

Overclocking

The new Kepler Architecture with GPU boost has been a bit of a bear when it comes to pushing the clocks. This is due to the throttling mechanisms put in place and the fact that it dynamically clocks. Unlike 500 series where we could set a static clock and it just applied the card, Kepler clocks according to many variables, which means that much more care must be shown when applying overclock settings and even monitoring it during the run.

Things such as the thermal target can play a big role in stone walling your performance during an overclock session as everything has to be adjusted accordingly to ensure expected performance levels are met.

The Windforce 780 easily jumps up to an effective boost clock of over 1265MHz which enabled some very good performance and far eclipsing the out of the box clock speeds which bodes well for the capabilities of this cooler even when pushing the clock on the card.

Memory much like I was expecting eclipsed the 7GHz mark and helps make for even better performance.

This is excellent results as the cooler kept the card nice and chilly and able to push the performance to an area where normally might not be possible. That is one of the cool parts of the new GPU boost technology which allows for even higher effective clocks under boosting as long as you can keep it cool.

TEMPERATURES

To measure the temperature of the video card, we  ran Heaven Benchmark in a loop to find the Load temperatures for the video cards. The highest temperature was recorded. After looping for 10 minutes, Heaven was turned off and we let the computer sit at the desktop for another 10 minutes before we measured the idle temperatures.

The Windforce OC cooler keeps things nice and cool at stock speeds and even when pushing the clocks which is great so that you do not need to crank up the fans to keep things running well and cool.

POWER CONSUMPTION

To get our power consumption numbers, we plugged in our Kill A Watt power measurement device and took the Idle reading at the desktop during our temperature readings. We left it at the desktop for about 15 minutes and took the idle reading. Then we ran Heaven Benchmark for a few minutes minutes and recorded the highest power usage.

Here the Windforce 780 idles a bit higher than the reference card but under load it actually consumes a bit less power by 4 watts which is nice since the card performs so much better. This tells me that the card design and components is very efficient to be able to strike such a balance.