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Are Reference Cards OK?

P

phorkz

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 5, 2012
Messages
368
Hi guys,
Just wondering what are the thoughts of reference cards? Are they a complete no-no or are they ok?
I have recently sold off my 2 X 680’s, Asus CU ll Top editions, so not reference.
I am planning on buying 2X 8GB 880’s on release, which at that time will only be reference.
Revamping my PC for Gta V, which I would like to play on launch(fall), so waiting for non reference might not be possible, depending on dates of course.
I guess the reference cards would be better for temps inside the case, so that’s a plus.
Not planning on Water cooling the cards at all.
I usually do carry out slight overclocks on my cards, though probably will not be needed for awhile and as I understand there isn’t a lot of room for that when using reference?
Anyway thanks for your time!.

EDIT: plan on grabbing the Asus Swift monitor also.
 
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I am still loving my EVGA (ref) 680s in SLI. I play at 1080p but will soon be moving up to 1440p when the RoG Swift launches. I believe G Sync will complement these cards well and give them a longer life span.

But to answer your question. You can always over clock the reference cards to match the SC versions and outside of any non reference cooling solutions there really isn't to much of a difference IMHO.
 
the 880 will not be a pure reference cooler, its going to be a customized new cooler.

Reference of course means blower style cooler 99% of time AND stock clocked.. Blower style coolers work well for multi-card setups cause each card vents its own hot air instead of exhausting into the case.

Problem with reference blower style they don't tend to cool very well, get dirty easier, tend to be quite loud though at the same time the reference coolers also tend to cool the entire card gpucore/memory/vreg well enough sometimes even better then many "non" reference coolers.

So better for temps in case yes if it vents properly, but room heats up so it sucks in hot air that much sooner cause its not cooling as well as fast its a double edged sword.

One "mod" I have seen folks do with decent success is to snip the back vent where the hot air blows out to make it less constricted.
 
kEYNAus.png
 
Gigabyte announced they will have their new Windforce GTX 880 available by the end of September.
Assuming other AIB's are on a similar schedule, you should have non-ref cards by then.

Anyway if you believe rumors around here, the 880 is going to be slower than the 680 so you made a bad decision selling them.
I'm joking, of course. But seriously.
 
I thought the 8gb 880 were coming out latter than the 4gb models.
 
I don't touch reference model cards anymore. The fans are usually terrible.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Gigabyte announced they will have their new Windforce GTX 880 available by the end of September.
Assuming other AIB's are on a similar schedule, you should have non-ref cards by then.

Anyway if you believe rumors around here, the 880 is going to be slower than the 680 so you made a bad decision selling them.
I'm joking, of course. But seriously.
Click to expand...

I actually still liked the 680's, its really just the VRAM that is/going to cause the issue, otherwise i would have kept them, and its the same reason i wont just buy 2x 780 TI right now.

Alos, source on that info from Gigabyte? Oh NVM HAHA i must be blind
 
nvidia's reference design was very good this gen. i say the only reason to buy reference is if you're buying your cards the moment they're released and third party coolers aren't available yet. don't think that's going to be the case for the 800 series.
 
the reference coolers on the gtx 780/ti were usually good for 100-200 mhz core overclock but come with the penalty of having to run the fan around 80%.
 
phorkz said:
Hi guys,
Just wondering what are the thoughts of reference cards? Are they a complete no-no or are they ok?
I have recently sold off my 2 X 680’s, Asus CU ll Top editions, so not reference.
I am planning on buying 2X 8GB 880’s on release, which at that time will only be reference.
Revamping my PC for Gta V, which I would like to play on launch(fall), so waiting for non reference might not be possible, depending on dates of course.
I guess the reference cards would be better for temps inside the case, so that’s a plus.
Not planning on Water cooling the cards at all.
I usually do carry out slight overclocks on my cards, though probably will not be needed for awhile and as I understand there isn’t a lot of room for that when using reference?
Anyway thanks for your time!.

EDIT: plan on grabbing the Asus Swift monitor also.
Click to expand...

Non-refererence cards should be out a week or two after reference. You should just wait for it. Gigabyte has already announced there card will be out by end of September.
 
LordEC911 said:
dragonstongue said:
So better for temps in case yes if it vents properly, but room heats up so it sucks in hot air that much sooner cause its not cooling as well as fast its a double edged sword.
Click to expand...
Physics... how does it work?
Click to expand...
Yeah, you got confused here. Reference coolers are not sucking anything in (from the case or outside), hence the term "blower."

