Which 980ti to buy - EVGA Ti SC+ ACX 2.0 vs MSI Gaming 6G

Which 980 ti should I get?

  • MSI GTX980Ti GAMING 6G

    Votes: 25 45.5%

  • EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC + ACX 2.0

    Votes: 30 54.5%
  • Total voters
    55
M

MikeRotch

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 23, 2013
Messages
415
Help me out here guys, I'm upgrading from a 290 with an Accelero Acritc 3 cooler. Noise is important to me as my case sits on top of my desk.

So I am set on one of these two cards as they are the best of the Ti's available at my local parts shop (they don't carry the Asus STRIX).

Both cards are within $10 of each other so price isn't a factor.

I've spent the last 2 days googling the 2 cards but there have been no head to head comparisons that I can find. Both seem quiet, and not too hot running. The MSI has better stock OC clocks but I plan to do manual OC-ing anyway.

So noise would be the most important factor with quality of card and OC-ability a close 2nd and 3rd.

Which card would you buy and why? Please vote and state your reason .
 
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My money is on the EVGA card. If you wait till tomorrow I will also have experience with it first hand and I can report back my results. The MSI card I had was just pathetic.
 
From what I've read, you'll probably to happier with the EVGA card. I used to own a MSI 980 Gaming 4G card which was absolutely fantastic; Quiet, fast, good overclocker. But it looks like that same Twin Frozr V cooler is a bit underpowered for cooling an overclocked 980 Ti. Most of the reviews I've read say MSI's 980Ti is actually pretty noisy under load and the temps are still higher than EVGA's ACX 2.0 cooler. Hope this helps :)
 
Its almost the same but my Classified 980Ti ran just as hot as my Gigabyte G1 or MSI Gaming and the fans got pretty damn loud to keep that thing cool, so the SC is gonna be a bit louder with smaller fans. The MSI has been renowned for being real quiet even at high fan speeds but keeping the card cool without real good ventilation has been a problem for a lot of people but the EVGA won't do any better if your case airflow sucks
 
KickAssCop said:
That is because your case is crap not because of the cards lol.
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Hahahaha, i think imma follow you to read your responses. Lmao. :D

But as Cop said, he is about to have first hand XP with the evga card. Thats if you have patience to wait for his response.
 
I have 2 Evga ACX2 w/ backplate cards showing up today. I always go EVGA solely because they have the best support around.
 
My buddy just got his EVGA 980ti, really loud coil wine. Disappointing after all the hard work getting his custom loop setup.
 
Thanks for all of the input so far, looks like EVGA is ahead by quite a bit.

Around the net I've read coil whine is luck of the draw from any manufacturer using reference board.

I'll wait for KickAssCop's findings.
VWfreak, can you post your findings too? Thanks.

The cooling in my case (Thermaltake armor revo snow) is decent, not the best, but I have intakes coming in from bottom and front of case, and an exhaust going out the back above where the GPU sits. I have another fan on my side panel that blows directly onto the GPU. I have the H100i cooler with the radiator mounted the top of my case with the fans drawing air in but I don't OC my 3770k as no game bottlenecks it.
 
I got an evga 980ti ACX mainly because it's a reference card with a custom cooler. This allows me to get a waterblock for it, and easily resell it later without the block if needed. If you have no need for watercooling compatibility get the msi, better and quieter cooling.

I will say my evga can do 1550mhz at 1.255v.
 
Killerxp100 said:
I got an evga 980ti ACX mainly because it's a reference card with a custom cooler. This allows me to get a waterblock for it, and easily resell it later without the block if needed. If you have no need for watercooling compatibility get the msi, better and quieter cooling.

I will say my evga can do 1550mhz at 1.255v.
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I find that very hard to believe on a ACX with that voltage and not have throttling like hell
 
BlueSaber80 said:
I find that very hard to believe on a ACX with that voltage and not have throttling like hell
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That's because there's a waterblock on it ;)

With the acx cooler I was limited to 1495mhz @ 1.23v to keep the throttling down. Air flow in your case is key with these non-blower cards. Once you hit 80c your throttling, no matter what you set your temp limit at.
 
