980TI GAMING 6G vs 980Ti GAMING 6G LE

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KGBinUSA

Limp Gawd
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So I want to pick up a MSI 980Ti. Two different ones available.

980Ti Gaming 6G

980Ti Gaming 6G LE

Now, besides the clock speeds, I do not see any other difference besides Phantom Pain that comes with LE and price.

Does anybody know if MSI uses higher binned gpus for Gaming 6Gs as opposed to LEs?
 
I'm assuming the 6G's would be higher binned. But overclocking is a total crap shoot anyway.
 
Different Bios maybe?

Everything I google about MSI 980ti LE....pops up the Lightning Edition, but of course the color scheme of yellow and black does not match the "LE" in your link. I went on the MSI website and couldnt even find the "LE" version.

What info newegg does list pretty much shows the different modes the gaming 6g has vs the lack of modes the LE has.

So, my answer is the gpu BIOS...:D...of course along w/ the guarantee of those OC speeds.

I dont know anything about what they bin though.
 
Darksword said:
I'm assuming the 6G's would be higher binned. But overclocking is a total crap shoot anyway.
Click to expand...

Their not. The LE is the version of the 6G that can't obtain stable overclocks, so its stock clocks instead for slightly lower price but better cooling and noise then reference blower cards. So basically the LE is for the people of the mindset of "I don't care about overclocking, let alone paying for it but I hate the look/design/noise/heat from the reference nvidia blower"

And the 6G's are not binned, I went through 3 different 6G's until I finally got one with low coil whine but only has ASIC score of 63%. Other people have them as low as 58% and as high as 82%
 
Looks like the LE version is the same card just with reference clocks. Just like the evga acx and acx sc+ are the same cards with one being factory oc.

I doubt there is any binning going on with these cards. Probably just msi putting out a slightly cheaper card to bring their offerings more in line with other manufacturers.
 
BlueSaber80 said:
Their not. The LE is the version of the 6G that can't obtain stable overclocks, so its stock clocks instead for slightly lower price but better cooling and noise then reference blower cards. So basically the LE is for the people of the mindset of "I don't care about overclocking, let alone paying for it but I hate the look/design/noise/heat from the reference nvidia blower"

And the 6G's are not binned, I went through 3 different 6G's until I finally got one with low coil whine but only has ASIC score of 63%. Other people have them as low as 58% and as high as 82%
Click to expand...

Basically I should be shooting for the 6G, if I want to overclock.
 
KGBinUSA said:
Basically I should be shooting for the 6G, if I want to overclock.
Click to expand...

Yep and keep in mind the stock cooler was designed for the 145watt and 165watt TDP 970 and 980, it struggles with the 250watt TDP 980 Ti as a lot of owners like me are finding out the hard way. It runs quiet vs the other 980 Ti models but it struggles with heat management. The Zotac AMP Extreme, Gigabyte G1 have better coolers capable of handling that heat output, but they have their own cons

Zotac's reliability is unknown and untested company track record and Gigabytes G1's have some serious coil whine and dead DVI port issues.

A lot of peeps are screwing air cooling due to the insane 980 Ti temps and throwing on NZXT's Kraken G10 water cooling mount with a H75 or X41.

I however have no desire to spend the money on water so I just crank the fans up to higher speeds with custom fan curve and am upgrading my intake fans to push more air into my case and removing PCI slots for the hot air to get remove faster. In short, the 980 Ti's run fucking hot.

2FjZzWl.jpg


dVD9DsQ.jpg
 
BlueSaber80 said:
Yep and keep in mind the stock cooler was designed for the 145watt and 165watt TDP 970 and 980, it struggles with the 250watt TDP 980 Ti as a lot of owners like me are finding out the hard way. It runs quiet vs the other 980 Ti models but it struggles with heat management. The Zotac AMP Extreme, Gigabyte G1 have better coolers capable of handling that heat output, but they have their own cons

Zotac's reliability is unknown and untested company track record and Gigabytes G1's have some serious coil whine and dead DVI port issues.

A lot of peeps are screwing air cooling due to the insane 980 Ti temps and throwing on NZXT's Kraken G10 water cooling mount with a H75 or X41.

I however have no desire to spend the money on water so I just crank the fans up to higher speeds with custom fan curve and am upgrading my intake fans to push more air into my case and removing PCI slots for the hot air to get remove faster. In short, the 980 Ti's run fucking hot.

2FjZzWl.jpg


dVD9DsQ.jpg
Click to expand...