Unless you mean the air the card is blowing out of the case is heating up the room faster? I thought that is what A/C was for...
 
Personally I think the Titan and 780 reference cooler is pretty damn awesome. Basically the best reference cooler ever designed, IMO.

While if you're an overclocking nut and don't mind the negatives associated with that, you can get aftermarket though. But, reference is FAR better for SLI and SFF form factors. If you SLI custom cooled cards, the top card will generally get way too hot over time and can cause issues. Reference SLI does not have this problem since air is exhausted out of the case, which is the beauty of reference cooling if you opt for it. It's also quiet at stock settings, however, you'll need to up the fan speed if you want to overclock (which obviously would be less quiet).
 
Usually reference cards are ok as long as you can deal with the extra heat and noise. If you have excellent airflow you should be ok, some are obviously worse than others (reference 290/x cooler is louder than my vacuum cleaner)
 
ssnyder28 said:
Usually reference cards are ok as long as you can deal with the extra heat and noise.
Click to expand...
Extra heat and noise? But blower coolers exhaust outside the case and only have a single moving part... they're very-nearly ideal.

The 780 / Titan reference cooler is still one of the best things out there, as far as I'm concerned. Anything that exhausts into the case (most aftermarket solutions) ends up louder overall, due largely to case fans needing to run faster to keep up with all the additional heat.

AIO water cooling is quieter than reference at load, but generally louder while the system is idle (because the pump can't operate as quietly as the reference cooler fan at idle). This is going to depend on pump design, but I have yet to encounter one that doesn't have this problem.
 
ssnyder28 said:
Usually reference cards are ok as long as you can deal with the extra heat and noise. If you have excellent airflow you should be ok, some are obviously worse than others (reference 290/x cooler is louder than my vacuum cleaner)
Click to expand...

You must have a pretty quiet vacuum then or crap cooling in that case of yours. (If you have a 290 that is otherwise, what you hear online is a joke.) I have a XFX R9 290 that I flashed recently to a 290X and it works great, not noisy at all. However, I am also using a Fractal Design R3 case which is quiet anyways.

I also up the fan to 100% and although I would not run that regularly, it was far quieter than my Vacuum cleaner. The reason I am sharing this is because I think reference coolers are fine for stock performance. You just have to make sure that you have good case cooling but, I would say the same for a non reference cooler.

Either way, enjoy your new purchase when you get them.
 
Reference cards are usually the best for multi-GPU setups, as they tend to exhaust hot air outside of the case, instead of pump it back into the case, as others have mentioned.

I was wondering though, couldn't one just modify the fan in the reference cooler to a quieter and more efficient one?

Another good thing about reference coolers is that they're the cheapest option (usually) if you're seeking to roll your own liquid cooling setup (or just put in aftermarket cooling). It would be nice if they sold the video cards without a cooler for the more hardcore cooling crowd...
 
jbltecnicspro said:
Reference cards are usually the best for multi-GPU setups, as they tend to exhaust hot air outside of the case, instead of pump it back into the case, as others have mentioned.

I was wondering though, couldn't one just modify the fan in the reference cooler to a quieter and more efficient one?

Another good thing about reference coolers is that they're the cheapest option (usually) if you're seeking to roll your own liquid cooling setup (or just put in aftermarket cooling). It would be nice if they sold the video cards without a cooler for the more hardcore cooling crowd...
Click to expand...
It would be nice, but instead we have to deal with $200+ premiums on AIB cards with custom water blocks...
 
blows heat out heats up room generally faster but its more directed airflow albeit not as good overall capacity as many non reference granted so usually means the card gets hotter in a shorter period of time. It does tend to be easier to manage case airflow with blower style then non-ref type though.

Titan cooler maybe reference on a titan, but its not a reference design cooler really.

Both reference and non-reference have benefits and bad sides to them. I have noticed most reference are more robust in terms of design not cooling or noise, most non-reference cool better at lower noise but in some cases do a crap job of cooling vreg and vram and this can cause performance problems.

The reference cooler I have heard for the 800 series will be a reference blower type but more designed on the titan style with a revamped blower fan.
 
reference are just very constrained heatsink so the blower has to have numerous blade at low slant to generate enough pressure to force air through this heatsink so therefore more noise(and also get dirty very fast) if they used less blades on the blower fan and gave them more of an angle/twist to generate more flow they could use a less constrained heatsink and do fancy things with that heatsink such as dimpling or whatever to increase surface area. Maybe make the heatpipes move along the length of the heatsink instead of cutting into it stopping airflow etc.

