GeForce GTX 770 and rivals Test results One page

During our tests of the GeForce GTX 960, the old GeForce GTX 770 video adapter was a constant participant. At one time it was a very successful high-end graphics accelerator, although now its place is in the segment of mid-level solutions. At the end of the GeForce GTX 770's life, we decided to pay a little attention to the old man to find out its capabilities in modern conditions.

This time we will move away from the usual scheme, when we abstract from specific models. The focus will be on the Gigabyte GTX 770 WindForce 3X (GV-N770OC-2GD) with increased factory frequencies and a standard memory capacity of 2 GB. Note that it was the factory overclocked versions that dominated the market. Some of these video cards are still on sale today.

Let's see what Gigabyte is capable of at native frequencies and overclocked, test it at reference frequencies, compare it with the Radeon R9 280X and Radeon R9 380. Let's not forget about the comparison with the GeForce GTX 960, although based on the results of past tests this topic has already been covered in to the fullest.

Let's study it first technical features Gigabyte GV-N770OC-2GD.

The video card went on sale in a large box. Inside, additional cables and adapters are stored in a separate compartment. In this case, these are two power adapters from Molex connectors to the video card power connectors.

Gigabyte is large in size. Equipped with a two-slot WindForce 3X cooling system - last index indicates the number of fans. Current graphics accelerators are equipped with a similar cooler.

The Gigabyte GTX 770 has two SLI connectors and two power connectors. Gigabyte's cooler protrudes slightly beyond the board.

The cooling system uses six heat pipes. Contact with the graphics chip is made through a copper base. There is an aluminum plate around it, which is in contact with the memory chips through special thermal pads. It is noteworthy that right on the main radiator there is a platform for contact with power transistors. This design of a single radiator is now used by all graphic solutions Gigabyte senior level.

At the point of contact with the GPU, the metal plates of the radiator alternate with thick trapezoidal metal sheets. They are held together by a pair of powerful bolts. This “core” improves heat dissipation efficiency and directs air flow.

Three fans with a diameter of 80 mm are mounted on top of the radiator. They ensure complete ventilation of the radiator and airflow across the entire board.

Gigabyte GV-N770OC-2GD uses a board of its own design with an enhanced power supply system and 8 phases in the GPU voltage converter. This should have a positive effect on stability at higher frequencies.

The heart of the GeForce GTX 770 is the GK104 processor with all active computing units: 1536 CUDA cores and 128 TMU “texture units”. The GK104 was used in this configuration back in the days of the GeForce GTX 680. Actually, the GeForce GTX 770 is only the successor of the GeForce GTX 680, which moved to higher frequencies. If the old flagship had a base frequency of 1006 MHz, then its replacement has 1045 MHz, and the average Boost Clock has increased from 1059 MHz to 1085 MHz.

GeForce GTX 770 is equipped with two gigabytes of GDDR5 memory. In the current conditions, such a volume can play the role of a limiting factor. Effective memory frequency 7012 MHz (GeForce GTX 680 had 6008 MHz).

Again frequency characteristics Gigabyte will illustrate with a screenshot from GPU-Z.

This utility allows you to determine the ASIC Quality parameter, which in our instance is 90.9%. This value indicates the “quality” of the chip and partially characterizes its overclocking capabilities. In this case everything should be fine.

The video card is not quiet, but the noise of the running fans under gaming load is moderate and there is no particular discomfort. Below is a screenshot of monitoring parameters using the MSI Afterburner utility while running the Metro Last Light benchmark. The GPU temperature reached 73 °C, the peak fan speed was at 2500 rpm. The real Boost frequency remained stable at 1254 MHz.

With overclocking, everything is really good, although there were GeForce GTX 770 copies with better frequency potential. Using the available softvolt mod, we managed to achieve a stable processor frequency of 1306 MHz with a base value of 1187 MHz.

Memory overclocking reached 7806 MHz. A slight increase in fan speed made it possible to maintain operating temperatures almost at the initial level.

