4 Weeks with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 SLI @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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4 Weeks with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 SLI - What do you get when you take two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 video cards, configure those for SLI, and set those at your feet for four weeks? We give our thoughts and opinions about actually using these GPUs in our own system for four weeks with focus on performance, sound profile, and heat generated by these cards.
 
4K gaming for me, not worth the jump. I love my Trifire setup (Specs below in sig)
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
That's a big jump in idle wattage from one card to two! I've seen another review that claims the jump was only 2W!

Thanks for the review.
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As noted in this article and the 980 SLI Review, we are fairly sure we have a bug of some kind, but are not sure exactly what it is on the review system.
 
Kyle, I am really shocked that you do as much as you do on a system with only 16GB of ram. :eek:
 
Great perspective on real world usage.

I can really appreciate how your desk setup isn't optimal for acoustics & thermals. Makes me feel better about mine.
Even so the stock 980s performed admirably.
 
290Xs at $320 = winning all over the place, heat/noise or not.

At that price, you can get an AiO cooler + bracket like one of these and still come out under the price of a single 980.
 
Can we drop the "Insane heat" comments? Unless you live in Hawaii, next to a volcano, and run R9 290x cards then I can understand the heat comments, but other than that its not that big of a deal. To call it insane is downright silly.
 
Igroock said:
Can we drop the "Insane heat" comments? Unless you live in Hawaii, next to a volcano, and run R9 290x cards then I can understand the heat comments, but other than that its not that big of a deal. To call it insane is downright silly.
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There are a lot of factors that play into that. I live in Florida. I have a small room with two air ducts and a 1.5 year old $5000 AC unit connected to my house, which was built in 1995 and sealed reasonably well. The room with the 290Xs gets noticeably warmer during gaming, period. If my girlfriend is in the room gaming on her PC as well, it gets hot enough that I have to turn the AC in the house down. And this is in a room that I specifically had them add a second duct to, because of the heat.
 
qdemn7 said:
Kyle, I am really shocked that you do as much as you do on a system with only 16GB of ram. :eek:
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Unless you are doing heavy video editing or compiling or something, I can't imagine 16GB not being enough. I've never seen my system go beyond more than 8-9GB of RAM. I mean yeah RAM is cheap, but with what he listed he's doing, I don't think it's going to push that barrier. My work laptop - which has 8GB and I multi-task on all the time - rarely has any trouble.
 
Anyway back on topic I feel like your conclusion paragraph is spot on. I considered moving to GTX 980 SLI but I don't feel that the performance jump is big enough, and while my cards are hot and loud, they're not $600 worth of hot and loud. I'll wait until AMD releases their next GPU and see how the market shakes out. It also helps that one of my most favorite series - Dragon Age: Inquisition - is shipping next month and supports Mantle.

On that note, I haven't seen a big AAA RPG in your review suite in some time. Do you have any plans to add Dragon Age?
 
Any plans for more 970 coverage, including SLI? The 980 is a beast, but the 970 seems to be a much better price/performance card. With the 970 priced much closer to the 290X, it would be a valid comparison.
 
only 16GB? :eek::eek:
and windows 8.1? I never though I would see the day... :p
 
I love these types of articles. A much different perspective than the usual video card review.

atp1916 said:
290Xs at $320 = winning all over the place, heat/noise or not.

At that price, you can get an AiO cooler + bracket like one of these and still come out under the price of a single 980.
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I tend to agree with this. Ive been wanting to upgrade my GPU lately and the 290x is really hard to turn away from now that its down to nearly $300. That is just a crazy low price for something that was $550 just a few weeks ago and can come within spitting distance to a $550 GTX980. I know theyre hotter running and that can be a problem if youre gaming in a room with higher ambient temps but for a $250 savings its really hard to convince myself to stay team green.
 
I would love to see PhysX move away from its proprietary roots.
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I'm sure AMD will move to physx the day after nvidia jumps on mantle. :D:D
 
Great article. It shows that benchmarks don't tell the complete story.
 
The maxwell cards are quite nice right now.

