"Gigabyte GPU Gauntlet" my butt... what would you do with this 980Ti?

Keep it?

  • Total voters
    38
Okay, so... I'm a "nothing ventured, nothing gained" type of person. I went to Microcenter. I couldn't talk them into exchanging it for a ASUS Strix while keeping the price tag, but I did talk them into letting me do an even exchange (that is same price) for the other open box G1 they had. This one has ever so slightly higher ASIC, but no real difference. I guess I can see why the owner returned both. I mean frankly with how bad that last one overclocked, I would be satisfied with anything; the only direction to go was up. Iterally. I just wanted to try out the other one regardless. We'll see how it lasts through Far Cry 4. So far I notice that it seems to run cooler, and it seems to boost higher out of the box.

I kind of feel dirty though. Not because of the even exchange, it's because they gave me another Bullets and Blades coupon even though it was an even exchange... I'm kind of like "wtf, I don't know what to do with this..." I guess I could sell it since I've already redeemed AC on the other one... I don't really need that other game. Well whatever. I don't have any Heat so I guess I won't be selling it on here. I might give it to a friend, but none of my friends really care for AC..
 
Well... yes and no, because I was only going to do the exchange at the exact same price. Otherwise I was just going to keep it. This was just a little gamble to see if I could get ever so slightly more, but otherwise I'm still technically keeping what I set up the poll for. Shrug. That and as promised I did not say anything was actually really wrong with the GPU (though I had to find an excuse for the exchange). I just handed it back to them and they slapped a label on it.

I'm sorry, it was just disheartening as hell to see it keep crashing this overclock... then this overclock... then this overclock.
 
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StoleMyOwnCar said:
Well they should. I like my overclocks to be 100% stable no matter how long I game because occasionally yes, I have like 10-12 hour straight sessions in a certain game. Granted maybe I'll get up to cook while leaving it running or something. Any crashing while playing and without a save would be a big annoyance to me.

I mean what's pathetic, is that there are at least a few cards out there that run at stock clocks that will reach higher than this thing's stable boost OC. They're also guaranteed to stay stable at that clock 24/7 or you can RMA. This card doesn't deserve to have anywhere close to the same status as the Classy or other high end cards. Like if I didn't get a discount on this, I'd be wheeling this thing over to Microcenter in a heartbeat. Right now I'm on the fence. I think I may at least give it a shot. Microcenter is only about 20 minutes away and they tend to acquiesce to customer demands fairly easily.

Either way Gigabyte's dubious "GPU gauntlet"s and terrible quality enthusiast cards are something else.
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Silicon lottery is a bitch, and yes "GPU gauntlet" is nothing more than marketing fluff. I'm sure Gigabyte bins the GPUs though, but only to the extent that it's stable at advertised speeds.
 
Yeah... I guess that's all the binning they do. Again if I had to buy another card at this point and Microcenter had it, I would have picked up another AMP Extreme in a heartbeat. They're the best guaranteed bin on the market because of their incredibly high base clocks. Oh well.

Anyway the new card ran Far Cry 4 for about 4.4 hours before finally crashing out at 1466. That's quite an improvement over the first one, which crashed out within an hour or so at 1440. I'll probably just turn it down 10Mhz to 1450 and then roll with it. If it crashes in any games I'll touch it again then. So I got a lot out of just going over there and asking. Better binned card (maybe) and another game coupon. Another rebate, too. I'm kinda liking this. >_> Nothing ventured nothing gained indeed. I'll just roll with this one, as it boosts higher at stock anyway.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Yeah... I guess that's all the binning they do. Again if I had to buy another card at this point and Microcenter had it, I would have picked up another AMP Extreme in a heartbeat. They're the best guaranteed bin on the market because of their incredibly high base clocks. Oh well.

Anyway the new card ran Far Cry 4 for about 4.4 hours before finally crashing out at 1466. That's quite an improvement over the first one, which crashed out within an hour or so at 1440. I'll probably just turn it down 10Mhz to 1450 and then roll with it. If it crashes in any games I'll touch it again then. So I got a lot out of just going over there and asking. Better binned card (maybe) and another game coupon. Another rebate, too. I'm kinda liking this. >_> Nothing ventured nothing gained indeed. I'll just roll with this one, as it boosts higher at stock anyway.
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Did you already up voltage?
 
n=1 said:
Silicon lottery is a bitch, and yes "GPU gauntlet" is nothing more than marketing fluff. I'm sure Gigabyte bins the GPUs though, but only to the extent that it's stable at advertised speeds.
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Exactly and this is what people misunderstand. They never claim that they overclock better or very high, just that they run stable at the stock overclock above reference boards. I used to have two non-binned Gigabyte Windforce 3X OC GTX 970s and they both overclocked exactly like the slightly more expensive G1 models (bought the cheaper ones because the price difference was significant for SLI).

Generally with the 980 Tis you have to put them on water to have 1500+ clocks without making them sound like jet engines. That's why IMO the EVGA Hybrid and the MSI equivalent are the best choices aside from getting the MSI Gaming and putting the water cooler on it yourself.
 
Seems like a lot of work to get something that might end up being 5% faster.
 