In order to test the GeForce GTX 770 at reference frequencies, the base value was reduced to the lowest available level. As a result, Boost was 1137 MHz, which exactly corresponds to the characteristics of conventional GeForce versions GTX 770. But in harsh temperature conditions, Boost for the reference may decrease, but for our video card it was constant. This nuance will have minimal impact on the results. But if you are scrupulous about the results, it can be taken into account.

Test participants

The general list of participants in this testing is as follows:

• GeForce GTX 770 2GB
• GeForce GTX 960 2GB
• GeForce GTX 760 2GB
• Radeon R9 280X 3GB
• Radeon HD 7970 3GB
• Radeon R9 380 2GB
• Radeon R9 285 2GB

All technical characteristics are given in the table. For GeForce, the official frequency level is indicated (Base and Boost Clock). The real value of the maximum Boost for test instances is reflected in the final diagrams.

	Gigabyte GTX 770
GPU codename
Number of transistors, million
Technical process, nm
Core area, sq. mm
Number of stream processors
Number of texture blocks
Number of ROP blocks
Core frequency, MHz
Memory bus, bit
Memory type
Effective memory frequency, MHz
Memory capacity, MB
Interface
TDP level, W

Teststand

• CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K @4.4 GHz
• motherboard: ASUS Rampage IV Formula
• memory: Kingston KHX2133C11D3K4/16GX, 1866 MHz, 4x4 GB
• hard drive: Hitachi HDS721010CLA332, 1 TB
• power supply: Seasonic SS-750KM
• operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
• GeForce driver: NVIDIA GeForce 353.06
• Radeon driver: ATI Catalyst 15.6 and ATI Catalyst 15.7 for R9 380

Testing was carried out in compliance with the settings and parameters described earlier in the GeForce GTX 960 review. Test games are played in alphabetical order according to their name.

Hello readers of the expert club. Today we will talk about, although not a recent, but quite relevant video card based on Geforce 770 - Gigabyte geforce 770 2gb windforce.

Even though the card is in its second year, it shows itself to be doing well, and the recently discontinued 960 has not become a full-fledged replacement for the 770.

So let's talk about this model. How is it different from others? Firstly this model is the OS version (OverClocking), which means it is already overclocked out of the box. Overclocking is almost 10% from the 1046 to 1137 box, then this card is distinguished from competitors by the proprietary WINDFORCE cooling model, which carries as many as 3 fans on board, and, as the manufacturer claims, is capable of removing 450 watts of heat. Now let's take a look at the box itself.

When you get the box in your hands, you begin to understand that the video card is not from the budget segment, the box is quite massive, and is made of high-quality smooth cardboard. On the front side we see the name of the manufacturer, model, amount of memory, and also that the video card comes with overclocking out of the box.
The back features the company's signature technologies. It mainly talks about the features of their cooling system.
On the reverse side it is also indicated that to connect the card you need a power supply of at least 600 W. It is also desirable to have 6 pin and 8 pin connectors for food.

The package with the video card includes a disk containing drivers and the GURU OS utility and 6pin and 8pin power adapters. This kit is enough for you to install the card in your computer.

Now let's talk about this card.
Type-Video card.
GPU- GeForce GTX 770 (GK 104).
Interface- PCI-E 16x 3.0.
Technical process- 28 nm.
CPU frequency- 1046 (1137 with turbo boost).
Number of universal processors- 1536. Number of texture blocks - 128.
Memory- 2GB.
Memory size- 256 bits.
Memory frequency- 7010 MHz.
Number of monitors supported - 4.
Supported Interfaces- HDMI, DVI-D/I, Display Port.
DirectX version - 11.1
OpenGL version- 4.3.
Maximum resolution- 4096*2160.

The cooling system is called WINDFORCE 3X 450W, it immediately makes it clear that this system can remove 450 watts of heat. When installed, the card occupies 2 slots, and its length is 292 mm, this must be taken into account, because If it doesn’t take up much in terms of height, then in terms of length it won’t fit into every case.
The video card cooler is made of a radiator consisting of two sections. One of them is made of 53, the other of 56 aluminum plates. And 3 fans with a diameter of 76 millimeters that blow over this radiator.

