Galax GTX 970 Hall of Fame

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Seroman

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Are there any reviews out for this beauty?

index.php


Im thinking about returning my squeaky Gigabyte G1 and get this one instead and id love to see some benchmarks. These are some pretty specs :

Key Features:

Completely redesigned PCB layout from the ground up, optimized for GM204
10 layer manufacturing process in HOF signature pure white color
Extended PCB width for optimized layout and cleaner signal
Advanced GALAX exclusive “Triple Force” cooler
2x 80mm fan + 1x 90mm fan
4x 8mm heat pipes + 3x 6mm heat pipes (total 7 nickel-plated heat pipes)
Copper base cooler
Integrated MOSFET heatsink
Customizable top HOF LED (control blanking frequency, brightness with GFE)
Plastic cover with premium die-cast aluminum accents
Anodized aluminum backplate protects components and reinforces PCB
Next generation IR3595 Digital PWM controller provides 2X switching frequency vs. previous generation
8 phase GPU + 2 phase memory power
IR3555 with next gen DrMOS and 60A output
Aerospace-grade GALAX Extreme Power Inductors provide ultra-long life, high endurance and low noise vs. normal power inductors
Hyper Boost technology acts like a hardware turbocharger, increasing fan speed and maximum power delivered to the GPU with the push of a button
Voltage tool (developed by enthusiasts) allows voltage beyond stock limits
Hardware dual BIOS simplifies the tweaking process by enabling risk-free firmware updates and customization
Prelim internal overclocking results: >1.5GHz on air, >2.1GHz on LN2

And why these cards from Galax are so rare? i tried to look up for it on Newegg but they dont even sell Galax stuff anymore.:eek:
 
If you want to get a Galax card in the US nowadays your best bet is to order directly from them.
http://www.galaxstore.net/
Odellus said:
>2.1 GHz on LN2

holy shit
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We've already seen a 980 hit 2GHz on LN2 using a hardware hack with trimpots to bypass the regulators. But this is definitely a lot safer with the BIOS and hardware to support it :p.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1836141

It's actually disappointing that they say they can only get 1.5 GHz on air. This is what most people are hitting with the cards currently available with the stock BIOS power limits. 970s from Gigabyte are hitting close to 1.6 GHz.
 
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^that's exactly what I was thinking. While the LN2 number is nice, it's irrelevant to 95% of those who buy these cards. Not to mention 1.5GHz on air is absolutely nothing to write home about (assuming card/bios wasn't power limited), so it's actually kinda sad that they even advertise this.

That said if the card is priced right it could be competitive, but something tells me it's going to be >$400 USD.
 
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Also, a plastic shroud? Were the other HOF editions from Galaxy using a plastic shroud, too? Seems cheap for a supposedly high quality product. The STRIX cooler from ASUS uses aluminum throughout for a small price premium over the base.
 
I've seen this card around. Even posted about it in the Galaxy Abandons US market thread. It is a thing of beauty that's for sure.

It'd be nice to see Brent use a pair of these cards for his new Overclocking SLi review which he's working on.

Galaxy and [H] had a great relationship, it would be nice to see that continue with Galax :)
 
They consolidated their previously region-specific Galaxy and KFA2 brands into one new name and product line.
 
Armenius said:
If you want to get a Galax card in the US nowadays your best bet is to order directly from them.
http://www.galaxstore.net/
We've already seen a 980 hit 2GHz on LN2 using a hardware hack with trimpots to bypass the regulators. But this is definitely a lot safer with the BIOS and hardware to support it :p.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1836141

It's actually disappointing that they say they can only get 1.5 GHz on air. This is what most people are hitting with the cards currently available with the stock BIOS power limits. 970s from Gigabyte are hitting close to 1.6 GHz.
Click to expand...

Thanks!
 
Anyone got a hold of the benchmarks?

I'm deciding between Gigabyte G1 gaming and Galax HOF.
Galax is around 50EUR more expensive than Gigabyte one.

What do you think?
 
I'm happy enough with my gtx 670 from Galaxy. Its not a fantastic cooler, it doesn't overclock nearly as well as my vanilla gtx 670 with an arctic twin turbo cooler on it, and it isn't really that quiet for a twin fan aftermarket cooler. But I got it pretty cheap and it's been trouble-free. However, paying that much of a mark-up ABOVE the price of the gigabyte card seems silly to me. HoF cards are great, but not IMO really better than other top tier cards. If it was priced the same as a Gigabyte G1 I would probably get it. For an extra 50 pounds, dollars, euros, whatever, no way.
 
cukyor said:
Anyone got a hold of the benchmarks?

