Which GTX 980 to keep - 1475/8000Mhz or 1530/7500Mhz one?

I just happen to have 2 MSI GeForce GTX 980 Gaming 4G videocards and I can only keep one. I tried both stock BIOS and the NoLimits/GameStable BIOS from Overclock.net forums to improve my OC. Both cards have rather low ASIC scores of 67.1 and 67.3, but ultimately I have to make a choice between:
#1. MSI GeForce GTX 980 Gaming 4G (ASIC 67.3%) that clocks as high as 1475/8000Mhz on air, but GPU would not clock above 1475Mhz without artifacts, even with water-cooling or in very cold temperature. VRAM can possibly go as high 8200Mhz. This card must use NoLimits BIOS to achieve this OC. It scores 13050 marks in 3DMark FireStrike Standard.

OR

#2. MSI GeForce GTX 980 Gaming 4G (ASIC 67.1%) that clocks as high as 1530/7500Mhz on air, but GPU can clock higher (as high as 1575Mhz) when water-cooled or when its really cold outside. VRAM artifacts past 7500Mhz even @ very low temps. This card must use NoLmits BIOS to achieve this OC. It scores 13250 marks in 3DMark FireStrike Standard.

I game @ 1080p, max out everything, no V-Sync, and use either 2x MFAA or 4x MSAA or 4x TXAA or 2x SMAA, depending on the game. I do not plan on using water-cooling any time soon, so air-cooling and air-cooling OC is what I will end up with.

Which card would you pick and why? Do you consider either one to be a lottery win? I am not sure if I do because I either have to sacrifice GPU OC or VRAM OC. Most professional reviews for MSI GeForce GTX 980 end up overclocking the card to 1500Mhz+ on core and 8000Mhz+ on VRAM.

I could also try to exchange these cards and try my luck one more time, but I don't know if its worth it... Please let me know which card you guys would go with!

What is the manufacturer of the memory chips of each card and have you tried measuring the performance difference between the two in the game you will most play?

I would suggest keeping the card that can do 1.5GHz on core, memory bandwidth is not the bottleneck even at the stock 7GHz I think. And your 3DMark score tend to agree with that.

It is more about the core clocks than the memory speed. As the memory is fast to begin with. You will see more gains with higher core clocks over memory overclocks to begin with. But you can see that in your synthetic benchmarks though.

All this pushed to the side. What exactly are you trying to get a high ASIC score card? It really seems you are tying to get a super high clocking card in general. At that point all you can do is keep trying different cards and playing the silicon lottery. As far as I'm aware they are all have "Samsung" ram on the pcb. No your cards are pretty much average. Nothing special there and you didn't say what voltage you was using or anything.

Core is king.

KILLER_K said:

It is more about the core clocks than the memory speed. As the memory is fast to begin with. You will see more gains with higher core clocks over memory overclocks to begin with. But you can see that in your synthetic benchmarks though.

All this pushed to the side. What exactly are you trying to get a high ASIC score card? It really seems you are tying to get a super high clocking card in general. At that point all you can do is keep trying different cards and playing the silicon lottery. As far as I'm aware they are all have "Samsung" ram on the pcb. No your cards are pretty much average. Nothing special there and you didn't say what voltage you was using or anything.

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At this point I just want a card that isn't sub-par to others. I haven't seen any GTX 980's doing less than 8000Mhz on VRAM, so it makes me wonder if this is a crappy unit. The other one was vice versa - great on VRAM, rather low on GPU, below the 1500Mhz average OC (when used with modded BIOS with 1.312v). I was hoping for a card that could do 1500Mhz GPU and 7800-8000Mhz VRAM and with ASIC above 70%. I know its all lottery, but 1500/7800Mhz with modded BIOS is nothing extreme. The other card (#1) can't do even 7500Mhz on VRAM now. 7400Mhz is game-stable, but I managed to up the core to 1540Mhz game-stable. I know also for a fact that the 1540/7400Mhz card can easily do 1575Mhz on GPU under water, if not higher. I can bench artifact-free 1570Mhz on a cold day with my room window open, keeping core under 60C. With a good WC loop, the temps won't go over 50C, probably stay under 45C 99.9% of the time! Another thing is also for sure - in some games, going from 1475/8000Mhz to 1540/7400Mhz increased framerate by good 2-5fps, letting me play Assassin's Creed - Unity @ 60fps a lot more frequently than at 55fps, which does make it seem smoother. Shadow of Mordor benchmark score went from avg. 95 to avg. 98. Unigine Heaven, however, does not seem to be affected that much by my OC! Its some odd benchmark tools because people with LOWER clocks, slower CPU's and system RAM, get HIGHER score than I! How is that even possible? My PC and Windows 8.1 is fully updated, optimized, has 0 3rd party services, processes, and apps running in the background.