To increase heat dissipation, six copper heat pipes are installed on the radiator: four with a diameter of 6 mm. and two - 8 mm. All of them are soldered to the copper base and radiator fins, which significantly improves the rate of excess heat removal.

GIGABYTE takes care of cooling the memory chips and power elements, the cooling of which occurs due to low-profile radiators secured with screws.

The printed circuit board is made in the original black color.

Gigabyte solved the issue of increasing the rigidity of the structure quite simply by installing an aluminum strip on the side, but many manufacturers choose a casing for the board.

The seven hundred and seventieth power supply was carried out according to an 8+2+2 scheme (eight phases for the GPU and two for memory chips), and the reference version includes three phases less in the graphics chip power circuit.

This card is built on the GK104 (Kepler) processor, built using a 28-nm process technology and consisting of 8 active SMX blocks, 1536 universal shader pipelines (CUDA cores in NVIDIA terminology) and 32 rasterization units, as mentioned above, the chip frequency is raised to 1137 , and with GPU Boost 2.0, in turbo boost the core frequency is about 1189 MHz.

Around the chip there are eight GDDR 5 memory chips, each 256 megabytes, manufactured by ELPIDA. The memory frequency is 7010 megahertz, and data exchange occurs via a 256-bit bus at a speed of 224 gigabytes per second.

Now let's check what the video card is capable of.
Test stand:
Housing – DNS SA 210.
Processor – Intel Core i7 2600k 3.4 GHz.
CPU cooling system – Deepcool Ice Edge 400FS
Motherboard – Gigabyte Z77p-D3.
RAM – Kingston KVR1333D3N9 8GB.
Drives – Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB + Seagate ST3500418ASDM003
Power supply – Chiefftec APS 650CB 650w
Monitor – Samsung S24B300.

GPU-Z.
Data about the video card in the GPU-Z program.

Crysis 3.

Ultra settings, 4x anti-aliasing.


As you can see, with these settings it is quite possible to play this game. There is a minimum 30 frames per second.

Alien Isolation.

Maximum settings.


The video card handles this game without much difficulty.

Battlefield 4.

The settings are maximum, the test was carried out in multiplayer mode.


As we can see, playing is quite comfortable with these settings..
OC GURU 2.
Using the OC Guru program that was included in the kit, we overclocked the video card. Up to 1174 video core, and up to 7754 memory, which is a pretty good result, although the video card is quite noisy when overclocked under load.

For example, in games the minimum FPS increased by 8 percent or more.
Test in games during overclocking.

Temperature.

Conclusions.
It turned out to be a pretty good video card, with good factory overclocking and, in addition, with good overclocking potential and a pretty good cooling system. Yes, it is not so new, it has already been two years since it was presented, but it cannot be called irrelevant.

Pros.
-Performance.
-Factory overclocking.
-Overclocking potential.
-Reinforced power circuit system.

Minuses.
-Dimensions (more models from other manufacturers)
-At maximum load makes a lot of noise.

The third video card in our summary review is the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 OC Windforce 3X. This is the fastest model in the GeForce GTX 770 family from Gigabyte.

Let's start with a screenshot of GPU-Z, where you can see confirmation of known specifications

Screenshot of GPU-Z video card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 WindForce 3X OC

Test sample in detail

In the case of Gigabyte, we get a slightly more aggressive approach to factory overclocking of the video card than in the case of ASUS, for example. The base frequency has been increased to 1137 MHz, which corresponds to an increase of 8.7 percent compared to the standard model. With a minimum Boost frequency of 1189 MHz, Gigabyte raised the bar by 7 percent. As for the memory frequency, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 OC Windforce 3X remains at 1753 MHz.

The Boost frequency in practice turns out to be higher than the declared 1189 MHz; most often the GPU worked at 1241 MHz, which corresponds to an increase of 4.3 percent. Let's see how such an increase will affect the test results.

