well the best is the up coming king pin edition but that is/will be silly money and meant more for benchers rather than gamers, next one down is the classified buts that's over £600.
what res will you be playing at? unless its 4k or multi monitor save your money and go with the gtx780 or the non reference 290.
My experience of EVGA graphics cards have been hit or miss. But mostly miss.
I use to own 2x 780 gtx sc acx sli. One of them clocked quite well the other was terrible and by terrible I mean barely over what came out of the box. Some might say well it promised what it was suppose to and they would be quite right.
Fast Forward, I just recently took delivery of an EVGA Classified 780 TI dual bios. Now first off let me just say it is beautifully made and the build quality I have not seen any better yet so far. So why the miss opinion on the Classified. There are so many reasons I don't even know where to begin.
For something that commands a premium price and marketed as premium product the overclocking on my card is probably the worst I have found on the net so far. Maybe there are worse but I doubt it.
At stock volts it is stable so that is not in question. So at 1150mhz it's fine. But if I just overclock it to say 1200mhz it unstable and artifacts. If I lower it to 1190mhz then it seems fine.
Sure I have had cards before that have overclocked like a dog like many a user on these forums and others. But they never claimed to be better clockers or cherry picked so that overclocks would be better. And none of them cost 600+ pounds either.
But I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt and flash the bios to use skynets bios and that's when I realised that EVGA classified at least my card is a disappointment in every way.
EVGA have a fix but are totally silent about the matter. The fact that their own bios is not ideal for the classified and then making classified owners wait and wait without any real commuinication. To makes matter worse the bios that fixes the classified of sorts is unofficial so while it is okay to flash for it I do believe if you overvolt with it then it voids your warranty.
Sure all the reviews and even OCUK 8pack classys all do 1300 on air or thereabouts. That not to say I believe that 8pack cherry picked his card out of all the others. But I don't really see that many 780TI classy owners saying that their card will do 1300 on air. And Checking other forums this seems to be the case more often than not.
So after flashing the bios to unlock the 1.21v I can do 1200mhz. But the card runs so hot the fans is going 100% so I didn't even bother trying the 1.3v afterburner hack to pump more volts through it to see if I could get more speed out of it. I don't doubt for a second if I watercooled it then I could get better clocks and for sure lower the noise threshold which is insane at 100% fan speed. This is all just to do 1200mhz.
Maybe I am by myself on this but I don't think the chips are speedbinned for the classy. IT just like any other reference card.
So I have decided to return this card under DSR and have already ordered a windforce 780 ti. I have owned quite a few windforce card and while the quality of build is nowhere near that of a classy card I save myself a few pounds and even if it doesn't clock that well it will be less of a disappointment than the classy I have now.
(
