So what did EVGA do to make their card so fastfaster than the much more expensive GTX Titan? First of all, they increased the GPU clocks by more than 100 MHz (130 MHz higher than Titan). Unfortunately, memory clock is unchanged, which would have been an easy extra boost. Our manual overclocking confirms that there would be plenty of headroom for that. Now, the secret sauce seem to be the operating temperatures. NVIDIA designed their Boost 2.0 algorithm with temperatures in mind: if the card goes beyond 80°C, Boost 2.0 will reduce clocks to ensure the card stays around that temperature target. EVGA realized that and designed a cooler that ensures the card will never reach 80°C to keep the additional throttling from taking effect. Just having a good cooler is not enough, you also need to find the right fan speed settings. It's easy to stay below 80°C with a fan that sounds like a leaf blower, and EVGA picked decent fan settings that are just as quiet as the reference cooler without falling into the 80°C performance hole.
EVGA's cooler is also one of the better-looking custom designs, but I do not think it cannot compete with NVIDIA's reference design cooler visually, which is without a doubt the best-looking one in the industry. EVGA was wise to choose matte colors and metal highlights to keep the cooler from looking plasticky. In terms of cooling performance, the ACX cooler is definitely a step forward: It improves temperatures while keeping noise levels in check. EVGA also highlights that it uses ball bearings while most other VGA card fans use sleeve bearings. On paper, ball bearings have a longer lifespan, but I seriously doubt there is a significant difference for a product that will only be used for a few years tops. Technically, ball bearings are noisier than sleeve bearings, but this doesn't seem to be an issue on EVGA's cooler. I do wish the card came with a backplate. Granted, unlike the GTX Titan, which has memory chips on the backside, the GTX 780 has nothing to cool, but a backplate would have certainly helped with the visual appearance of the card.