It is high time they redesign the blower style to make it quieter and more efficient cause it does blow the heat out and it seems to allow a much larger surface to suck in the heat from all the components on the card.

Again as I have heard folks do with their 290/290x especially when they first launched, they clipped the back out of the vent as in the part that's above dvi/hdmi that actually lets the air out, they chopped the vent out of the way so it was wide open apparently that helped make it somewhat quieter and helped with temps as well.

Another thing they need to do, use better thermal paste at the factory, almost every card I had cleaned/taken apart over the years the thermal paste was caked on sometimes even only on 1/2 of the chip, proper layer of thermal paste/pad makes a world of difference for cooling and therefore noise.
 
dragonstongue said:
most non-reference cool better at lower noise
Click to expand...
Again, this is only true in an open-air setup.

Inside a case, non-reference coolers cause all kinds of problems. Where as the reference cooler only has to spin up one fan to cool the graphics card, a non-reference cooler requires the fan(s) on the card AND your case fans all spin up.

At idle, a non-reference dual-fan cooler might be quieter... but under load? Nope. Too much heat is being dumped into the case vs. reference.
 
ManofGod said:
You must have a pretty quiet vacuum then or crap cooling in that case of yours. (If you have a 290 that is otherwise, what you hear online is a joke.) I have a XFX R9 290 that I flashed recently to a 290X and it works great, not noisy at all. However, I am also using a Fractal Design R3 case which is quiet anyways.

I also up the fan to 100% and although I would not run that regularly, it was far quieter than my Vacuum cleaner. The reason I am sharing this is because I think reference coolers are fine for stock performance. You just have to make sure that you have good case cooling but, I would say the same for a non reference cooler.

Either way, enjoy your new purchase when you get them.
Click to expand...

Well you must've gotten a really nice one I guess, the 290x I had was the loudest gpu I've ever owned. This was pretty much what i've heard from everyone else so I figured it was the norm. My airflow isn't an issue as I've used many other cards with the same setup without any problems. The only other card that made anywhere near that level of noise was a 7990 but taking a wild guess the 290x was around 2x as loud at 100% fan speed.
 
I have had the reference 770 GTX from evga for about six months and it's been fantastic. Low heat and super quiet.

I just acquired a reference AMD R9 290 card on the other hand... and it's the total opposite. It works great, but holy shit it's SUPER loud. Louder than any card or fan I can ever remember using in a PC.
 
From the blower type cards I've owned from AMD/ATI, they've always been loud. Nvidia have sorted their ref cooling solutions. My 680's are dead quiet, even at OC speeds. Obviously, they make noise during extensive gaming, but nowhere as loud as my 7970's were.
 
ssnyder28 said:
Well you must've gotten a really nice one I guess, the 290x I had was the loudest gpu I've ever owned. This was pretty much what i've heard from everyone else so I figured it was the norm. My airflow isn't an issue as I've used many other cards with the same setup without any problems. The only other card that made anywhere near that level of noise was a 7990 but taking a wild guess the 290x was around 2x as loud at 100% fan speed.
Click to expand...

Perhaps but, I also have a setup that is relatively as quiet as a system can be with fans. The 2 x 6950's from Power color I had were much more noisy that the 290 I have now. Also, as I had previously mentioned, I have a Fractal Design R3 that is one of the quieter cases on the market because of the way it is designed.

Perhaps in an open air system on a desk, it would be louder but, I do not run my system that way. I personally think that the reference designs are just fine and often better than the non reference designs. (Not always though.)

Edit: Just a heads up, it looks like you would be fine with a reference cooler on 2 x 880ti's in my opinion.
 
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Odellus said:
haha dude are you serious?
Click to expand...
Dead serious.

- Reference cooler under load = one fan exhausting heat directly outside the case (case fans can stay low RPM or off).
- Dual-fan cooler under load = two fans exhausting heat into the case (case fans must spin-up to avoid overheating).

In my case, it's 1 fan running faster (reference) vs. 5 fans running faster (dual-fan cooler) when the graphics card is under load. Not hard to figure out which setup is quieter...
 
Unknown-One said:
Dead serious.

