With the SC, historically, the card has been identical to the EVGA reference series since the 500 series....it generally was given a better cooler and a factory OC and that was all that differentiated it from the reference card. In this case, both have the same cooler and the same factory OC.
Again, historically, the approach other manufacturers took (Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, etc.) on their factory overclocked cards was to use a custom PCB and beefed up VRM not only to get a decent factory OC, but so as to allow a good manual OC once ya got it in your box.
For whatever reason, the internet rumor mill has ignored this distinction which is akin to thinking "Don't get the sport model of that car you can just buy the plain version with the 427 motor option" ....and not recognizing that the sport model has gearing, transmission and suspension upgrades which allows the sport model to be faster. What the rumor mill failed to take into account was that with a beefier VRM, you could apply more voltage and therefore be stable at higher clocks.....so, again historically, a big NO to the idea that you can overclock a factory OCd card the same as a reference card cause you were, most times, not dealing with the same hardware. The 570 was thw best example of the differences here as if you google "570 VRM" you should find a lot of failure stories.....For the 560 Ti, for example, the EVGA SC had 4 phase VRM, while many of the other players had 6 or 7 phases on the factory OCd cards
With the SC, you are always dealing with same PCB and VRM so yes, you should be able to OC to the same level. Unfortunately, nVidia has clamped down with both physical and legal restrictions on card suppliers that kinda take away the value of those efforts so the difference between reference cards like the EVGA and non reference like the Asus are much smaller..... now the EVGA Classified MSI Lightning category is another story as there are ways to do voltage things there. You can also load custom BIOSs which will generally let you get higher oCs but in my experience, not game fps.
In most ads, I'm seeing the 780 EVGA SC ACX and the 780 EVGA ACX listed with a 967 Mhz core clock. The FTW is at 980 .... I had a FTW, never was stable at anything close to it's advertised factory OC.....took 18 months, 20 support calls and 5 RMAs to resolve.
FWIW, I had my best luck OC'ing with Asus 780s .... then after MSI retooled and released the later revision, I started recommending MSI as they overclocked just as well but were much quieter than Asus or EVGA
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