Seems they have some quirks right now, but I'm sure as they mature things will be ironed out.

I see no reason to put aside my highly clocked 290 right now though. Waiting for that next big leap in performance.
 
Great article! I hope Nvidia sets the tone for the future with sub 200w TDP cards, like intel efficiency seems more important nowadays. Other then 4k i don't see many killer games to push things forward especially with the consoles being as gimped as they are now. And like you said there are no good gaming 4k screens available, i'm sorry but TN for anything over 24" just to have 4k just does not make sense to me.
 
Great article. Can you please elaborate on how you measured the power draw?

For me the heat aspect is important and well marked. The problem is not so much temperature in summer but in winter. I live in colder climes and in the summer I can just open the window but in winter I do not want to have to open the window to let the howling wind and rain in.
 
You mentioned the flashy new SLI bridge in the article. I've read elsewhere of people needing to use the new v2 SLI bridges to get 4K SLI working properly because they are are electrically different.
 
You can look at my sig.

I have two systems that sit right next to each other.

Call me crazy.

I have to admit, if I hadn't watercooled the Crossfire system, I would have thrown it out by now. The 290X GPUs ARE loud and they ARE hot, the end.

I bought a couple GTX 980s for my other system and I overclock them at 1450GHz, and run the fans at 70%. You simply can't hear the fans over the ambient noise of the computer. The room gets a little bit warmer.
I'm thinking that these cards probably won't need to be watercooled for the sake of silence, but more just for fun.

My 2 cents......GTX 980 > R9290X :D (realize that I bought the 290s when they were released, so the cost to me is not in the argument)
 
Kyle, do you not overclock Graphic Cards on your systems?

I've never heard you mention this in your 4 weeks with articles.

I guess that'll be Brent's up and coming article so maybe you left that out intentionally. The reason I ask is because I was curious if you ran into a bug with Voltage Discrepancies. One card will run about .50mV lower than the other. So basically if either card alone can handle 1545mhz GPU Core your limited when they are in SLi because one of the 2 cards can't handle 1545mhz GPU Core while running at 1.164mV. This has also caused some game instability as well. We have a work around that we're using but even that isn't perfect.

I guess I'm just curious.
 
I think anyone who upgrades from 290x Xfire to 970 or 980's SLI has a screw loose but .. more power to you. I decided that after I got the 290x's that I wouldn't upgrade until 20nm ... the wait will pay off for me and others
 
As a R9-290X CrossfireX owner, I'd say that's a pretty fair review and unbiased review; I especially agree about the heat of the R9-290X in CrossfireX mode. They will definitely heat your office. Thankfully the two games I'm waiting for, Dragon Age Inquisition and The Witcher III both come out during cool months. The noise doesn't bother me so much as I am a headphone gamer. I am considering a new system build next summer, but I think first on the list is a triplet set of 4K monitors.

Really hard to fault Nvidia engineering; too bad I have such strong feelings against their CEO and business practices.
 
One thing I think a lot of people miss is that power consumed affects die temperature...but die temperature does not affect power (at least not in a significant sense). Therefore if you do water cooling or air cooling...the power from the wall will still be nearly the same. This power from the wall ALWAYS turns to heat. The fact that exhaust from an AMD card is 150 degrees really shows at how good the cooler is at removing the heat from the die, but the fact that it is a 150 DEGREES at that volume of air is the part that is bat shit crazy. AMD could lower the exhaust temperature at the expense of higher air flow and thus more noise. To me, 150 degree exhaust is borderline a safety issue.

But math is math....it is a bitch. Lets take a room that is 10'x10'x10' (easy math here) which comes to about 37 cubic feet . Air has a heat capacity of 1 joule per gram per degree Celsius. Air density is about 1.2 kilograms per cubic meter, so there are about 45000 grams of air in the room. Therefore it will take ~ 45000/300W = 150 seconds to raise the room ONE degree. In a half hour with no air movement, the air could, in theory, rise 12 degrees. This is ALOT and thus as Kyle said...you start getting sweaty.

