"Asus 780 Ti" 100C VRM temp during load not good - Says Guru3D

1. Well 1st step is understanding the performance differences .... 2nd is deciding which ones are most important to you .... 3rd is deciding how much those differences are worth to you......I can help with the 1st two, with the 3rd you're on your own cause I can't make that decision for you.

The best card out of the box to me is immaterial. Other than the Classified, that puts every other card potentially in the same basket. The gigabyte is objectionable because of the noise, that's its only major knock. The MSI stands out cause in every review, it's been lauded for its ability to create half the noise of the competition. Performance differences under air are small once you overclock so noise becomes the deciding factor. Under water, the Asus shines as does the Gigabyte. Historically, I have had better luck OC'ing Asus under air and water than any other brand but again much of that is in the 5xx and 6xx series and "things have changed" with the 7000. But I augment this opinion with the preponderance of opinion in the reviews which put the Kingpin in a class by itself because of its voltage modding and other unique features and the MSI which kills everything else on noise.

2. Hynix is the "gold standard".....Hynix is the best memory module with the best specs, the best OC ability and the ability to withstand the highest voltages. In system RAM for example, you will find Hynix in the Mushkin Redline series .... Corsair Vengeance Pros started out with Hynix upon release and then switched to a cheaper module later on (after the reviews were all written .... . There are two reasons whey manufacturer's pull the switcheroo.

a) The reviews ..... Hynix will score better, take higher voltages (while half the community is still running around screaming the sky is falling when voltage goes above 1.5 volts, Hynix does just fine and 1.90v and beyond) and OC better with lower timings.

b) Market and yields .... whether it be CPUs, GFX cards, RAM whatever ..... when a production line starts up yields are not as good as they will be eventually. RAM that qualifies at say 2400 will be rare and if it don't pass tests at 2400, they will try 2133 and then 1866 and so on. Each manufacturer hopes to sell their products in various market niches so they want to sell RAM at all available speeds. However Hynix is able to deliver better yields than everybody else and to insure enough supply for their more demanding customers (margins are greater on the more expensive stuff) and memory vendor might contract with Hynix to insure an adequate supply .... then when yields improve as the line matures, they can satisfy demand by switching to a lower priced vendor (and make more money).

The Gigabyte is a fine card performance wise, but it's noisy and would drive me bonky. Adding a water block will get your temps GPU down below 40C, your VRMs down below 60C.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDyYliSo-Hw Look at 22:50 mark
The 780 / 780 Ti / Titan all use same block.

EK rules the roost on VRM temps with like a 30C advantage over EVGA (so much for EVGAs vaunted quality)
$118 http://www.frozencpu.com/products/23947/ex-blc-1709/EK_Gigabyte_GeForce_780_GTX_WF3_VGA_Liquid_Cooling_Block_-_Nickel_EK-FC780_GTX_WF3_-_Nickel.html?tl=g57c613s1928
$31 http://www.frozencpu.com/products/23968/ex-blc-1712/EK_Gigabyte_GTX_780_WF3_Backplate_-_Black_EK-FC780_GTX_WF3_Backplate_-_Black.html?tl=g57c613s1928

So with that $180 price difference you talked about, I'd prolly get the Gigabyte and put it under water ($149)

As for brand preference..... let me share a bit of historical examples .....

Back in the day IBM was the king of laptops .... their last big hurrah being the A20 ..... best KB, great ruggedability, almost unmatched performance. Every magazine listed the A20 is the "king of laptops". But IBM didn't sell many of them compared to their lower priced models. IBM was also the industry sales leader. Then some bean counter said "Hey, these things are so expensive to make, we can't make any money them " so IBM stopped making the A20 .... no more magazine reviews saying they were they best and within 18 months their laptop business folded.

How often do you read here that Corsair makes great PSUs ? The Corsair HX series is indeed one of the best series of PSUs ever made..... not quite as good as Seasonic X Series, but perty darn close. But when PSU advice is asked for, the most common response if "get a Corsair, they make great PSUs". True enough but they also make some pretty crappy PSUs (CX series).

Same thing here. The EVGA Classified has historically been among the best GPUs in every series. But for example in the 500 series, while Asus, Gigabyte and MSI were putting 6 and 7 phase VRMs in their factory overclocked cards, EVGA went with the stock PCB in their SC series. Those other three were building a better card with more durability and better overclocking while overclockers with EVGA and other reference board cards were burning up the VRMs on their cards .... the 570 was particularly notorious for these mishaps. And yet, while the other 3 had clearly better hardware, EVGA was able to charge a premium for their inferior cards by feeding off the reputation of the Classified being defined as the "world beater" by most mags and internet reviews.

