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

Keep it?


  • Total voters
    38

StoleMyOwnCar

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Sep 30, 2013
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Short version: I went to Microcenter and picked up an open box (practically new, near perfect condition) Gigabyte G1 gaming. With some very mild haggling the price came down to 525$ (or 556$ with taxes). It includes the Bullets or Blades coupon, and a 20$ rebate I can mail in to Gigabyte. That would bring the price down to ~... eh ~500-510$ with taxes? According to them it also has the manufacturer's warranty. I'm not sure whether I'll just redeem the game or not. No coil whine or anything, but it has a horrible ASIC (~65%). It overclocks pretty badly. On stock voltages the highest I've got it at is ~1404 atm. I have confirmed it cannot hold 1460 beyond an hour or two at stock voltages. I will try ~1440 later. I haven't tried much voltage modding. Considering the price would you keep it? Microcenter has about 3 others of these in stock, but I'm not sure if I can just go in there and swap cards between them while keeping the price tag. I think I got a bit lucky here. I also have a few Kraken G10's that I can play around with.


Additional stuff:
So this is pretty much the third 980 Ti I'm trying. Nothing was wrong with the first one per se, but the second one (AMP Extreme) had fan rattle. This time I got sick of playing around with the 980 Ti lottery with online retailers and just went to Microcenter. Because I can actually return it myself and just hand it to them immediately. Plus their return policy is amazing (30 days). They had a few of these, and frankly all I did was ask the dude working with me if he could ask his manager to mark it down... just because... (or some Black Friday or <insert random reason here). They were quite generous with their markdown (75$ lol). <3 Microcenter. Anyway, I'm kinda leaning towards keeping it, but this feels like a really crappy 980Ti, esp for a G1 Gaming (and considering my AMP Extreme could hold 1442 easily AT STOCK). Am I crazy for wanting to keep it simply due to this price? I'm crowdsourcing my choice. I'm just a bit disappointed because my first two cards were 79-82% ASIC and overclocked higher than this thing is currently clocked to... at stock. I kind of half expected this considering this was returned as a pair with another one though lol.
 
Putting card on water will not change the overclock potential of the card. 1404 is a pretty decent overclock. My Classified at stock does 1405. I don't think you will see any real world performance gains unless you hit about 1525+ in which case you can expect 2-3 fps on top of already a significant performance jump over stock 980 Ti.

If the trip to MC is on the way and you want to try the other cards then sure but for an extra 75$ (i.e., if they do not honor it again) you are just wasting time and money.
 
^^^ Mostly what he said. You got in at a good price and 1400 on stock V's aint bad at all. Keep it and call it good.
 
Don't feel bad. My g1 crashes on heaven at any core oc above +55. The absolute best it will do is 1421 boost and that's with +87 voltage. Anything more than that and it's unstable. I'm not even sure it's 100% stable at +55 as I get infrequent crashes in DCS that I never got with my 970s. I also get coil whine in menus and cut scenes. I'm probably sending it back to Amazon for an exchange. I think maybe they sent me a return because there was no tape on the box. I paid extra for a g1 and got an oc that any old 980ti will do out of the box. I think I can do better than this card and for that money it needs to be perfect.
 
You expected too much from marketing. Those G1s that get 1500+ are golden samples, yours are just silicon samples ;)
 
So the general consensus seems to be to keep it thus far. Okay thanks, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't really crazy for thinking it would be a good idea to do so in spite of its crap clocks and ASIC.

You expected too much from marketing. Those G1s that get 1500+ are golden samples, yours are just silicon samples ;)

Um... no not really. My expectation's basis is off of the two previous 980 Ti's I had (a Classy and AMP Extreme, in that order) which are roughly in a similar MSRP price bracket as this card (ie similar tier), yet seem to have much superior binning on average. The only reason I brought in that marketing term was because I was looking through the results in the stickied [H] thread on this card, and saw the term mentioned; but that was after I had already bought the card and looked at its ASIC and whatnot. I actually didn't really read any marketing about this card at all, though I saw many forum members recommending it on here (which is the part that mattered to me more). Frankly the only reason I chose this one was that it was the cheapest open box deal available at MC. There were some EVGA's for about 15$ more, and some ASUS Strix for a bit less than that. I just went with this because:
- Usually G1 Gaming is one of the higher end models and has a backplate, so I felt I would be getting the best resale value for the money vs EVGA
- ASUS has questionable RMA fulfillment.

That's really about it. I didn't care about Gigabyte's marketing in the slightest and was in fact quite skeptical in most ways (hence Microcenter 30 day return policy).
 
Amazon has a 60 day return policy right now because of the holidays. I have until January 26th to return this card. I only bought it because it has two dvi ports which I need for surround so I'd only have to buy one dp to dvi adapter. These cards are priced with a premium though and as such they should perform with a premium. 55 on the core is a joke and would be even for a reference card. A G1 should be able to do 1450 minimum or else it's way overpriced compared to other cards.
 
Yeah I really like having two DVI ports. That's one thing that really helped me like this card. How much did you pay for yours at Amazon?
 
Yeah 1400 is a fine OC. Most OCs you see online aren't actually stable anyways. I would just be happy and not worry about the extra 3% OC that in no way you'd ever notice anyways. You can't tell the diff between 60 and 62 FPS...
 
I'm at my 5th hour of Unigine Heaven looping with the card at 1440 at stock volts. I guess it's at least this stable. I'll give it one more hour before just sticking with that clock.
 
You are better off simply never checking the ASIC quality and trying to pas any judgement based on it. It is all snake oil bullshit and hasn't proven out that higher ASIC values clock higher.

1440 at stock voltage is good. No idea what you really want to be happy at this point. If your card was +15 higher on the core would that change your opinion because the card was 1% faster? It sounds like you would be happier if the card simply had a higher ASIC %.
 