I actually was planning on using a G10 bracket. I have one of these
AMDasetek_pspc.jpg
on my R9 290 right now and was just going to switch it to the new card.

Using that cooler will be slightly ironic though.
 
Agree with Blue here. Was about to grab an MSI but couldn't stomach the paper thin heatsink. Finally pulled the trigger on Zotac. Bit of a gamble, but there's nothing else out there at the moment.
 
TDSlam720 said:
Agree with Blue here. Was about to grab an MSI but couldn't stomach the paper thin heatsink. Finally pulled the trigger on Zotac. Bit of a gamble, but there's nothing else out there at the moment.
Click to expand...

Good choice. Another defect in the MSI design is the fact that the heat pipes are running along the top instead of running directly under the fan. It looks aggressive but does nothing for cooling the heatsink. I went through three 980TIs and the Zotac is clearly the best of the bunch.
 
Cyph said:
Good choice. Another defect in the MSI design is the fact that the heat pipes are running along the top instead of running directly under the fan. It looks aggressive but does nothing for cooling the heatsink. I went through three 980TIs and the Zotac is clearly the best of the bunch.
Click to expand...

The issue is that anything over the size of a reference R9 290/290X will not fit in my case. Maximum length is 275mm, which leaves me with only a few options.
 
BlueSaber80 said:
Yep and keep in mind the stock cooler was designed for the 145watt and 165watt TDP 970 and 980, it struggles with the 250watt TDP 980 Ti as a lot of owners like me are finding out the hard way. It runs quiet vs the other 980 Ti models but it struggles with heat management. The Zotac AMP Extreme, Gigabyte G1 have better coolers capable of handling that heat output, but they have their own cons

Zotac's reliability is unknown and untested company track record and Gigabytes G1's have some serious coil whine and dead DVI port issues.

A lot of peeps are screwing air cooling due to the insane 980 Ti temps and throwing on NZXT's Kraken G10 water cooling mount with a H75 or X41.

I however have no desire to spend the money on water so I just crank the fans up to higher speeds with custom fan curve and am upgrading my intake fans to push more air into my case and removing PCI slots for the hot air to get remove faster. In short, the 980 Ti's run fucking hot.

http://i.imgur.com/2FjZzWl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/dVD9DsQ.jpg
Click to expand...

That's quite a dinky cooler. It looks like they took the same dimensions of a center single fan cooler (circa 6870 style) and adjusted it accordingly to accommodate dual fans.
 
Beaflag VonRathburg said:
That's quite a dinky cooler. It looks like they took the same dimensions of a center single fan cooler (circa 6870 style) and adjusted it accordingly to accommodate dual fans.
Click to expand...

Lol, i was thinking of a 560ti TFII...which I think I have it laying around somewhere (heatsink only) if i havent thrown it out yet.
 
Beaflag VonRathburg said:
That's quite a dinky cooler. It looks like they took the same dimensions of a center single fan cooler (circa 6870 style) and adjusted it accordingly to accommodate dual fans.
Click to expand...

Even makes evga's ACX cooler look beefy by comparison, and I was pretty underwhelmed with that cooler too. If your going air those huge triple slot coolers on the Zotac cards seem to be the best.


*The Msi card might be the best bet though if your planing on adding an AIO, because of the cooling plate on the memory and vrm's.
 
Cyph said:
Good choice. Another defect in the MSI design is the fact that the heat pipes are running along the top instead of running directly under the fan. It looks aggressive but does nothing for cooling the heatsink. I went through three 980TIs and the Zotac is clearly the best of the bunch.
Click to expand...

The pipes curve and go back into heatfins vs the straight pipes on the ACX which doens't perform any better even though EVGA says it does. Its all marketing bullshit either way. My classified ran no cooler and was loud as hell at higher RPM's.

uP5SXsf.jpg
 
At least from my experience, the G1 which had straight pipes under its own dinky heatsink cooled ever so slightly better than the MSI. However, I could never get either of them to get below 70 degrees with an aggressive fan curve. The Zotac, on the other hand, blew them all away by being 10 degrees cooler. Reading around Internet, mid 60's are normal for the Zotac so you can avoid the 2nd thermal throttle at 74C. Right now I set my fan curve to 70% at 60C and I avoid the first thermal throttle at 64C. It runs 61-63 in the Witcher 3 at stock voltage. That's pretty outstanding, close enough to liquid cooling without the hassle and extra expenditure. I even sold MGS5 for $40 on Ebay which brings my total to $630 for the Zotac. The biggest benefit is the heat exhausting from the case. The computer is less of a heater in the summer time.
 