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 WindForce 3X OC in detail
Clock speeds (2D/3D)	Chip	324 MHz/ 1137 MHz
	Memory	162 MHz/ 1753 MHz
	Turbo	1189 MHz
Memory Specifications	Volume	2048 MB
	Manufacturer, type	Samsung, GDDR5
	Memory bus width	256 bit
Video card layout	Length (with slot cover)	25.5 cm
	Length (with cooler)	28.0 cm
	Height (with cooler)	13.0 cm
	Thickness (with cooler)	3.4 cm (two slots)
	Additional food	1x 8-pin 1x 6-pin
	Power subsystem	4+1 phases
Cooler	Size	Two slots
	Cooler material	6 copper heat pipes Nickel plated aluminum fins
	Fan	3x 75mm axial
Interfaces		2x DL-DVI 1x DisplayPort 1x HDMI
Contents of delivery		User guide CD with drivers 2x power adapter PCI Express 1x DVI-VGA adapter 1x SLI bridge

Unlike some other manufacturers, ASUS and Gigabyte decided to keep the NVIDIA reference power subsystem. So four phases of the voltage regulator are responsible for the GPU, one for the memory. Of course, Gigabyte also emphasizes the use of the highest quality components.

The GV-N770OC-2GD or GeForce GTX 770 OC Windforce 3X comes with the WindForce 3X cooling system, which is familiar to us. It can dissipate up to 450 W of energy, which, taking into account the thermal package of the GeForce GTX 770, is more than enough. Behind the massive cooler, the video card itself is difficult to notice.

Behind printed circuit board You can notice a few design changes compared to the reference version. Gigabyte, like many manufacturers, used a board of its own design without fundamental changes, but the differences are still visible.

Three 75mm fans provide ample fresh air flow to the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 OC Windforce 3X. Through the transparent blades you can see the heat pipes and radiator.

With a TDP of 230W, the two additional power connectors will be more than enough as they provide a total of 300W (75W via the PCI Express + 75 slot and 150W for the 6 and 8-pin sockets). Even taking into account the factory overclocking, the power reserve will be more than enough.

Gigabyte moved some of the components of the voltage regulator to the back side of the printed circuit board. Additional tracks can be seen here. It’s hard to say how all this affects the performance of the video card.

On the slot cover we get standard outputs in the form of two dual-link DVI ports (1x DVI-I and 1x DVI-D), one DisplayPort 1.2 and one HDMI 1.4a interface.

When it comes to an inexpensive video device from the entry-level segment of High-End adapters, many experts recommend paying attention to the Geforce GTX 770 modification from the famous manufacturer Nvidia. Over several years of existence on Russian market This particular video adapter is the best-selling in the category of affordable devices (400 USD). The review, characteristics and owner reviews presented in this article will help buyers decide whether it makes sense to purchase this device or not.

Clash of the Titans"

The Nvidia 770 video adapter is built on the GK 104 graphics core and is positioned on the market as an intermediate option between the two top-end GTX 680 video cards of the previous generation and the flagship of the Nvidia Geforce Titan line. By comparing the three listed devices, the reader will discover their complete external similarity, or rather the same physical dimensions.

As tests show, which are confirmed by reviews from experts, the new product has fairly high performance, which provides it with superiority over the top device of the previous generation, the 680 GTX model, but its price is 30% cheaper, which attracts all fans of dynamic games. There is information that the Geforce GTX 770 chip was presented to the market as an alternative to the inexpensive solution from AMD HD 7970.

Specifications

Keeping up with the times, the 770 has at its disposal the entire range of modern technologies that are provided with High-End devices. Is it true, basic characteristics were slightly underestimated by the manufacturer so as not to interfere with the stable income from sales of Geforce Titan - nothing personal, just business.

