GTX 970 SC ACX SLI has arrived from amazon.... but....

GoldenTiger

GoldenTiger

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Dec 2, 2004
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...the fan speeds are stuck at max or near max regardless of what I set them to and despite the tachometer reading anywhere from 1300-2700rpm.... noise level remains identical (loud) :(, with the 344.11 WHQL driver and Afterburner 4.0 final.

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I just got the cards in and haven't read the forums today yet... does anyone know if this is a known issue?

By the way, out of the box boost = 1354mhz in games :eek:.
 
My fans are working normally, but for some reason the only thing I can run so far in SLI is BF4. Everything else (Unigine, 3DMark, Metro 2033) has a weird green screen effect. Actually I tried to grab a screenshot right now and it's now a blue flickering or some shit. It's not really artifacting though.

I just hope it's a driver issue that will be fixed soon.
 
Sorry to hear they're stuck at full speed.
Maybe that's EVGA's way of making ACX actually cool the cards? :eek:
I keed I keed...344.11 & latest Afterburner is working fine for me regarding fan speeds on 660s.
Have you given Precision X a shot?
PS. Wow that was fast delivery!
 
potam said:
My fans are working normally, but for some reason the only thing I can run so far in SLI is BF4. Everything else (Unigine, 3DMark, Metro 2033) has a weird green screen effect. Actually I tried to grab a screenshot right now and it's now a blue flickering or some shit. It's not really artifacting though.

I just hope it's a driver issue that will be fixed soon.
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Not necessarily related to the problem, but what SLI bridge do you have? And what monitor?
 
potam said:
My fans are working normally, but for some reason the only thing I can run so far in SLI is BF4. Everything else (Unigine, 3DMark, Metro 2033) has a weird green screen effect. Actually I tried to grab a screenshot right now and it's now a blue flickering or some shit. It's not really artifacting though.

I just hope it's a driver issue that will be fixed soon.
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Heya, thanks for the feedback.. are you using an eVGA GTX 970 SC ACX 1.0 card or cards like I am? :)
 
Wheres the rest of them, Only 2?

JK, Congrats on the cards. Im waiting for my 3 980s from Newegg. I woke up at 4am for work and checked Newegg and got the EVGA SC version.
 
runudownquick said:
Sorry to hear they're stuck at full speed.
Maybe that's EVGA's way of making ACX actually cool the cards? :eek:
I keed I keed...344.11 & latest Afterburner is working fine for me regarding fan speeds on 660s.
Have you given Precision X a shot?
PS. Wow that was fast delivery!
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I was about to go try precision now :), good idea by the way. I ordered about 10 minutes before amazon's $3.99 overnight shipping cutoff when they were put up for sale early accidentally last night before the NDA dropped, and got them shipped... then got them in my box today :).

Marcdaddy said:
Wheres the rest of them, Only 2?

JK, Congrats on the cards. Im waiting for my 3 980s from Newegg. I woke up at 4am for work and checked Newegg and got the EVGA SC version.
Click to expand...

The rest are in my imagination :p. Haha.

Thanks :D and nice score!
 
potam said:
I'm using the SLI bridge from my Gigabyte UD5H. My monitor is a Shimian, so I'm running at 1440p.
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Well I've definitely seen similar issues with certain SLI bridges, like an older EVGA 3-way bridge. Also at 4K there is a problem with a lot of SLI bridges that NVIDIA has said they are hoping to fix in the next driver release (not sure if that meant the one that just came out or the one after).

If you have any other bridges, try them. Otherwise no idea, but probably a driver issue.

I've heard the best are the hard 2-way bridges, followed by the 3-ways and lastly the ribbon-type bridges which for some reason often cause problems.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Heya, thanks for the feedback.. are you using an eVGA GTX 970 SC ACX 1.0 card or cards like I am? :)
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Yeah, same cards. I'm using Afterburner and they're idling at 35%, and max when I was in BF4 was 57%.

Blahman said:
Well I've definitely seen similar issues with certain SLI bridges, like an older EVGA 3-way bridge. Also at 4K there is a problem with a lot of SLI bridges that NVIDIA has said they are hoping to fix in the next driver release (not sure if that meant the one that just came out or the one after).

If you have any other bridges, try them. Otherwise no idea, but probably a driver issue.

I've heard the best are the hard 2-way bridges, followed by the 3-ways and lastly the ribbon-type bridges which for some reason often cause problems.
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It's a ribbon-type. I have a hard 3-way from an old Asus mobo, but it doesn't align with the spacing of the cards. I may try to get one from a friend or just go pick one up somewhere.
 