Techpowerup shows the evga being 2dbA quieter than the MSI, and kitguru shows them being virtually identical, with the evga being 0.2dbA quieter during gaming. As for coil whine, it seems to be luck of the draw. I'm leaning towards the evga, I haven't made a final decision yet. I'm guessing they're so close that it doesn't matter.
 
My new EVGA seems pretty good so far. Idle is silent since the fans don't spin though it is around 50C and I notice my 5930 runs 1-2 deg. higher (but I haven't put the side fan back on yet). I'll be playing Dying light tonight which should max things out, but in games like Civ5 with the fans running ~1200RPM I could not hear them over my 140mm case fans running ~900RPM. No coil whine but then I have old ears ;).
 
They are both loud and hot. Plan ahead for an aftermarket cooler. MSI has dedicated VRM heatsinks so go with that.
 
seanclayton said:
They are both loud and hot. Plan ahead for an aftermarket cooler. MSI has dedicated VRM heatsinks so go with that.
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They are not that loud at all. I have the MSI and its damn quiet. Even 100% fan is not as loud as 50% on the reference card. It also never goes over 78 C on auto fan even when oced to over 1500 under full load.
 
Well as my shitty luck goes. I got the EVGA card with ASIC of 68.7%. It idles at 41 C (MSI used to idle at 57 C). It overclocks to about 1450 on the core and about 7500 on memory. MSI used to overclock to 1440 on the core and 7500 on memory as well.

However, I have not used any other bios yet. Possibly with MAXAIR or MOTIVAN bios I may hit higher results.

The fan is much quieter than the MSI one. MSI used to sound horrible at 70% fan speed. This one at 70% sounds less. Noticing the RPMs this fan is about 300 RPM lower than MSI.

I will continue to post more results but thus far, I am not too happy with the low ASIC but am happier than MSI card in terms of temperatures and noise.

Edit 1:

The motivan bios seems stable at 1500/7500. Need to test more. Highest temperature I saw during Heaven was 80 C with default fan curve. With custom curve it is about 74 C but quite noisy for my liking.
 
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Thanks for the update KickAssCop.

Everyone who wrote a post says EVGA, but the poll results show MSI 16, EVGA 12.

:confused::confused::confused:
 
I am benchmark stable at 1480/7800 on both cards. I managed to de-link them and keep them at that level. My 3dmark results are as follows:

25692 Firestrike
15847 Firestrike Extreme
8633 Firestrike Ultra

I am pretty sure if I run this on Windows 8.1 I will add about 200-300 points to my scores as has been my experience in the past.

I have to modify the fan curve to run this speed. The fans can get terribly noisy but the temperatures remained 75 C top card and 68 C bottom card.

For gaming ofcourse, I did not want to make my computer sound like a tornado so I put default fan curves of both cards and 1450/7700. This nets me much higher temperatures at about 83 C top card and 81 C bottom card. However, the noise is about as much or slightly lower than my 970 SLi with Gigabyte.

I played Witcher 3 for a bit at 4K. Every possible setting turned to maximum settings and it was pegged to 60 fps (without vsync) to a monkey's bottom. I can't ask for more. It was a bit jarring to play at 4K w/ all sorts of AA thrown in. Image was too sharp. However, I loved it. I really wish someone would make a faster refresh monitor at 4K. I will buy it in a heart beat. I can't wait for the 3440*1440 21:9 at 75/100 Hz that I have been hearing.

Overall, I am finally at peace with these cards. I do believe that for such hot running cards, 1450/7700 is a damn good setup with audible yet tolerable noise. Since I wear headphones, I don't hear a damn thing anyways even with volume at 40%.
 
I think you would be happy with any of these cards but I slightly prefer the EVGA.
 
Lol my MSI came DOA on me. That makes it 2 bad 980 ti from MSI. Good thing B&H has badass free return shipping. Looks like it's time to try EVGA, since they have dedicated VRM plate.
 
Definitely do the MSI. I personally am an EVGA guy. All my video cards in the past have been EVGA, but the reports of coil whine was highly worrisome to me. So this time around, I went with MSI.