1. The clock frequency of the graphics core is 1046 MHz (in Boost 2.0 mode the core runs at 1085 MHz). There are 1536 physical CUDA cores, 128 texture units.
2. The memory is built on a modern GDDR5 bus and has a capacity of 2 GB, however, there are soldered pads for its expansion, which some manufacturers took advantage of by releasing products with 4 GB random access memory on board. The effective memory of the Nvidia Geforce GTX 770 is 7010 MHz, although it operates on a 256-bit bus. Hence the low bandwidth (224.4 GB/s) in contrast to the Titan flagship.
3. As befits all devices in the gaming niche, the video adapter supports SLI mode, provides third-party programs with access to CUDA processors, supports 3D games, and understands the Blu Ray video stream at the hardware level.

Heating and cooling

It is generally accepted that the GK 104 chip, borrowed from the 680 GTX modification, is very energy-consuming - 230 Watts. Firstly, the requirements for the power supply are too high because of this (600 W minimum), and additional connectors must be present (6-pin and 8-pin). The second problem is the strong heating of the graphics core during operation, which in a few seconds without decent cooling will quickly exceed 100 degrees Celsius.

The Nvidia laboratory considered that only the system from the flagship Titan could cope with cooling the GeForce GTX 770. The device has a turbofan located at the rear of the video board, aluminum radiator grilles across the entire surface of the printed circuit board, which are hidden by a protective casing. Such a system copes with cooling adequately, unless we are talking about overclocking clock frequencies.

Top seller

The ASUS Geforce GTX 770 video adapter, which appeared on the Russian market, immediately attracted the attention of many buyers. Low cost has become the main criterion for many users before purchasing. The device has a proprietary DirectCU II cooling system, which the manufacturer installs on most of its video devices. An aluminum radiator covers the entire area of ​​the printed circuit board, and copper tubes, penetrating the cooling system around the perimeter, converge on a contact pad, which removes heat from the graphics core.

The ASUS Nvidia Geforce GTX 770 video adapter is highly susceptible to overclocking. As the review shows, the standard graphics core frequency of 1059 MHz cannot effectively reduce the temperature of the graphics core (60 degrees Celsius). A proprietary voltage controller was installed at the factory, which should provide less heating, but apart from an increase in electricity consumption (260 watts), this did not cause the video adapter to heat up any less.

Decent hybrid

It's a completely different matter with the decent cooling of the ASUS Geforce GTX 770 Poseidon hybrid video adapter. The manufacturer, using other people's developments, tried to create an air-water cooling system, and, judging by numerous reviews from the owners, it worked. A water block is installed on the printed circuit board, which covers not only the graphics core, but also memory chips with power elements. Using 50-centimeter pipes, the system communicates with the compressor, which is installed separately and has an aluminum radiator with a huge fan.

The standard core frequency of 1059 MHz, in fact, is already insignificant for the overclocking potential that the Geforce GTX 770 video card shows (the price is within 40,000 rubles). Without any overheating or excessive noise, the graphics core works perfectly at a frequency of 1200 MHz, and, as users note, this is far from the limit.

Players' Favorite

The Gigabyte Geforce GTX 770 product from another Taiwanese representative deserves the attention of potential buyers. By installing the proprietary Windforce III cooling system, the manufacturer tried to push competitors in the gaming niche, demonstrating the high potential of the video card in overclocking the graphics core. As the owners note in their reviews, the device operates stably at a frequency of 1138 MHz (in Boost 2.0 it is 1189 MHz). Not a bad result for an air-cooled system, but increasing frequencies subsequently leads to a significant increase in the temperature of the graphics core.

The manufacturer installed aluminum grilles around the entire perimeter of the Geforce GTX 770 printed circuit board, ensuring temperature balancing with copper tubes, and placed a casing with three huge fans on top. They create an air flow powerful enough for cooling, but the dissipated heat is not removed outside the case, but remains inside system unit. It all depends on proper operation housing cooling systems. If the power supply is installed at the top, overheating will be immediately noticeable.

Homemade hybrid

The Gigabyte Geforce GTX 770 video card has attracted many overlockers who do not want to overpay for a brand and want to have a reliable device on hand for their own experiments. As the owners assure in their reviews, the powerful cooling system of three coolers requires a little modification, namely the installation of additional cooling in the form of an inexpensive water block on the graphics core, instead of one section of an aluminum grille and a basic copper core. The Arctic and Scythe brands offer decent water blocks for cooling video cards.

