[section_title title=”Overclocking”]Overclocking
ZOTAC GTX 780 AMP! Edition
The 780 variant of the AMP! Edition comes with a base clock of 1006MHz base clock and a boost clock of 1162MHz according to EVGA precision X which is a nice little overclock out of the box.
Now when it came to overclocking this particular GTX 780, I am well aware of the A1 revision chip which doesn’t really open up much in the way of true overclocking potential and with this sample, I could understand where the general consensus was coming from. I managed a slightly disappointing 10% overclock compared to the 30% from the 780Ti (see below). However extra performance is never a guaranteed thing and it was nice to get just that from it. The 384bit bus allowed a little bit of a memory overclock but again the 780Ti really came up trumps compared to the 780 in this respect also.
ZOTAC GTX 780Ti AMP! Edition
The ZOTAC 780Ti AMP! Edition already comes with a pre-applied overclock of a 1006MHz base clock with a boost of 1072MHz. Although if you look at the screenshot, EVGA precision X (which I recommending with overclocking NVIDIA GPUs) shows a reading of 1110MHz. Either way, both are still impressive out of the box clock speeds and the memory is also relatively high at 1800MHz.
Now I will be pretty blunt here, I really don’t like how the latest range of NVIDIA GPUs overclock. That isn’t to say its flawed technology but when overclocking, I prefer solid figures and not boost figures. With EVGA Precision there is an option in the back end which allows you to enable a thing called K Boost which basically keeps the GPU at full boost clocks 100% of the time. This reduces the amount of random clock changes and in my opinion is a much better option for benchmarking and gaming sessions etc. This of course will affect temperatures and be prepared for the default fan curve to do its business.
With that being said, the GTX 780Ti employs NVIDIAs GPU Boost 2.0 technology which is very simple, albeit annoying sometimes and I do hope Maxwell returns to the old ways of selecting your desired GPU clock speed and away you go.
The ZOTAC GTX 780Ti AMP! Edition is an already potent and powerful card and with its triple silencer triple fan cooler, I was expecting great things from this card and oh boy it truly delivered. I managed to get boost clocks of 1290MHz and a memory overclock of 1930MHz. The GPU clock is a near 30% overclock (28.2% to be exact) which is staggering. Now this won’t automatically mean 28% + more performance but when benchmarking and even when gaming, the increase should be very noticeable etc. This is almost certainly to do with the fact NVIDIA are using the newer B1 revision of chip in the 780Ti rather than the older A1 revision in the GTX 780 model.
Please note that every sample and individual card overclocks differently but it is usually a good indication of a models potential. In this case the AMP! Edition shows really great potential and I am more than happy with this particular GTX 780Ti sample although I also believe the GTX 780 sample to have performed quite badly in comparison.