I'm deciding between Gigabyte G1 gaming and Galax HOF.
Galax is around 50EUR more expensive than Gigabyte one.

What do you think?
Click to expand...

Honestly I'd guess the benchmarks are within 5 fps of each other or the same, it's trivial. The choice comes down to looks and price. The Galax would look really nice in an all white based build where as the G1 looks great in any build. My only complaint with the G1 is the lack of an RGB "Windforce" logo, you're stuck with blue or off unless you want to mod it yourself. It's an amazing card though, I'm very happy with mine. To me, the Galax is in no way worth the price premium.
 
Galax have 2 really appealing cards in the 970 range at the moment, had my brother pick up a 970 EXOC Black recently and the cooler on that thing is really good.
 
At $480 i wish it came with double the vram or something because that is way to close to the price of a 980. Beautiful card though.
 
Hey Kor, is there a chance you can get your brother to measure the length of the EXOC (PCB and heatsink, if it's longer than the PCB)? I picked up their ITX-sized card and found it was 2cm shorter than advertised, which was a surprise. Wondering if the others might have had typos on their dimensions, too.
 
deruberhanyok said:
Hey Kor, is there a chance you can get your brother to measure the length of the EXOC (PCB and heatsink, if it's longer than the PCB)? I picked up their ITX-sized card and found it was 2cm shorter than advertised, which was a surprise. Wondering if the others might have had typos on their dimensions, too.
Click to expand...

You're referring to the 970 OC, right? Did you include the bracket when you measured? The dimensions listed on our site generally include the bracket with mounting flange, which adds about 2cm.
 
By the way, since the reviews aren't out just yet on the 970 HOF I can at least comment on performance from my own personal experience. I'm not the foremost expert on overclocking, but I got a random pick of the lot to test and I was able to reach 1609MHz on the core with 3969MHz memory. This was just at the standard 1.25v; there is a tool readily available to go further. At these clocks I got a 3dmark11 score of X5905, which beat my 980 at X5735 and came surprisingly close to the X5953 my GTX 980 SOC scored on stock settings in the same machine a couple months prior. I don't recall ever seeing a card just sail past the GPU a class above it like that before, and temps never exceeded 54C with Hyper Boost on. Also no signs of coil whine even in a dead silent room with Unigine loading (the one thing that will make almost anyone's card squeal at a least momentarily).

I'm obviously going to be a bit biased being the vendor rep and all, but the 970 HOF definitely surpassed my expectations to say the least, and I think those who take the plunge on this card are going to be very pleased with the results.
 
Hey Galaxy,

Yeah, the 970 OC. Measured at 173mm on the heatsink shroud, and 170mm on the PCB. The bracket adds an extra 10mm, so even including that, it was shorter than advertised. I didn't think brackets were typically included in the length measurements of a card. Not that I'm complaining! I'm an ITX system kind of guy, so it was a pleasant surprise to see a 970 that was the size of a 750. :)

The HoF looks great, by the way. White PCBs don't get used often enough. But it wouldn't fit in my SG05, neither would the EXOC, so I went with your small form factor card.
 
Got an email from Galax this morning - the HoF is $40 off and they're doing free shipping through the 26th.

Still a bit pricey, though.
 
Poik said:
What's with the name/name change?
Click to expand...

Name sounds like a cat coughing up a fur-ball.

On a more related topic......I had two Galaxy GTX 780 reference cards. They were just fine.
 
My card was 350 and honestly I would pay 50$ more for the white look but not more. That card is sexy and would look amazing in my white Fractal R5. I will live with what I got.
 
Galaxy said:
. At these clocks I got a 3dmark11 score of X5905, which beat my 980 at X5735 and came surprisingly close to the X5953 my GTX 980 SOC scored on stock settings in the same machine a couple months prior. I don't recall ever seeing a card just sail past the GPU a class above it like that before.
Click to expand...

Oh, I dunno, this seems to have happened once before...

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_460_HAWK/31.html

With the proper cooler, a custom GTX 460 ($250) could blast past the GTX 470 ($350), and nip at the heels of the GTX 480 ($500) Now THAT was value!

This HOF card seems more like an extreme platform aimed at the "last 10% performance increase," and you pay a commensurate premium for it. Not so tempting in my opinion.
 
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rumartinez89 said:
At $480 i wish it came with double the vram or something because that is way to close to the price of a 980. Beautiful card though.
Click to expand...

This.

For $480 might as well pony up a bit more and spring for a reference 980 instead.
 