I didn't even realize that my GTX 260 and GTX 570 BOTH had coil whine and I was living with it. :eek: That's how quiet the MSI is.
 
Thanks guys for all of the input. I decided to get the MSI. My ASIC score is 73.2%.

I've only done some preliminary OC. I got up to 1509 Boost clock 3881 mem @ 1.218 volts. I have only running the furmark 6GB stress test on Kombuster software for 30 minutes. Temps get to about 75 degrees but I have my fan @ 70%. At that speed, it's not that much louder than my case fans and when I don't game I have my custom curve (via AB) to 30%. I might remove the Accelero Arctic Extreme 3 from my 290 before I sell it and stick it on the MSI.

I played GTA online for about 90 minutes and no crash. So far pretty happy with my MSI. I don't think I'm going to get much more OC out of this card and even if I do, the extra heat I get isn't worth the extra FPS I get.

Again, thanks [H] for your input.

EDIT: I ran Furmark over night it was still running this morning but saw that my GPU was running at 510 MHz or something like that. Is this because I am OCing the GPU clock too high, or this a bad PSU? I have an XFX750 PRO. I ran my 290 on it with no problems.
 
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MikeRotch said:
Thanks guys for all of the input. I decided to get the MSI. My ASIC score is 73.2%.

I've only done some preliminary OC. I got up to 1509 Boost clock 3881 mem @ 1.218 volts. I have only running the furmark 6GB stress test on Kombuster software for 30 minutes. Temps get to about 75 degrees but I have my fan @ 70%. At that speed, it's not that much louder than my case fans and when I don't game I have my custom curve (via AB) to 30%. I might remove the Accelero Arctic Extreme 3 from my 290 before I sell it and stick it on the MSI.

I played GTA online for about 90 minutes and no crash. So far pretty happy with my MSI. I don't think I'm going to get much more OC out of this card and even if I do, the extra heat I get isn't worth the extra FPS I get.

Again, thanks [H] for your input.

EDIT: I ran Furmark over night it was still running this morning but saw that my GPU was running at 510 MHz or something like that. Is this because I am OCing the GPU clock too high, or this a bad PSU? I have an XFX750 PRO. I ran my 290 on it with no problems.
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That's severe downclocking going on there. You have a custom fan profile set? Or did you modify the temp/power limit thresholds?
 
MikeRotch said:
EDIT: I ran Furmark over night it was still running this morning but saw that my GPU was running at 510 MHz or something like that. Is this because I am OCing the GPU clock too high, or this a bad PSU? I have an XFX750 PRO. I ran my 290 on it with no problems.
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That sounds like your driver crashed and recovered.
 
KickAssCop said:
Well as my shitty luck goes. I got the EVGA card with ASIC of 68.7%. It idles at 41 C (MSI used to idle at 57 C). It overclocks to about 1450 on the core and about 7500 on memory. MSI used to overclock to 1440 on the core and 7500 on memory as well.
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My EVGA card came with a .... wait for it.... 58% ASIC! I was able to give it +250 on the core and +400 on the memory without any issue, but if I try to push it much further than that it doesn't do very well. It's still a beast of a card but I wish I could OC it more. Maybe I need to try throwins some more voltage at it.
 
58%? You must have bought it from the discounted pool of cards that are binned for firesales, right?

According to the marketing however you should have had to underclock it by -250 on the core.
 
I did push the Core clock too high.

After 2 more days of OCing I settled on 1490 boost clock and 7750 mem clock

I ran furmark while I was at work and came back and it was still running strong.

Thanks again for all of your input [H].
 
Does anyone have first hand experience with warranty through MSI or Zotac? I also am in the same "rut", usually go EVGA but that Zotac AMP Extreme looks beautiful.
 
VulcaN said:
58%? You must have bought it from the discounted pool of cards that are binned for firesales, right?

According to the marketing however you should have had to underclock it by -250 on the core.
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Just to be clear, I did not buy the SC version. It's a base 980Ti with the ACX 2.0 cooler.
 
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