I went with the LE (arriving today) - saved a few bucks and figure I can overclock it to the speeds of the 'normal' version without much issue.
 
KGBinUSA said:
So I want to pick up a MSI 980Ti. Two different ones available.

980Ti Gaming 6G

980Ti Gaming 6G LE

Now, besides the clock speeds, I do not see any other difference besides Phantom Pain that comes with LE and price.

Does anybody know if MSI uses higher binned gpus for Gaming 6Gs as opposed to LEs?
Click to expand...
In addition to what's already been said I just wanted to point out that the LE edition comes with MSGV. Which may or may not have value to you.

I just purchased the LE edition. Figure I'll take my chances with overclocking and save the $20 and get the free game.
 
WhiteRice said:
In addition to what's already been said I just wanted to point out that the LE edition comes with MSGV. Which may or may not have value to you.

I just purchased the LE edition. Figure I'll take my chances with overclocking and save the $20 and get the free game.
Click to expand...

The non-LE usually comes with MSGV as well. I got mine from Amazon and they emailed me the code as they started the shipping process of the card.
 
Kaisei said:
The non-LE usually comes with MSGV as well. I got mine from Amazon and they emailed me the code as they started the shipping process of the card.
Click to expand...

On newegg it's the other way around. But on MSI's website it simply states that the 980ti comes with a code.
 
BlueSaber80 said:
Their not. The LE is the version of the 6G that can't obtain stable overclocks, so its stock clocks instead for slightly lower price but better cooling and noise then reference blower cards. So basically the LE is for the people of the mindset of "I don't care about overclocking, let alone paying for it but I hate the look/design/noise/heat from the reference nvidia blower"

And the 6G's are not binned, I went through 3 different 6G's until I finally got one with low coil whine but only has ASIC score of 63%. Other people have them as low as 58% and as high as 82%
Click to expand...


I've got two MSI 980 Ti 6G's, both have no coil whine at all. I have a Seasonic X1050 power supply also.

I would also like to point out I have no cooling issues with either of my cards either using a custom fan profile, even with the fans running at 80%, they're super quiet and temps never exceed high 60's under load and overclocked to 1500Mhz. I have good case cooling also.
 
Blkout said:
I've got two MSI 980 Ti 6G's, both have no coil whine at all. I have a Seasonic X1050 power supply also.

I would also like to point out I have no cooling issues with either of my cards either using a custom fan profile, even with the fans running at 80%, they're super quiet and temps never exceed high 60's under load and overclocked to 1500Mhz. I have good case cooling also.
Click to expand...

Guess I just have shit luck
 
So I got my 'LE' edition today - on the box it actually says LITE edition. I ran GPU-Z and it's ASIC score is 74.2%.
 
got haggis? said:
So I got my 'LE' edition today - on the box it actually says LITE edition. I ran GPU-Z and it's ASIC score is 74.2%.
Click to expand...

This means that 6Gs are not binned and LE vs 6G just have different bioses...
Can you post your max stable overclock? Would be nice to know.
 
KGBinUSA said:
This means that 6Gs are not binned and LE vs 6G just have different bioses...
Can you post your max stable overclock? Would be nice to know.
Click to expand...
It's like nVidia and VGA manufacturers are performing an elaborate social experiment and we're all just the subjects...
 
WhiteRice said:
Silicon lottery, amirite?

Do you plan on overclocking? If so please post your results.
Click to expand...

Yes, I do plan on overclocking. I am completely new to overclocking gpus, so this will be an interesting experiment. Might take me a few days.
 
got haggis? said:
Yes, I do plan on overclocking. I am completely new to overclocking gpus, so this will be an interesting experiment. Might take me a few days.
Click to expand...
It's a fun hobby, don't sweat it too much though. In the end your card is there to play games.
 
KGBinUSA said:
This means that 6Gs are not binned and LE vs 6G just have different bioses...
Can you post your max stable overclock? Would be nice to know.
Click to expand...

I don't think you can draw that conclusion based on his result.
 
So I did some overclocking - with my card that has the 74.2 ASIC score, I can OC the core +200 using MSI Afterburner. Anything higher than around 220, I start to see artifacts and driver crashes.
 
got haggis? said:
So I did some overclocking - with my card that has the 74.2 ASIC score, I can OC the core +200 using MSI Afterburner. Anything higher than around 220, I start to see artifacts and driver crashes.
Click to expand...

Perhaps a BIOS flash to the 6G?
 
I suppose I can ignore the LE part if i'm planning on ditching the stock cooler and slapping a EK block?
 
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