The main thing is to make sure that only water cooling removes heat from the graphics core during the installation process; accordingly, the standard contact pad of the Geforce GTX 770 2Gb must be completely cut off. Concerning technical characteristics after upgrading, a performance increase along with low noise of the entire system is ensured (1200 MHz becomes the standard core performance indicator).

The race for memory capacity

The MSI Geforce GTX 770 4GB Gaming Edition will attract buyers with a huge amount of RAM on board the device. The company's laboratories came to the conclusion that if there is a wiring on the printed circuit board for memory chips, then you should definitely use it. In addition, the manufacturer modified the power system by installing its own voltage controller and solid state drives. As a result, the power dissipation of the video adapter was significantly reduced, and the proprietary cooling system of two coolers further contributed to this.

The owners' reviews contain only positive emotions: 1180 MHz for the core and 7050 MHz for the memory bus can be considered a worthy result. But further overclocking leads to the fact that the coolers at high speeds begin to make strange sounds, reminiscent of the howls of a wolf in the forest. Here it is up to the owner to decide what is more important to him: performance or silence in the system unit.

Defector

The attention of buyers was attracted by the product Galaxy Nvidia Geforce GTX 770, the price of which is also within 30,000 rubles. The manufacturer, known for its Radeon video cards from AMD, suddenly released a video adapter for a competitor's chip. The proprietary cooling system with three coolers and a copper radiator with a core is legendary, so all that remains is to summarize: active cooling copes 100% high temperature graphics core.

Owners will also be pleased with the overclocking potential. The GTX 770 chip works great at 1144 MHz, and there are prospects for increasing performance further. Everything directly depends on the cooling inside the system unit case. The fans operate very quietly and there are no prerequisites for inconvenience caused by the hum of the coolers.

Zotac decided to surprise everyone in the gaming market by releasing three devices at once in different price categories. GeForce graphics card The GTX 770 under this brand differs not only in appearance, but also in the efficiency of the cooling system. The manufacturer itself also received minor modifications, where the manufacturer replaced the controller responsible for power distribution. Thus, an inexpensive solution with two 770 GTX AMP coolers has a low overclocking potential, but guarantees the owner complete silence during operation.

A system with three fans is offered to the user at a price of 35,000 rubles. The price increase is provoked by better overclocking potential (1100 MHz core) and 4 GB of RAM. A modification Extreme Edition offered as a device for overlockers (1180 MHz). It is worth noting that the expensive modification has a powerful cooling system, which is installed on the Geforce Titan video adapter.

Blast from the past

The brand Inno3D, forgotten in the video card market, has returned with quite interesting offer. A product with hybrid air-water cooling Nvidia Geforce GTX 770, the price of which is within 35 thousand rubles, can attract buyers. True, as users note in their reviews, appearance devices and the absence of radiators on power elements cause mistrust at first acquaintance. A regular water block with fifty-centimeter pipes communicates with an external cooler. Under the casing, in the area of ​​the memory chips, there is a section of aluminum radiators, and a copper core is adjacent to the contact pad of the graphics core.

The performance of the video adapter puts everything in its place. The standard frequencies declared by Nvidia were not increased in the Inno3D laboratories; they entrusted this work to the owners of the video card. As one would expect, savings on radiators significantly affected the heating of the printed circuit board; there is no point in overclocking a system with a water block above 1100 MHz, since the device exhibits unstable operation.

Finally

As one would expect, the new product attracted a large number of buyers, because the main criterion for them still remains the cost of the video card. For a device based on Geforce GTX 770, the price varies between 30-40 thousand rubles. If we calculate the coefficient between cost and performance, then in the High-End class this video adapter will take a leading position.

As for the choice on the market from the available range, the sales leaders are three companies: ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI. Everyone else proves their superiority over competitors high performance, and not at an affordable price.