I always try new cards with a clean driver install and no tools installed. I've had the tools fuck up fans speeds a few times, definitely worth trying to see how loud the card is without anything potentially messing with it.

If that fails, try one card at a time and see what happens. I'll have my 970 here tomorrow, I'll send it right back if it is loud at idle, bleh!
 
just curious, does the fan rpm work with only one card installed?
 
Does this happen with evga precision aswell? The card(s) could have some sort of defect on the fans that are causing it to run at full speed.
 
Yeah, I'd say DDU the drivers and clear out all the tweak programs and start fresh. I've had 100% fan speed stuck on an AMD card before and that fixed it.
 
Are they full speed the moment you power-on and your computer goes through POST, or do they ramp up once Windows boots?

What are your system specs?
 
DejaWiz said:
Are they full speed the moment you power-on and your computer goes through POST, or do they ramp up once Windows boots?

What are your system specs?
Click to expand...

Through POST... I just figured it out by stopping every fan in my system one by one including the video cards, and it is the rear fan on the first video card doing it. If I stop that one.... immediate silence. The other 3 fans (other on card 1, and then the two on card 2) run properly.

Of all the luck :(.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Through POST... I just figured it out by stopping every fan in my system one by one including the video cards, and it is the rear fan on the first video card doing it. If I stop that one.... immediate silence. The other 3 fans (other on card 1, and then the two on card 2) run properly.

Of all the luck :(.
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Ouch, one bad PWM fan in a daisy chain can definitely cause that. I've only ever seen it with case fans though, that sucks.
 
Well, shit. Time to contact Amazon or eVGA. eVGA may be the better route since Amazon is likely out of stock and you'd be waiting quite a while for a replacement.
 
I would just send it back to amazon and get it exchanged. Most e-tailers are expecting more stock of 970's/980's early next week.
 
That sucks. I hope my two don't have any issues. I'll find out Monday since Amazon can't seem to understand what overnight delivery means. :mad:
 
Bladestorm said:
That sucks. I hope my two don't have any issues. I'll find out Monday since Amazon can't seem to understand what overnight delivery means. :mad:
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Hope this doesn't turn out to be rather high occurrence.

..and Amazon should at least upgrade you to 980's or give you a third for screwing you over on overnight shipping. :p
They going to refund the shipping charge or give you a credit of some sorts?
 
tonyftw said:
I would just send it back to amazon and get it exchanged. Most e-tailers are expecting more stock of 970's/980's early next week.
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Yeah, ended up setting up a cross-ship with evga (after checking that amazon had no stock with no date posted at the moment), disappointing since I was looking forward to the weekend off with them but such is life.

Thanks again for all the advice and comments everyone... still will be a fun weekend oc'ing and playing on one for now :D.
 
DejaWiz said:
Hope this doesn't turn out to be rather high occurrence.

..and Amazon should at least upgrade you to 980's or give you a third for screwing you over on overnight shipping. :p
They going to refund the shipping charge or give you a credit of some sorts?
Click to expand...

You joke but I've seen some crazy shit like that from Dell before. Buddy of mine ordered an m17x alienware while we were deployed and it got lost, Dell sent him a second $4500 laptop free of charge. They both arrived on the same day (it can take 2-3 months to see a package like that) and they told him to keep the extra one.
 
Tough. Good for EVGA to cross-ship.

Waiting on you to post some info after you get them set the way you want.
 
c3k said:
Tough. Good for EVGA to cross-ship.

Waiting on you to post some info after you get them set the way you want.
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Well.... Having gamed on one for several hours now (970 evga acx v1.0 sc) oc'd quite nicely at just 54% fan speed... it is whisper quiet and I say this as someone who is EXTREMELY "sensitive" (a polite word for it) about noise. Using all undervolted fans in a fractal r3 it almost, but not quite, blends in with the barely-audible airflow from my case at that fan speed (it's just a hair above it) while keeping my OC of 1430mhz core + 8164mhz mem (no, that's not a typo on the mem) game stable for me for a couple of hours now.

I actually literally can't bump the voltage up despite having room for it or I end up hitting the power limit and clocks throttle at the moment.... I have saved and modded my BIOS for higher voltage and power limit (it appears to allow upwards of 1.3v potentially, bar hardware limits) but cannot flash the mod because I don't have an nvflash that works for GM204 yet :(. At ~1.187v (guessing since it fluctuates reading between 1.175v and 1.200v) I am sitting at around 105-108% power limit most of the time, occasionally a bit lower, and in my place with the AC broken only hitting 67-69c peak load temperatures after gaming on it for a couple of hours straight in the same game (no break and seems to be fully stable!). The ambient temperature is quite warm (I am using a room fan to help keep myself cool for now) and it's still running that well.

