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Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 GHz Edition Review

Published by Christian Ney on 09.11.13

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The card

Gigabyte decided to equip their new GeForce GTX 780 GHz Edition with their very own cooling solution, the WindForce 3X 450W. This one features two 8mm and four 6mm copper heatpipes. Soldered to the heatpipes is the rather large fin stack which is being cooled by three 80mm fans. The fans are manufactured by Everflow and carry the model number T128010SU. They have been inclined in order to blow the air away better at the top of the card.

Overall the cooler is well manufactured but the copper base is far from the mirror finish, and looks like it was industrial machined. Around the base you can find an aluminium part which is used to fix the cooler to the PCB and also to cool the memory via thermal pads. The thermal paste used is soft, of good quality and hasn't been spread uselessly in large quantities. The rear fin stack has been equipped with an aluminium plate to cool the MOSFETs of the GPU power design. A thermal pad has also been used in this case.

The new Gigabyte GTX 780 GHz Edition is equipped with a very nice and well designed aluminium backplate to prevent bending and it also protects crucial components from potential damage. The GTX 780 OC V2 which is physically the same card but with lower clocks and A1 rev chip did not come with a full cover backplate and this can be considered as a great plus for the new GTX 780 GHz Edition.

A closer look at the PCB shows that Gigabyte equipped its card with an 8+2 phase power design. The GPU gets its current from eight phases and the two phases are left to take good care of the memory.

Checking the voltage regulation chip we find a digital 8-phase synchronous buck converter NCP4208 from ON (ON Semiconductor) that supports I2C. Furthermore there is an unidentified Richtek 2-phase analog PWM labelled 0T=FG V1D taking care of a stable current supply for the the memory. The PCB also features another chip labelled INA 3221. The INA3221 from Texas Instruments is a three-channel, high-side current sensor and bus voltage monitor with an I2C interface.

The memory chips on the GTX 780 GHz Edition come from SK Hynix and carry the model number H5GQ2H24AFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1'500 MHz (6'000 MHz effective). The older Gigabyte GTX 780 OC V2 was equipped with Samsung's K4G20325FD-FC03 and we are quite sure that SK Hynix chips will have a bit more room for overclocking.