Well I don't think it'll actually be a 5% increase. If it was, then consider that I got a game coupon worth 30$ for my trouble on top of 5% performance. If 5% is multiplied on 600$, that's 30$. So 60$ for 1.5 hours of trouble, in terms of value. That being said, none of that went through my head. Just the fact that I'll be stuck with this card for a while and if I can maybe gamble a bit to go up a little, it wasn't a big deal. It was 20 mins of driving each way and 30-40 mins ish in the store. Not really a huge deal honestly, as I didn't have much else I wanted to do that day anyway. Was quite bored.

Plus you're on [H]. Where that last bit of Mhz matters. Lol.

trandoanhung1991 said:
Did you already up voltage?
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No, like I said I try to see where cards get to with just base volts first because, from what I have, read Maxwell does not scale well with volts. Actually something a bit interesting from my last card. I didn't say this anywhere in the thread, but I did actually attempt pushing voltage at one point on it to get it stable at 1460 in Heaven. What happened was interesting... I started getting rainbow artifacts all over my screen. Like various colored balls of light everywhere, obscuring all vision. Yet the test kept running. I was like "IDK wtf is going on here, but I'm stopping this." I had to restart the computer to get those artifacts to go away, too. I never tried touching voltage again from that point, at least on that one.

This card seems to last much longer than that one at 1466 without any volts, so that's a good sign.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Well I don't think it'll actually be a 5% increase. If it was, then consider that I got a game coupon worth 30$ for my trouble on top of 5% performance. If 5% is multiplied on 600$, that's 30$. So 60$ for 1.5 hours of trouble, in terms of value.
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Yes that "trouble" of buying a new GPU and having it work perfectly at specification is clearly worth the bonus of getting an extra free game coupon. You should start a crowdfunding campaign to help you through this difficult time ;)
 
You can replace "trouble" with "effort" if it so pleases you. >_>
One thing: it's not a new card at all, it's just the other pair to the one I had before. That is, they were part of an SLI setup, and both were returned at the same time. Interestingly, this one is also in better condition all around, and it doesn't have the fan power cable sticking out from the cooler. I'm kind of wondering now if the owner tried to put the one I had originally on a Kraken G10 (or equivalent), and took the cooler off. That might explain how its temps were somewhat worse. He might have messed up putting the stock cooler back on. Anyway time to figure out how to get rid of this game code.
 
My Titan X only goes up to 1420mhz :'(

Worst card ever.
 
My 980Ti runs around 1420mhz. I think 1500 is less common than the internet makes it out to be. I would be happy with the good price you got and not worry about it. If you need more performance we will have new cards out within the next 6 months, spend your money then.
 
Give it some voltage, you may be able to get in the high 1400's.

Just to put my 2 cents in, I've gone through 3 980ti's all reference. ACIS's 64%, 72%, and 86%.

The 64% wouldn't overclock well at stock voltage, around the same as the OP's card 1420ish. With a 1.255v bios it would go into the 1480's stable.

The 72% card overclocked to 1450 with stock voltage, 1490 with the 1.255v bios. Just wasn't completely stable at 1500.

The 86% card overclocked to 1480 stock, 1550 with the 1.255v bios.

As you can see from my experience ACIS score had a positive effect on my overclocking results. All three cards were used under water. Increasing the voltage past 1.255v did nothing for any of the cards. Again these are my personal results, there are many people claiming to have low ACIS scores and 1500+ clocks.

Overall 150mhz difference is not something your going to notice anyways. Only reason I've gone through three is the first had bad coil whine and the second had a bad fan on the stock cooler, still tested it out under water though :)
 
Keep it unless you feel like paying full price. A card is not a guaranteed overclocker and you could end up with a new one that is worse. I say, enjoy what you have and game on. :)
 
I got my 2nd card and it was a dud - Bad DVI port. Got a 3rd card today and it easily hits 1495 stable in Heaven and in games at boost at 65-72c. This card is a keeper! It may go above 1500 but honestly I'm happy with it as is. 3rd time is the charm I guess. Crossing my fingers it holds out. I have until January 31st to return it. I'm done messing around with these G1 cards either way as they are renowned to have major port issues and stability problems from what I've read and I've experienced both of those problems. This one at least seems to be a great card...so far.
 
Astrodave said:
I got my 2nd card and it was a dud - Bad DVI port. Got a 3rd card today and it easily hits 1495 stable in Heaven and in games at boost at 65-72c. This card is a keeper! It may go above 1500 but honestly I'm happy with it as is. 3rd time is the charm I guess. Crossing my fingers it holds out. I have until January 31st to return it. I'm done messing around with these G1 cards either way as they are renowned to have major port issues and stability problems from what I've read and I've experienced both of those problems. This one at least seems to be a great card...so far.
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I'm glad you've got a better one. Like I said if I had paid 650 for this I would be hoping for a better card than that, too.

That being said, the second one I exchanged for seems to be quite fine at 1450 (maybe 1466+ with some volts). I played Thief pretty much all day and the GPU was capped out at 99% the entire time. I didn't experience any crashes or anything. I'm pretty satisfied with this one. Seems like the one I got at first was the crappier of the SLI pair that was returned. This one is definitely a keeper. Need to get rid of this code somewhere, though... I have no need for Rainbow Six. Once I get the rebate and game sold off, it'll be ~500$ for the card with taxes. Under 500 without taxes. Pretty decent deal for a G1.
 
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