I'm EXTREMELY impressed with this card... SLI is going to be even crazier once my defective 2nd card gets replaced but the performance for me at 4K so far is ridiculously good across the board at virtually everything maxed in games (except AA levels of course heh at this resolution, I just use FXAA which is quite nice at 4K and looks much better than lower res with it. In BF4 this means bumping particles from *gasp* ultra to high, for example, to keep minimums from going low during giant explosions of doom, :p. I can't wait to start oc'ing further with it once I can flash this BIOS..............! Anecdotally and from watching the framerate during action in ESO and BF4, the minimums seem to be much much better than the 1176mhz GTX 780 Ti I had tried for a little while under similar in-game situations, while the averages seem to be a nice amount higher but not earth-shatteringly so.

Did I mention I can't wait to see how high this thing goes on perf and oc once I can flash the bios? :)
 
GoldenTiger said:
Well.... Having gamed on one for several hours now (970 evga acx v1.0 sc) oc'd quite nicely at just 54% fan speed... it is whisper quiet and I say this as someone who is EXTREMELY "sensitive" (a polite word for it) about noise. Using all undervolted fans in a fractal r3 it almost, but not quite, blends in with the barely-audible airflow from my case at that fan speed (it's just a hair above it) while keeping my OC of 1430mhz core + 8164mhz mem (no, that's not a typo on the mem) game stable for me for a couple of hours now.

I actually literally can't bump the voltage up despite having room for it or I end up hitting the power limit and clocks throttle at the moment.... I have saved and modded my BIOS for higher voltage and power limit (it appears to allow upwards of 1.3v potentially, bar hardware limits) but cannot flash the mod because I don't have an nvflash that works for GM204 yet :(. At ~1.187v (guessing since it fluctuates reading between 1.175v and 1.200v) I am sitting at around 105-108% power limit most of the time, occasionally a bit lower, and in my place with the AC broken only hitting 67-69c peak load temperatures after gaming on it for a couple of hours straight in the same game (no break and seems to be fully stable!). The ambient temperature is quite warm (I am using a room fan to help keep myself cool for now) and it's still running that well.

I'm EXTREMELY impressed with this card... SLI is going to be even crazier once my defective 2nd card gets replaced but the performance for me at 4K so far is ridiculously good across the board at virtually everything maxed in games (except AA levels of course heh at this resolution, I just use FXAA which is quite nice at 4K and looks much better than lower res with it. In BF4 this means bumping particles from *gasp* ultra to high, for example, to keep minimums from going low during giant explosions of doom, :p. I can't wait to start oc'ing further with it once I can flash this BIOS..............! Anecdotally and from watching the framerate during action in ESO and BF4, the minimums seem to be much much better than the 1176mhz GTX 780 Ti I had tried for a little while under similar in-game situations, while the averages seem to be a nice amount higher but not earth-shatteringly so.

Did I mention I can't wait to see how high this thing goes on perf and oc once I can flash the bios? :)
Click to expand...

Glad to hear it. I ordered the same card, mine arrives Tuesday. Im planning on reapplying the ACX with liquid ultra as well.
 
rinaldo00 said:
What monitor do you have?
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Dell UP2414Q (3840x2160 60hz IPS panel) :).

Just finished half an hour of BF4 @ 8224mhz mem + 1400-1430mhz core clock (fluctuated due to bumping against power limit), I was amazed at how smooth the dips were and rare they were. Framerate stayed good consistently across the map even during heavy explosions etc. going off. With almost full Ultra minus MSAA (I took post-process to medium and effects to high, FXAA to low) I was maintaining 50fps at minimum and probably 95% of the time 60+ the entire match (conquest 64p).

Can't wait to uncork this thing with a modded BIOS... it literally was dipping itself down to 1.162-1.175v a lot of the time and downclocking a little on its own because of the power limit. Peak temp was 71c and average load was around 66-67 the whole time. I've run a 780 for a long time before and briefly ran an 1175mhz 780 Ti and can confidently say the framerate dips and minimums appear to be much better than the kepler cards I have used in 4K. This actually surprised me considering just looking at avg numbers doesn't show the difference in the actual experience on those grounds... have found a handful of reviews that showed time graphs but not many when I looked around. Once more people have cards in-hand I think this is going to be a major thing they notice.