Now, a normal household AC system can handle this NO problem. The problem becomes in "localized heating". While air is exchanged when cooling it does not target the "hottest air". Therefore you land up getting a bubble of heat near the heat source. The bigger the source, the bigger the bubble. A 300Watt source is ALOT. Take a 100W light bulb and sit a foot away from it...in a room. You will notice it. In Kyle's case his PC is under his desk in a "proverbial bubble". Thus the air there is going to get quite a bit warmer than the ambient and eventually start to raise the overall ambient of that area. I wouldn't be surprised if the temp near his PC was a solid 10 degrees higher near his desk than in the back of his room and probably 15-20 degrees higher than any other room in his house if he was running his PC full-tilt with 290X crossfire.

I actually used this effect in my old house. We left the temperature of the house at 60 degrees and then we hung out in my office which was ~8x8x8 and closed the door. Even my 300W of consumption with 2 bodies (100W each) kept us at a nice 75 degrees. Sometimes it even got too warm and we had to open the door. :)

So yeah...for most people, reducing your PC power by nearly 50% is a big effing deal, especially with a bleed edge rig.
 
Have you increased the power limit or temp limit on the cards at all? What about the fan curve? I've been messing with mine and trying to squeak a few more fps out of them without noticeably increasing the noise or heat levels.
 
magoo said:
The 290X GPUs ARE loud and they ARE hot, the end.
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This was the main reason for my upgrade / side grade. Even after watercooling the 290x's for noise reduction; the heat given off was just unbearable. Sweating like crazy after a couple hours of gaming in a ac / ceiling fan room was too much of a distraction.
 
Great article! So the 290X's are really that hot? Still, the price on them now is crazy low. I'm still using dual 680's at 1440p and they still get the job done for the games I play. I'm waiting on the Big Maxwell card and the R9 390X. Hopefully they'll deliver.
 
GameLifter said:
Great article! So the 290X's are really that hot? Still, the price on them now is crazy low. I'm still using dual 680's at 1440p and they still get the job done for the games I play. I'm waiting on the Big Maxwell card and the R9 390X. Hopefully they'll deliver.
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Yes, they're really hot. The non-reference cooled ones will prevent throttling but all that heat is still dumped into your room. One of them is fine, two of them will be very warm.
 
Astral Abyss said:
Have you increased the power limit or temp limit on the cards at all? What about the fan curve? I've been messing with mine and trying to squeak a few more fps out of them without noticeably increasing the noise or heat levels.
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Mine are OEM units running at stock speed (yeah, I know they are throttling; thanks a lot AMD :-( What can I say, I was an early adopter). Historically I've wasted too much time chasing down OC issues. OC seems easier now than it used to be, but I soured on the idea after getting spots and having system crashes when I used to MMORPG back-in-the-day. Now I just want stuff to work, and don't care about (or really notice) the couple extra FPS that OC would give me.
 
Igroock said:
Can we drop the "Insane heat" comments?
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No.

Rizen said:
On that note, I haven't seen a big AAA RPG in your review suite in some time. Do you have any plans to add Dragon Age?
Click to expand...

We have discussed it, but I do not see that being added.

atp1916 said:
290Xs at $320 = winning all over the place, heat/noise or not.

At that price, you can get an AiO cooler + bracket like one of these and still come out under the price of a single 980.
Click to expand...

Yes, the price drop we have seen in the last few weeks makes a very compelling case for 290X or 290X CrossFire.

Those brackets are great, but while you lose a lot of the noise (which never really bothered me anyway), you still have to deal with the same about of heat exhausted.

Liquid_Static said:
I'd love to see a 970 SLI bit!
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Yes, that is coming.

Stoly said:
I'm sure AMD will move to physx the day after nvidia jumps on mantle. :D:D
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Interestingly, there was some serious conversation inside NVIDIA about opening up PhysX, and I thought it was actually going to happen a couple of years ago. Something changed in regards to that along the way though.

Subsequence said:
... i'm sorry but TN for anything over 24" just to have 4k just does not make sense to me.
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Which is why I still have these aging Dell displays still on my desk.