I am contemplating grabbing two of these over the Hof 980s. Here in Australia, that would save me over 600 big ones
 
Necro bump.

Has anyone else used this card? Looks a lot more tempting at $430. Although I can get a Gigabyte G1 970 for around $300 after rebate and selling Witcher 3...just looking for something to play with in lieu of my GTX 750 Ti (and outside of my TITAN X SLI setup).

Why is it that Galax isn't sold on NewEgg, Amazon, or MicroCenter (or pretty much anywhere but their own site - for that matter)? Seems to be a great card but that aspect has me puzzled.
 
sk3tch said:
Necro bump.

Has anyone else used this card? Looks a lot more tempting at $430. Although I can get a Gigabyte G1 970 for around $300 after rebate and selling Witcher 3...just looking for something to play with in lieu of my GTX 750 Ti (and outside of my TITAN X SLI setup).

Why is it that Galax isn't sold on NewEgg, Amazon, or MicroCenter (or pretty much anywhere but their own site - for that matter)? Seems to be a great card but that aspect has me puzzled.
Click to expand...

I am not sure if it is due to some bridges that were burned when Galaxy pulled out of the NA market nearly overnight, or if they just decided that they can move enough product through their company portal.

It could also be that NE/Amazon/etc want better pricing since Galax as a brand is new to the market and they are worried about spending a ton of money on inventory that customers may pass over for better known AIBs such as MSI, ASUS, EVGA etc..
 
Great cards, removed the backplate to see the white glory. But honestly the 970 chips clock so well you might as well save the money and get a cheap one. I'm a sucker for the white pcb though :p
 
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Thank you, ccityinstaller and FRZ! And wow...sexy as F, FRZ!

I'm just looking for something to tweak while I wait for AMD and NVIDIA's next. We'll see what I do. Leaning towards Gigabyte G1 GTX 970 if I go new...but in the hunt for some other Galax HOF stuff right now. We'll see what pans out!
 
Hello guys,

I've been asking around in different forums but still can't get an answer. And this thread seemed like a good place to ask this as well. So well here's my question.

Can anyone confirm that the card height of the Galax 970 HOF really is just 129.1mm? Looking at the available pictures on the net its PCB looks way taller than just 129.1mm.

I mean the Gigabyte 970 G1 is 129mm and its PCB isn't taller than the mounting bracket.

Sample images:

Gigabyte - http://www.gigabyte.pl/products/upload/products/4062/c784_5.png
Galax - http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/images/b3139.jpg

Looks to me like card height is actually around 140mm, same as the Asus 970 Strix.

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/14-121-899-TS?$S300$

Brief background, I want to use the Galax 970 HOF inside a Corsair Air 240. But many people have confirmed that the Asus 970 Strix won't fit without modding the case panel.

So pretty please? If anyone can confirm this I'd really appreciate it!
 
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happi said:
Hello guys,

I've been asking around in different forums but still can't get an answer. And this thread seemed like a good place to ask this as well. So well here's my question.

Can anyone confirm that the card height of the Galax 970 HOF really is just 129.1mm? Looking at the available pictures on the net its PCB looks way taller than just 129.1mm.

I mean the Gigabyte 970 G1 is 129mm and its PCB isn't taller than the mounting bracket.

Sample images:

Gigabyte - http://www.gigabyte.pl/products/upload/products/4062/c784_5.png
Galax - http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/images/b3139.jpg

Looks to me like card height is actually around 140mm, same as the Asus 970 Strix.

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/14-121-899-TS?$S300$

Brief background, I want to use the Galax 970 HOF inside a Corsair Air 240. But many people have confirmed that the Asus 970 Strix won't fit without modding the case panel.

So pretty please? If anyone can confirm this I'd really appreciate it!
Click to expand...

It might look hefty but 129.1mm is the correct height. I've double checked the dimensions myself with a ruler and it's spot on, 129mm from the bottom of the connector to the top of the card.
 
Galaxy said:
It might look hefty but 129.1mm is the correct height. I've double checked the dimensions myself with a ruler and it's spot on, 129mm from the bottom of the connector to the top of the card.
Click to expand...

FINALLY! Thank you very much for confirming!

I guess my followup to this is if both the Gigabyte and Galax are same height, why is the Galax's PCB taller than the mounting bracket. You got any ideas?

I'm guessing that the bracket for Galax is maybe smaller, but I thought the brackets were atleast standard among all manufacturers.
 
The G1's shroud is larger than the bracket, too. The differences in how the sizes look may be due to angle of the picture.
 
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