980 SLI Question.

Solhokuten

Solhokuten

[H]ard|Gawd
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Thinking about upgrading to the Acer XB280HK 4K gsync, and grabbing an additional GTX 980. My question is what model should I get? The [H] sli review recommends non-reference due to throttling, but I already have a reference 980 SC so should i get another or a strix, matrix, or something like that? Thanks in advance.
 
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Where did you read that the reference 980 throttles? I have no recollection of ever reading that in an [H] review, or anywhere else for that matter. Your overclocking on any Maxwell card is going to be limited by the conservative power limits of the stock vBIOS, though.

Just grab another SC to pair with the one you already have. There is no reason to complicate things by adding a different type of 980 into your setup.
 
Armenius said:
Where did you read that the reference 980 throttles? I have no recollection of ever reading that in an [H] review, or anywhere else for that matter. Your overclocking on any Maxwell card is going to be limited by the conservative power limits of the stock vBIOS, though.

Just grab another SC to pair with the one you already have. There is no reason to complicate things by adding a different type of 980 into your setup.
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Here is the quote from the [H] 980 SLI Overclocking review

We were surprised to find clock throttling below the boost clock with GeForce GTX 980 SLI reference video cards. The performance is still good, but you are definitely not getting the most out of SLI performance with two reference video cards. We fully recommend forgoing reference cooled cards and choosing a custom cooled retail GTX 980 card so that it can maintain a clock speed above the boost clock. When able to, the clock speed should be above 1216MHz and this will make a big difference in performance compared to the 1126MHz we were getting out of the reference cooled cards at default settings in SLI.
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I was surprised to find this out as well..gives me something to think about with the upgrade.
 
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Couldn't one Just match the bios for ea card and then the voltages would match.

Really though every card over clocks different so this prob should be common with always needing to keep the overclock under the weakest card.
 
eclypse said:
Couldn't one Just match the bios for ea card and then the voltages would match.

Really though every card over clocks different so this prob should be common with always needing to keep the overclock under the weakest card.
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The issue as [H] describes it is with reference designed coolers SLI tends to exceed 80c which causes the cards to throttle below the boost clocks. I'm wondering if placing a card like the 980 Strix or Matrix on top would circumvent the issue. The matrix has the same default clocks as the reference Evga 980 SC I own. Ultimatley I just want to make sure I can run at the default clocks of the 980 I have, and according to the [H] review getting another reference SC in SLI will certainly throttle down to the base clock.
 
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My Evga SC cards have a large side fan blowing against them, and with gpu fans at 90%, mostly stay below 70, about 75% of the time.
 
deasnutz said:
My Evga SC cards have a large side fan blowing against them, and with gpu fans at 90%, mostly stay below 70, about 75% of the time.
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My case does not have a side fan, but I see your and eclipse's point. I'm just gonna have to roll the dice on this one. [H] did have a much higher OC than Im shooting for.

Should I upgrade my PSU? I think 850 should be enough for my system, but I'm not sure.
 
Solhokuten said:
My case does not have a side fan, but I see your and eclipse's point. I'm just gonna have to roll the dice on this one. [H] did have a much higher OC than Im shooting for.

Should I upgrade my PSU? I think 850 should be enough for my system, but I'm not sure.
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Do the 980s really run that hot? I ran a pair of 780s at 75% fan speed and they never went above 70C. And the 780 had a TDP that was twice that of the 980.

850W should be plenty, even with your overclocked and watercooled CPU.
 
Armenius said:
Do the 980s really run that hot? I ran a pair of 780s at 75% fan speed and they never went above 70C. And the 780 had a TDP that was twice that of the 980.

850W should be plenty, even with your overclocked and watercooled CPU.
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Yeah [H] was running at 1466/7.8 which is quite a leap above the stock 1253/7
I'm only going for 1342 which is the stock boost clock of the 980 SC.

Thanks for all the help.
 
skiddierow said:
My 980s throttle at stock fan speed in a 230t.
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Ugh, this is what I was afraid of. I'll probably just get the Matrix Platinum or the Strix for the top card, and cross my fingers.

I'll take any suggestions for the top card. Hopefully something that will save me from some crazy loud %100 fan profile. A water setup isn't in the budget right now.
 
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Gigabyte G1 has some near silent fans.. I run mine at like 90% while I game. 970 at 1550 1.25v stay around 55c while playing bf4.
 
I'm running a strix on top and ref on the bottom, while i wanted another ref it was just too expensive and or hard to get. Only Evga had cards in stock but it was 50 euros more expensive so i thought fuck it.
Anyways, they both run great, 1450ish core for both but memory still stock. And no throttling but the strix is noisier then the ref after a while, it has sort of a mid rangy noise profile which to me is more bothersome then the smooth whooshing sound of the ref since the latter gets blocked completely by my headphones.

But that is likely an airflow problem, i plan to get a FT05 so it should be quieter then.
 
Subsequence said:
I'm running a strix on top and ref on the bottom, while i wanted another ref it was just too expensive and or hard to get. Only Evga had cards in stock but it was 50 euros more expensive so i thought fuck it.
Anyways, they both run great, 1450ish core for both but memory still stock. And no throttling but the strix is noisier then the ref after a while, it has sort of a mid rangy noise profile which to me is more bothersome then the smooth whooshing sound of the ref since the latter gets blocked completely by my headphones.

But that is likely an airflow problem, i plan to get a FT05 so it should be quieter then.
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Good to know. May I ask what kind of case you have currently?.

Does anyone know how the G1,Strix, Matrix, and other after market coolers compare. Really want to choose the best option.
 
Solhokuten said:
Good to know. May I ask what kind of case you have currently?.

Does anyone know how the G1,Strix, Matrix, and other after market coolers compare. Really want to choose the best option.
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The case is a Corsair 450D, 2x140 front, 1x120 bottom, 2x120 top and 1x 120 in the back. Fanxpert 3 autotuning was used for silence. I tried some manual tweaking but i could hear some fans through my headphones so then it had no effect noise wise. So i just disabled auto fan stop for now and i might do some tuning later, the thing is i also want silence while not gaming and not having my headphones on.
It would be nice to be able to configure a fancurve to respond to gpu core temp, it's already tracking it...

Sorry for going a bit offtopic there :)
 
Subsequence said:
The case is a Corsair 450D, 2x140 front, 1x120 bottom, 2x120 top and 1x 120 in the back. Fanxpert 3 autotuning was used for silence. I tried some manual tweaking but i could hear some fans through my headphones so then it had no effect noise wise. So i just disabled auto fan stop for now and i might do some tuning later, the thing is i also want silence while not gaming and not having my headphones on.
It would be nice to be able to configure a fancurve to respond to gpu core temp, it's already tracking it...

Sorry for going a bit offtopic there :)
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Thanks, that was very helpful.
 
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