Quartz-1 said:
Great article. Can you please elaborate on how you measured the power draw?
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We tested the power utilization at the wall of the entire system. For full load power and temperature testing we used real gaming. The power supply used in testing is a Enermax MaxRevo 1350W. Total system wattage at idle without video card is 90W.

Quartz-1 said:
You mentioned the flashy new SLI bridge in the article. I've read elsewhere of people needing to use the new v2 SLI bridges to get 4K SLI working properly because they are are electrically different.
Click to expand...

I have never been given any sort of information like that from NVIDIA about the bridge.

Lord_Exodia said:
Kyle, do you not overclock Graphic Cards on your systems?

I've never heard you mention this in your 4 weeks with articles.

I guess that'll be Brent's up and coming article so maybe you left that out intentionally. The reason I ask is because I was curious if you ran into a bug with Voltage Discrepancies. One card will run about .50mV lower than the other. So basically if either card alone can handle 1545mhz GPU Core your limited when they are in SLi because one of the 2 cards can't handle 1545mhz GPU Core while running at 1.164mV. This has also caused some game instability as well. We have a work around that we're using but even that isn't perfect.
Click to expand...

I did play around with trying to get these to a solid 1500MHz but it was not in the cards for this specific set of GPUs. 1450 was about it with reliability.

Brent's single card 980 OC article is here. We have a short and sweet 980 SLI OC article on the way.

Astral Abyss said:
Have you increased the power limit or temp limit on the cards at all? What about the fan curve? I've been messing with mine and trying to squeak a few more fps out of them without noticeably increasing the noise or heat levels.
Click to expand...

Honestly no. I got done playing around with the OC on these cards and set it back to default. I was getting all the perf I needed at stock with great visuals at my resolution.

GameLifter said:
Great article! So the 290X's are really that hot? Still, the price on them now is crazy low. I'm still using dual 680's at 1440p and they still get the job done for the games I play. I'm waiting on the Big Maxwell card and the R9 390X. Hopefully they'll deliver.
Click to expand...

Yes, the 290X is INSANELY HOT. Exhaust temps on the ref coolers is over 150F.

schizrade said:
Please send that faulty equipment to me for testing and disposal.
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Damn, I can't seem to find those right now.
 
SixFootDuo said:
I think anyone who upgrades from 290x Xfire to 970 or 980's SLI has a screw loose but .. more power to you. I decided that after I got the 290x's that I wouldn't upgrade until 20nm ... the wait will pay off for me and others
Click to expand...

Damn, I can't seem to find that screw I lost......

Look, it's only money.:D ............and heat.......and noise.......fucking loose screws.....get off my lawn.....:eek:
 
Computer upgrades are cheap as a hobby, really. Gaming is still my biggest hobby, and especially compared to my cars and guitars it's cheap. I have $4000 in car parts sitting on a shelf waiting for me to find time to install them :(
 
magoo said:
You can look at my sig.

I have two systems that sit right next to each other.

Call me crazy.

I have to admit, if I hadn't watercooled the Crossfire system, I would have thrown it out by now. The 290X GPUs ARE loud and they ARE hot, the end.

I bought a couple GTX 980s for my other system and I overclock them at 1450GHz, and run the fans at 70%. You simply can't hear the fans over the ambient noise of the computer. The room gets a little bit warmer.
I'm thinking that these cards probably won't need to be watercooled for the sake of silence, but more just for fun.

My 2 cents......GTX 980 > R9290X :D (realize that I bought the 290s when they were released, so the cost to me is not in the argument)
Click to expand...

Hey i agree!
 
Blazemore said:
This was the main reason for my upgrade / side grade. Even after watercooling the 290x's for noise reduction; the heat given off was just unbearable. Sweating like crazy after a couple hours of gaming in a ac / ceiling fan room was too much of a distraction.
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That is pretty funny:D
 
Just sayin...

HardcoreGamer_SouthPark_MAV_01.jpg
 
Would love to see a technical explanation as to how AMD is achieving better scaling with their multi GPU solutions.
 
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