- Reference cooler under load = one fan exhausting heat directly outside the case (case fans can stay low RPM or off).
- Dual-fan cooler under load = two fans exhausting heat into the case (case fans must spin-up to avoid overheating).

In my case, it's 1 fan running faster (reference) vs. 5 fans running faster (dual-fan cooler) when the graphics card is under load. Not hard to figure out which setup is quieter...
Click to expand...


You're seriously overestimating the impact of exhausting into the case. Sure if you have terrible case airflow, non-reference makes zero sense. But I've used both reference and non-reference cards (similar TDP and efficiency) in a micro-ATX Silverstone TJ08-E with the intake on 'low'. The non-reference is far cooler and quieter.

With a case with plenty of airflow like the Silverstone Raven2 or FT02, there's absolutely no comparison between reference and non-reference. Blowers get annihilated because they don't pull heat off the GPU fast enough, end of story.

If you want to buy a GPU and then stuff it into a case with terrible airflow, that's on you. Don't blame the non-reference cooler. Who uses case fans that ramp up anyway?
 
wabbitseason said:
You're seriously overestimating the impact of exhausting into the case.
Click to expand...
Not really, no. I've run a large number of cooling configurations in my Fractal Design R3, and I'm speaking from personal experience. If you're going for a dead SILENT system, then exhausting that much heat into the case is totally unacceptable.

When running my GTX 780 with the reference cooler, I literally did not need case fans in ANY capacity for keeping the graphics card cool. Didn't matter how much GPU load there was, the case fans never needed to come on.

Switched to an ACX cooler and all hell broke loose. Suddenly the case would fill up with hot air when the graphics card was under load. Zero-RPM was no-longer an option, and I had to redo all my fan profiles to blast my case fans just to get semi-reasonable performance out of the ACX cooler. This also had the add-on effect of making EVERYTHING in the case run hotter (even the CPU fan had to kick up a notch).

Nothing about switching away from reference was quieter. Nothing. I went from case fans at 0 RPM most of the time to case fans at 1000 RPM most of the time. That's a huge increase in noise (and pretty much everything except the GPU core itself ended up warmer for it).

wabbitseason said:
If you want to buy a GPU and then stuff it into a case with terrible airflow, that's on you. Don't blame the non-reference cooler.
Click to expand...
It has nothing to do with my case. The R3 has never once been cited as having any kind of airflow problem.

It's the fact that the reference cooler doesn't need the kind of supporting airflow (and the noise that comes with supporting airflow) that an aftermarket cooler requires.

Maybe you're already blasting your case fans and making all kinds of unnecessary noise (thereby allowing you to slot in one of these aftermarket coolers without noticing its impact), but I'm not.
 
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Unknown-One said:
Dead serious.

- Reference cooler under load = one fan exhausting heat directly outside the case (case fans can stay low RPM or off).
- Dual-fan cooler under load = two fans exhausting heat into the case (case fans must spin-up to avoid overheating).

In my case, it's 1 fan running faster (reference) vs. 5 fans running faster (dual-fan cooler) when the graphics card is under load. Not hard to figure out which setup is quieter...
Click to expand...
By that logic, beast heatsinks like the Tri-X or PCS+ on 290/290X would be an ultimate failure but we already know they're both cooler and quieter than reference cards. They're cooler and quieter than the best Nvidia cooling solutions despite using significantly more power.

Pulling heat off the GPU is harder than pushing heat out of your case.
The most important factor in cooling your GPU is the heatsink itself. Your heatsink fans, case fans, and case airflow fall secondary.

Two fans pushing air through a heatsink that's twice as large as reference cards will always be more efficient.
 
Unknown: You are in the minority, mate. Something is very much up with your setup.

All of my fans run at a constant, low speed regardless of load. They are nearly silent from 3 feet away.

I recommend a Silverstone Raven (RV02 ideally, undervolt the fans slightly on 'low') if you want to test this out. Not that you need to--the 780 reference is a perfectly adequate cooler and probably the best blower ever made. But make no mistake: you could have much quieter, much cooler cards for the same level of overall system noise.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
By that logic, beast heatsinks like the Tri-X or PCS+ on 290/290X would be an ultimate failure but we already know they're both cooler and quieter than reference cards.
Click to expand...
Cooler and quieter when run outside a case, sure.

Inside a case is a totally different story, especially a system that's aiming for dead silence.

TaintedSquirrel said:
Two fans pushing air through a heatsink that's twice as large as reference cards will always be more efficient.
Click to expand...
Not when they're recirculating their own hot air.
 