Today, because of the better reference board and more restrictive legal licensing requirements, there is less advantage to using a custom PCB and more vendors are abandoning the practice of custom PCBs.... this step has been warmly (pun intended) welcomed by water block manufacturers as they don't have to design, inventory and stock dozens of blocks for the same card series ..... Gigabyte and Asus remain using a custom PCB. MSI just started using a reference PCB in the gaming series and of course EVGA always used one in their SC series.

Another thing about preference is peeps tend to form an opinion and stick with it forever .... I had used Asus cards and MoBos almost exclusively from 2001 to 2012. In the GFX card arena, Asus kicked tail with the 500 and 600 series most notable w/ their 560 Ti (30% overclocker) 2 of which went 40% faster than a 580 while being 20% cheaper.....and the 670 DCII TOP received the only 10.0 rating ever fro techpowerup. Now if you look at the 760, 770 and 780, Asus has the lowest clocked card among the Big 4 across the board . Why ? ....well a factory OC means you have to guarantee the overclock ....and that can be an unpleasant experience as I had with EVGA that took 18 months, 20 support calls and 5 RMAs to resolve . Not too much fun for the vendor either. So while the Asus cards can most likely match those other cards if you manually OC, they don't want to absorb the support and warranty costs if it don't.

With the 780 Ti .... Giga and MSI are 1020 MHz, EVGA at 1006 and Asus at a paltry 954
With the 780 .... Asus at a paltry 889 while everyone else is 950 +
With the 770 .... Asus at a paltry 1058 while EVGA at 1111 and Giga / MSI at 1137

Their MoBo BIOS remain well above anyone else's but their quality remains excellent, their quality control has suffered and TS has gone off the deep end. The Z87 boards were afflicted with minor but annoying bugaboos, 1st being that externals were not waking up after sleep (Fixed with hardware mod in C2 version) and later with the BIOS Clock Freeze problem which runs across all model lines ,and if reports are true, into the Z97 lines as well. This is a year old and still has no resolution.

So there are no absolutes ....

-Just cause a company made the best 500 and 600 series GFX card, doesn't mean they will continue to make the best 700 series.
-Just cause a company makes a a great PSU in one series, doesn't mean that their other products have similar quality and performance.
-Just cause a company makes a a great GFX in one series (i.e. Classified), in no way suggests that their other products (I.e. SC series) have similar quality and performance.
-Just cause a company owned the MoBo market for a number of years, doesn't mean somebody won't come a long and make a concerted effort to unseat them.

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/msi_z87_gd65_gaming_review/15

Now and again a motherboard appears that is so obviously brilliant, and so affordable, that we wonder if anything will be able to top it. For a while that crown was held by the ASUS Sabertooth, both in X58 and then P67 variants. Then MSI stole the crown with the Z77 MPower. Looking at the Z87 GD65 Gaming we think it's going to take something extraordinary to top it, such is the perfect storm of price, performance, features and looks.

The switch to Military Class 4 has given us an extremely ready overclocker too. You're always thermally limited when overclocking and the i7-4770K is one of the most demanding around. Considering the amount of cooling we're using we think that although the GD65 is capable of bringing 5GHz from our i7-4770K you'd need a proper water loop to make the most of it.

Performance is outstanding. The stock results were a particular highlight. We know a lot of people still just like to put their CPU in and go, without overclocking it first. Despite how easy it is these days we know that the fear factor still exists. So you'll be glad to know that the MSI Z87 GD65 Gaming really rocks hard even at stock settings. Naturally the overclocking is blistering too, with some OC3D records broken.

MSI have laid the gauntlet down to all the other manufacturers. Gorgeous to look at, blistering performance and all at a very affordable price, the MSI Z87 GD65 Gaming is not only the new benchmark for Z87 motherboards, but probably for all motherboards.

Click to expand...

And just cause MSI has made a strong move into the $100 - $200 market niche in MoBos, that doesn't mean that they own the market in all price ranges...... I still prefer the Asus Boards at $275 and up but at this time have suspended all builds in this price range until there's a permanent fix for the BIOS Clock Freeze Bug.