The VRAM on one is Samsung (8000Mhz) and the other is Hynix (7400Mhz). I just don't know if its worth trying once more with Amazon or just stick to 1540/7400Mhz. If I get a card that can do 1500/8000Mhz - is it likely to score higher or lower than 1540/7400Mhz one??? I don't see special, but I do seek one that is slightly above average. 1540Mhz is slightly above average for game-stable clocks based on what I've seen in professional reviews and user feedback. Average is about 1500-1520Mhz. VRAM, however, ALWAYS clocks to 7800-8000Mhz on EVERY GTX 980 reviewed out there! This makes me wonder if the 1540/7400Mhz card is simply DEFECTIVE when it comes to VRAM. Sure, its meant to run at only 7000Mhz, but if all others can do at least 7800Mhz, then there is surely something wrong with this one. Besides, this MSI Gaming 4G has super PCB components with 2x 8-pin power connectors, which means that it should OC better than an average card, at least better than EVGA GTX 980 SC and/or ASUS STRIX, ZOTAC, PNY, and other reference-PCB cards. It is, however, a very quiet card, barely audible @ 100% fan speed.

Actually both cards score exactly the same in Unigine Valley/Heaven and 3DMark FireStrike default. I am stuck at 13050 marks!

Thanks for letting me know they are now slipping "Hynix" in on buyers now. If you aren't happy then return it until you are. It seems they have no certain standards to really go buy on the ASIC score. From the looks of it high ASIC cards are far and few now.

I guess what bothers me now. You pay such a high premium for a card and get the bottom of the barrel stuff. Then top that off with annoying coil whine also. Just makes me wonder what they are really doing now. The bottom line is for the amount you paid you should be happy with it. I guess what is worse is they really aren't addressing the issues with the cards yet. The end users are having to fix their voltage problems on their own. Sad days are here now.

I doubt that you would be able to differentiate these cards in a gaming situation. Personally I would not care and do the things that these babies are made for: gaming!!

So here's a random question: what do you guys use for benchmarking these cards? Is there an automated program that will tell you if there's artifacts, or do you just have to sit and watch the Valley demo run or something?

I sometimes doubt everyone gets 8000 on ram. I run mine at 7800. Usually I just let it boot up to the default 1475/7400 I have my bios set to.

I don't know how many people are truely honest about "stable". My first impression was both your cards are good. I would go with the higher core. That's really good for a 980.

If the ram bandwidth is 224GB/s at stock and you have a 4GB capacity, assuming it's full that's 56 FPS. With the 30% compression (?) they use that's about 73 FPS. I use Vsync at 60 FPS so even with a full 4GB usage I still get above 60 FPS. Could be wrong here, but it's logical to me. So if your target is 60 FPS I would agree with a previous comment "core is king".

MavericK96 said:

So here's a random question: what do you guys use for benchmarking these cards? Is there an automated program that will tell you if there's artifacts, or do you just have to sit and watch the Valley demo run or something?

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I have some problem with Valley on my 970, sometimes it would crash my card even at stock speed. Must be my particular PC because I don't see a lot of people experiencing this problem. Personally, I just fire up whatever video games I'm playing and play for a good hour or two.

1530 core.

Dayaks said:

I sometimes doubt everyone gets 8000 on ram. I run mine at 7800. Usually I just let it boot up to the default 1475/7400 I have my bios set to.

I don't know how many people are truely honest about "stable". My first impression was both your cards are good. I would go with the higher core. That's really good for a 980.

If the ram bandwidth is 224GB/s at stock and you have a 4GB capacity, assuming it's full that's 56 FPS. With the 30% compression (?) they use that's about 73 FPS. I use Vsync at 60 FPS so even with a full 4GB usage I still get above 60 FPS. Could be wrong here, but it's logical to me. So if your target is 60 FPS I would agree with a previous comment "core is king".

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Mine's pretty similar. Definitely won't do 8000 on the RAM, so I run mine at 7800 as well.

I thought my core was stable at 1506, and I could run that speed in a number of games and for about 12 hours running Unigine Heaven, but Far Cry 4 has put the smack down on my card, so I've backed it down to 1490.

I went for another exchange from Amazon and got a card with Hynix VRAM instead of Samsung once again, but this time ASIC is extra-low - 63.4%. However, this card does 1550Mhz GPU / 8000Mhz VRAM with stock BIOS!!!

Apparently MSI has released a specific BIOS for each S/N of MSI Gaming 4G cards! That's right - same exact model, same clocks, same everything and yet its 5 different cards, each requiring its own BIOS in order to function properly, especially the fan spinning.

So much for low ASIC cards being crappy! It is also true that first day overclocking always provides the highest stable clocks that tend to get lower over the following week by good 15-20Mhz, especially on a hot day.

Parja said:

Mine's pretty similar. Definitely won't do 8000 on the RAM, so I run mine at 7800 as well.

I thought my core was stable at 1506, and I could run that speed in a number of games and for about 12 hours running Unigine Heaven, but Far Cry 4 has put the smack down on my card, so I've backed it down to 1490.

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Strange, my card runs at 1550/7800 stable in FC4 but would crash in Heaven. I guess this is a case of luck and optimization.

Parja said:

Mine's pretty similar. Definitely won't do 8000 on the RAM, so I run mine at 7800 as well.

I thought my core was stable at 1506, and I could run that speed in a number of games and for about 12 hours running Unigine Heaven, but Far Cry 4 has put the smack down on my card, so I've backed it down to 1490.

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yea far cry 4 makes my once stable overclocks crash as well. this is a good game to bench with if you own it.

I also have read that Core clocks is better than memory so would keep that one.