Unknown-One said:
Not really, no. I've run a large number of cooling configurations in my Fractal Design R3, and I'm speaking from personal experience. If you're going for a dead SILENT system, then exhausting that much heat into the case is totally unacceptable.

When running my GTX 780 with the reference cooler, I literally did not need case fans in ANY capacity for keeping the graphics card cool. Didn't matter how much GPU load there was, the case fans never needed to come on.

Switched to an ACX cooler and all hell broke loose. Suddenly the case would fill up with hot air when the graphics card was under load. Zero-RPM was no-longer an option, and I had to redo all my fan profiles to blast my case fans just to get semi-reasonable performance out of the ACX cooler. This also had the add-on effect of making EVERYTHING in the case run hotter (even the CPU fan had to kick up a notch).

Nothing about switching away from reference was quieter. Nothing. I went from case fans at 0 RPM most of the time to case fans at 1000 RPM most of the time. That's a huge increase in noise (and pretty much everything except the GPU core itself ended up warmer for it).


It has nothing to do with my case. The R3 has never once been cited as having any kind of airflow problem.

It's the fact that the reference cooler doesn't need the kind of supporting airflow (and the noise that comes with supporting airflow) that an aftermarket cooler requires.

Maybe you're already blasting your case fans and making all kinds of unnecessary noise (thereby allowing you to slot in one of these aftermarket coolers without noticing its impact), but I'm not.
Click to expand...

i could remove all of my case fans and my temperatures would be unaffected. my case fans are completely silent and run at the same rpm no matter what, so i'm not inclined to do so. i don't know what exactly you're doing where case fans actually matter in whether your gpu overheats or not, but you're definitely doing something wrong. my 770 maxes out at 70-72c at 60% fan speed which is inaudible (not sure why that matters because chances are you're playing a game when your fans kick in so it's not like you're going to hear it even if it was "loud") and my h100i runs at the lowest rpm possible and maxes out around 70c. the ONLY thing i can hear in an environment with no ambient noise is my h100i, and that's because i never bothered to replace the shitty stock fans because a. i always have an air conditioner running right behind me, and b. even if i didn't have my ac always on, i would be listening to music or doing something else that completely negates the sound they make.
 
wabbitseason said:
Unknown: You are in the minority, mate. Something is very much up with your setup.
Click to expand...
Nothing's wrong with my setup. I've simply found that running fans at 0 RPM is quieter than running them at-speed, and the reference cooler allows more case fans to remain at 0 RPM more of the time.

This results in a net-benefit to overall system noise that is totally destroyed by using a GPU heatsink that exhausts into the case.

The only thing that compares is using an AIO water cooler (which also directly exhausts heat from the case)... but that's only if you can get one that doesn't have the horrible pump-noise issues that most AIO units seem to have.

wabbitseason said:
I recommend a Silverstone Raven (RV02 ideally, undervolt the fans slightly on 'low') if you want to test this out.
Click to expand...
The Fractal Design R3 (my current case) and the Raven RV02 carry exactly the same rating on Silent PC Review...

Odellus said:
i don't know what exactly you're doing where case fans actually matter in whether your gpu overheats or not
Click to expand...
SImple, all I have to do is switch to the EVGA ACX cooler, and suddenly my case fans matter (because there's now a 250w graphics card dumping 100% of its heat into my box) :p
 
I think you'd have to try really hard to make the blower a better option in most cases.
I mean maybe you could take the absolute worst case scenario, something like the garbage ACX cooler on a 780 Ti and it would would (overall) make more noise to achieve equal temps.

A case fan or two spinning @ 600~1000 RPM is all it really takes, and even then the whole setup will be quieter and cooler than a reference blower with none of the extra fans. Under load, anyway. Even with a reference card I don't see people running a case with no extra fans.

Point being, if open-air cards weren't better, they wouldn't exist. Or at least they wouldn't be so popular.
I still think you're over-exaggerating the negative effects of "circulating hot air" since the shitty dissipation of blower coolers will hurt your temps significantly more. Your personal tests withstanding.

I've easily run my rig with no case fans, and a single 90mm strapped to my 280X @ 1600 RPM.
I will never in my life use a blower cooler ever again simply because there are very few situations where they're beneficial. I would assume there are benchmarks out there that prove you're wrong but honestly I'm too lazy to dig them up.

At this point I assumed all of this was obvious, common knowledge.
 
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