EVGA’s offering need no introduction despite its simple box design. The model here is one of their many GTX 970 offerings, one that’s at a lower price point and of lower speed.
The card comes with EVGA’s signature dual-fan setup, nice black shroud with the word EVGA and GeForce GTX 970 on the upper and lower section of the shroud.
At the top you see the fins of the heatsink, they’re not blocked in any way and on closer scrutiny you will see some hint of copper heatpipes. The card is powered by 6+8pin PCI-E connector, indicating that this GTX 970 is capable of drawing more power than many GTX 970 in the market.
GTX 970 cards are often powered by just an 8-pin PCI-E, indicating around 225W max power draw. By having this configuration the card is theoretically capable of up to 300W power draw.
The EVGA GeForce GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) is without backplate.
Here’s the view from the bottom, again EVGA adopts a design that does not block heatsink fins.
Below is the GPU-Z of the card
More details at the official product page.
Test Setup
| Processor | Intel Core i5-4670K |
| RAM | AVEXIR Blitz 2x 4GB 1600Mhz DDR3 |
| Motherboard | ASRock Z87 Extreme4 |
| Cooler | NZXT Kraken X31 |
| Monitor | Dell UP3214Q |
| Power Supply | FSP AURUM S 700W |
| Casing | NZXT S340 |
| Operating System | Windows 10 64bit |
Overclocking
The EVGA GeForce GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) overclocks very well, I was able to pump 165Mhz to the core and 200Mhz to the memory, matching the speed of the FTW model.
Benchmarks
Unigine Heaven 4.0
*NOTE : Details are set to maximum.
*NOTE : AA disabled in 4K test.
| Card | 1080p (avg) | 4K (avg) |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 53.8 | 13.8 |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 58 | 14.5 |
| ASUS GTX 960 Turbo | 33.2 | N/A |
| Reference GTX 980 | 65 | 17 |
Metro Last Light
| Card | 1080p (avg) | 4K (avg) |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 80 | 29 |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 85 | 31 |
| ASUS GTX 960 Turbo | 55.0 | N/A |
| Reference GTX 980 | 88 | 33 |
Bioshock Infinite
Settings are at
2 – UltraDX11_DDOF | 2 – Custom | 1 – 16:9 | 4 – FullHD / 4K
| Card | 1080p (avg) | 4K (avg) |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 112 | 37 |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 117 | 39 |
| ASUS GTX 960 Turbo | 75.04 | N/A |
| Reference GTX 980 | 123 | 43 |
Shadow of Mordor
Settings : Set to ULTRA, V-sync off.
| Card | 1080p (avg) | 4K (avg) |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 71 | 30 |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 86 | 33 |
| ASUS GTX 960 Turbo | 46.62 | N/A |
| Reference GTX 980 | 92 | 38 |
Grand Theft Auto V
Settings : Every option to the MAX setting available.
| Card | 1080p (avg) | 4K (avg) |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 37 | 27 |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 41 | 28 |
| ASUS GTX 960 Turbo | 23.4 | N/A |
| Reference GTX 980 | 44 | 32 |
The overclocking made no difference on games like Shadow of Mordor, I suspect this is due to the VRAM limitation but as for the other games there’s a general increase in performance with the boost in core speed.
Temperature
Furmark Burn-in Test was used to stress the card. Fan settings are at Auto. Room set to ~25c.
| Card | Idle(°C) | Load (°C) |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 44 | 73 |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) Full RPM | 28 | 57 |
The fan hovers at around 34% on AUTO settings where the audio level is acceptable and it will stop spinning once it hovers under 50°C.
Power Consumption
The stress was done with Furmark Burn-in Test. Power consumption reading was taken from the watt-meter, actual power draw by the entire system from the wall point. I’m using an FSP Aurum S 700W with 90% efficiency and the estimated system power draw (CPU, not including GPU) during Furmark test is 60w.
| Card | EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) |
| Furmark Burn-in | 272 |
| Estimated Actual System Draw | 244 |
| Estimated Card Power Draw | 184 |
The power draw seems a little higher than expected but I don’t think it’s a cause of concern, considering that Furmark tests pushes the card to draw more than what it usually does in typical benchmarks.
The Verdict
The EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) retails at RM 1599, it’s a very solid graphic card and with much overclocking headroom. I was able to match the speed to the FTW variant that costs RM 1,799 and once overclocked it comes very close to the GTX 980. The only thing it lacks is a backplate, not an issue unless you want something that looks more outstanding.