Hamateer said:
Glad to hear it. I ordered the same card, mine arrives Tuesday. Im planning on reapplying the ACX with liquid ultra as well.
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Nice :D! And yeah, the cooler is surprisingly good, probably in large part due to how efficient the 2nd gen maxwell is..... I was a little annoyed when I found out I had gotten the "wrong" card (I intended to get acx 2.0 but got the version 1 instead without knowing they even made those) but I couldn't care less at this point about that.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Nice :D! And yeah, the cooler is surprisingly good, probably in large part due to how efficient the 2nd gen maxwell is..... I was a little annoyed when I found out I had gotten the "wrong" card (I intended to get acx 2.0 but got the version 1 instead without knowing they even made those) but I couldn't care less at this point about that.
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LOL, same, I thought the new cooler was standard across the 970s. Thankfully the tech seems badass.
 
The funny thing is that a hardware site run by a man named Thomas has a 970 with the ACX 2.0 cooler on it. Kind of disappointing that they even bothered to use the 1.0 in the first place.

lPsicij.jpg


I can confirm mine doesn't have the ACX 2.0 badge in the bottom right, and the ACX 1.0 has less fins. Evidently the part number with ACX 2.0 is 04G-P4-2972-KR and 04G-P4-0974-KR for the 1.0 version. Seems you're looking for that "2" to be in the place of the "0." "1" seems to denote a stock 'blower' cooler. I'm not tremendously concerned, seeing as it's going into an Air 540 with 4x 140mm fans blowing onto the motherboard/GPU assemblage.

This is also a bit of a slap in the face for their largest market (even though I doubt any of us will be using these cards five years from now, they make good grandfathering pieces): http://eu.evga.com/articles/00877/EVGA-GeForce-GTX-980-970-FREE-5-Years-Warranty/

EU only.

Unrelated aside - I'm going from 2x 560 Ti 448s to this card, what's the verdict on using one of them as the dedicated PhysX card, even though I know that'll be overkill?
 
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ocellaris said:
It literally says ACX 1.0 in the Amazon listing...
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Yeah, just to state it more clearly...

To get the ACX 2.0 version, you need to look for the first digit of the third section of the part number, for instance:

04G-P4-0xxx-KR = ACX 1.0
04G-P4-1xxx-KR = stock blower-style cooler (seemingly reserved for the stock-clocked versions)
04G-P4-2xxx-KR = ACX 2.0
 
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Why do guys bother with custom coolers at all?
The reference 980 cooler its amazing i run 2 and max temp at 1500mhz i saw where 74c on top card and 68c on bottom with 70% fan speed with 80-90 GPU usage.

They look much better and they exhaust the hot air out and they are damn quite at 70% cant hear them over my case fans just love them
 
gamingarena23 said:
Why do guys bother with custom coolers at all?
The reference 980 cooler its amazing i run 2 and max temp at 1500mhz i saw where 74c on top card and 68c on bottom with 70% fan speed with 80-90 GPU usage.

They look much better and they exhaust the hot air out and they are damn quite at 70% cant hear them over my case fans just love them
Click to expand...

Because the reference 980 Titan-esque cooler only comes on the 980. The 970 uses a lesser-quality reference cooler.

And eVGA has *eight* SKUs for the 970 alone, these are the ones with ACX 2.0:

04G-P4-2978 - EVGA GeForce GTX 970 FTW ACX 2.0
04G-P4-2975 - EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SSC ACX 2.0
04G-P4-2974 - EVGA GeForce GTX 970 Superclocked ACX 2.0
04G-P4-2972 - EVGA GeForce GTX 970 ACX 2.0

The FTW and SSC versions come with a default voltage boost and double BIOS chips. I'm almost tempted to 'Step Up' to the SSC or FTW editions once the mad rush has died down - or if they come out with a version with more than 4GB of frame buffer.
 
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gamingarena23 said:
Why do guys bother with custom coolers at all?
The reference 980 cooler its amazing i run 2 and max temp at 1500mhz i saw where 74c on top card and 68c on bottom with 70% fan speed with 80-90 GPU usage.

They look much better and they exhaust the hot air out and they are damn quite at 70% cant hear them over my case fans just love them
Click to expand...
There is no 970 reference cooler. And when the 980 is oced to around 1500, the 980 reference cooler is ad loud as the 290x according to one review I saw.
 
Destruya said:
Because the reference 980 Titan-esque cooler only comes on the 980. The 970 uses a lesser-quality reference cooler.
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The 980 cooler has no vapor chamber so its not as good as the Titan cooler. Of course the 980 uses way less power though. And again there is no 970 reference cooler.
 
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