It is no longer a secret to anyone that NVIDIA has given a second wind GPU, renaming the six hundredth episode to the seven hundredth. The second indices had to be reduced by one, as a result, instead of the former GeForce GTX 680, we got the GTX 770. What did the end customer lose in this situation? Nothing. But he received several bonuses in the form of increased clock frequency and lower cost of the video card. A new mechanism for controlling the operation of the device has also been added - GPU Boost 2.0. Well, the trouble is that new solutions have become hotter. Yes, overclocking has never been easy; in this case, you have to pay with increased heat generation due to increased GPU voltage.

Attentive readers of our resource may have noticed even at the announcement of the GeForce GTX 770 graphics accelerator that the cooling system original version completely copied from GTX 780/GTX Titan. Why suddenly? Maybe GK104 is the same temperature or colder than GK110? Of course, everything depends on the frequencies and voltages, but under the same conditions such an assumption is unlikely.

The key word here is unification. Why make ten different coolers when you can create one good one, but for several series at once. Most likely, in this way the manufacturer wanted to hedge his bets in case the temperature increased significantly after increasing the GPU voltage. Don’t forget that the radiator is based on an evaporation chamber, which is better able to remove heat from a smaller area than tubes.

Not all manufacturers saw through this vendor trick in a timely manner. Some decided that since there was already a cooler for the GTX 680 in production, which did its job perfectly, then it was enough to equip the GTX 770 with it and go ahead. Just think, some 0.2 V was added, what difference could this make? And yet this is not entirely true. It’s good if the previous cooler had a reserve of thermal power, for example, some overclocked version. Then you can borrow it and put it on a hotter processor. However, it is best to make such a “reserve” on an already studied generation, so that later it would not be a shame to simply re-glue the name tags.

This is what Gigabyte did, releasing the GV-N770OC-2GD video card with an upgraded system, which, according to the manufacturer, is capable of dissipating up to 450 W of heat. Let's see how she manages it.

Packaging and kit

The box of the Gigabyte GTX 770 OC video card is medium in size and slightly elongated in length.

Its design is already familiar to us from other models of the company. Dark background colors and laconic compositions without various colorful graphics and colorful inserts predominate.

On the front side there is a stylized image similar to an eye. Some may even think that these are two circles and a set of lines. For example, I still cannot understand the meaning of this picture. In my opinion, it would be much more appropriate to depict a fragment of the cooling system, similar to how it is done on motherboard packaging.

In addition to the manufacturer's logo, the type and amount of memory used, the name of the graphics accelerator series and an indication of factory overclocking (OC Version) are given. The top icon tells us that the cooling system is guaranteed to remove 450 W of heat, but it does not say under what conditions this happens.

On the reverse side, the main space is reserved for the description of the CO with the obligatory mention of the indispensable 450 W. It also talks about Triangle Cool technology, which is used in the cooling system. Literally a couple of lines are dedicated brief information about the product. At the very bottom is an excerpt from the model specifications in several languages.

Inside the dark packaging is an even darker box with silver Gigabyte letters in the center.

Inside in the middle there is a small cardboard box with the delivery kit.

It is so compact that it is hard to believe that anything can fit in it. This is practically true, since even the packaging from the disc is bent.

Under the box, in a foam rubber frame and in an antistatic bag, the video card itself was located.

Among the accessories included in the package you can only find a 6-pin PCI-e to 2x Molex adapter.

Of course, the model is far from the most expensive, but the scope of delivery could be expanded. So, for example, 6-pin PCI-e with a high probability may be on a 600 W power supply, which is recommended by the manufacturer, but 8-pin PCI-e may not be. Therefore, such an adapter would be worth adding. In addition, the manufacturer clearly forgot about the owners of monitors with D-Sub interface. Yes, it is slowly being replaced by more modern HDMI and DisplayPort standards, but is still in demand due to its prevalence.

Let's now look at information media.

Among them:

• User's Manual;
• Disk with software and drivers.

And it's not crowded here. I can’t count myself among the big fans of waste paper, but if there is a user manual, then it should contain maximum information about the product itself, software and installation. Here is just some modest brochure, which doesn’t contain even half of what I listed.