Reference design vs. reference design, the numbers from Guru3d are in effect. The GTX 570 will run cooler and quieter and the EVGA Superclock with a factory overclock will run even faster than shown in the stock card benchmarks thus far. EVGA uses higher quality chips for their Superclocked series, and the card also comes with a lifetime warranty (vs. 2 years on the Sapphire). As an added bonus, you get PhysX and Nvidia drivers. It looks like we have a winner!
Quote:
"Conclusion
From the moment it launched, we have been impressed by the GTX 570 and the release of AMD’s competing HD 6900-series has done nothing to dim our enthusiasm over NVIDIA’s well priced GF110 derivative. It offers high end performance at an extremely accessible price point and when overclocked this $350 card can compete against the GTX 580; a product with a $150 premium.
What EVGA has done is once again taken a winning formula and has made it better in literally every way possible. The increase in clock speeds is higher than we have come to expect from previous Superclocked editions which is definitely a step in the right direction. The associated performance bump won’t turn any heads, nor will it noticeably change in-game experiences but when paired up with a lifetime warranty, the $20 difference between this card and plain Jane reference versions is money well spent."
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/39912-evga-geforce-gtx-570-superclocked-review-21.html
Quote:
"In our Radeon HD 6970 review, we saw a technical tie between the Radeon HD 6970 and the standard GeForce GTX 570: from the six programs we ran, one was faster on three of them and the other was faster on the other three. The overclocking present in the EVGA GeForce GTX 570 Superclocked, although relatively small, helped to point the tip of the scale in favor of this model from EVGA.
The EVGA GeForce GTX 570 and the Radeon HD 6970 achieve similar performance on Call of Duty 4, Aliens vs. Predator and 3DMark 11 (sometimes one was a little bit faster, sometimes the other, but the difference was not significant). However, on the other three games, the EVGA GeForce GTX 570 Superclocked presented a huge advantage: up to 21% faster on Crysis Warhead, up to 28% faster on Far Cry 2, and up to 55% faster on Lost Planet 2.
Costing exactly the same thing than the Radeon HD 6970, the EVGA GeForce GTX 570 Superclocked is the video card you should buy if you have USD 370 to spend, being a better option than the standard GeForce GTX 570.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/EVGA-GeForce-GTX-570-Superclocked-Video-Card-Review/1153/12