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You are better off simply never checking the ASIC quality and trying to pas any judgement based on it. It is all snake oil bullshit and hasn't proven out that higher ASIC values clock higher.

1440 at stock voltage is good. No idea what you really want to be happy at this point. If your card was +15 higher on the core would that change your opinion because the card was 1% faster? It sounds like you would be happier if the card simply had a higher ASIC %.

Umm... I would normally agree that ASIC doesn't matter, but fact of the matter is I've had three experiences thus far:
- 82% EVGA Classy. Was Firestrike Ultra benchmark stable up until 1571 (maybe higher). Long term stable at 1500 fairly easily, on air.
- 79% Zotac AMP Extreme. 1442 out of box, 1490-1500+ stable on air, fairly easily.
- 65% Gigabyte G1... tentatively (6 hour heaven) stable at 1440. Very likely rock solid at 1400-1420 for sure.

As you can see there is a bit of disparity here. This is just anecdotal, and it's not necessarily due to ASIC alone or anything, but yeah... it seems to matter a bit. Granted I agree with you that it's not a huge chunk. After all, a 60mhz disparity is <5% performance difference. As far as simply having higher ASIC making me happy alone: no, not at all. But fact of the matter is, it does not overclock very well (very well being defined as the other two cards I had previously). When I made this topic I wasn't even sure it was going to be stable at 1400. 1460 is definitely unstable, and 1440 was something I did not expect to be able to do any decent loop on, considering it's just 20mhz lower than 1460 (which crashed in just <2 hours).

That being said at 1440 I am quite happy with it, considering the price I got it at, and also considering that it came with the game. And this rebate, though I'm not sure if Gigabyte will honor rebates on open box items... it just says clearance though.

why stock volts?

Man up.

From what I've read, volts seem to kind of just make a marginal difference when overclocking the 980Ti. So my first run through with these, I just go for the stock volts to get an idea of where they're at, since they're not gonna move too far from that...
 
Well... My card may not have high ASIC (in my opinion it doesn't matter at all really) 60 % something, less than 70 % anyway (can't check right now). The card does 1,5 GHz just fine with stock volts. It should be able to do more, I have not tested where it hits the wall.
 
Well, mine has 66% ASIC, and I can manage [email protected]. So maybe you need to bump the voltage a little bit.

Granted, mine's only a 970 though. And I had to force voltage via BIOS mods, but it can be done.
 
Mine has a 77% asic and won't oc for shit so asic has nothing to do with anything. +50 core is pushing it on my card at stock volts. I got one that barely made the cut for a g1 on the lowest performance tier. I have doubts it will even last that long at stock speeds yet alone with a sustained gimpy +50 oc. I'll probably exchange it just for my own piece of mind. For $650 it needs to be perfect.
 
Well okay you guys have convinced me somewhat. Perhaps my experiences were simply limited and anecdotal, and ASIC doesn't matter all that much.

Mine has a 77% asic and won't oc for shit so asic has nothing to do with anything. +50 core is pushing it on my card at stock volts. I got one that barely made the cut for a g1 on the lowest performance tier. I have doubts it will even last that long at stock speeds yet alone with a sustained gimpy +50 oc. I'll probably exchange it just for my own piece of mind. For $650 it needs to be perfect.


Ouch, 650... and did you have to pay tax at Amazon, too? 650 is how much I got a Warehouse Deals Classy for. It was a darn good card. What bugged me was with the Classy I would have to buy a copper shim to use my G10, and that it didn't come with a game, and I didn't really know what the warranty status was like. Yeah I would be returning this card in a heartbeat if it came out to 650 before taxes. As it is, I got it for 550 after taxes, along with the code and such. So I'm alright with it for the price, and considering the poll, many people here would be, too. So I'm calling this resolved, probably. I'll be keeping the card even if I have to run it at stock clocks at some point to keep it stable. The price is good enough.

To put it in perspective, at Jet I got my AMP Extreme for 600 total. Granted no code and such, and no rebate. If I had to order another new card right now, though, I would get the AMP Extreme in a heartbeat. Let's put it this way, at its base clocks it's guaranteed 1430+ out of the box. It has to run stable or else you can RMA. The only place left to go is up from there, and it starts out at a considerably high spot to begin with. It's a pity the Microcenter I go to did not have the AMP Extreme. =| Oh well, a cheap G1 is like a cat, it's fine too.
 
Personally, I would keep it. But I'm a bit of a hoarder: I bid on and buy stuff that I really don't need. a low ASIC score isn't really anything to worry about, in fact it makes it a GREAT candidate for pushing the voltage up high.
 
I'll give you $500 for it if you don't want to keep it.

Slide power to max, slide voltage to max. Keep memory overclock low and focus on core overclock. Should do fine with max power/voltage.
 
Side comment about ASIC here:

I once had a EVGA GTX 560 Ti 448 Core Classy (with the "window cooler") which had an ASIC of 90%, but couldn't overclock for crap, with or without overvolting ... never went water/nitrogen on it.
 
Personally, I would keep it. But I'm a bit of a hoarder: I bid on and buy stuff that I really don't need. a low ASIC score isn't really anything to worry about, in fact it makes it a GREAT candidate for pushing the voltage up high.

Doesn't quite work that way for Maxwell per my post above.

Side comment about ASIC here:

I once had a EVGA GTX 560 Ti 448 Core Classy (with the "window cooler") which had an ASIC of 90%, but couldn't overclock for crap, with or without overvolting ... never went water/nitrogen on it.

Well 90% ASIC would mean crazy leakage once you start pushing the volts, and since Kepler (unlike Maxwell) does scale decently with added voltage, yeah I'm not surprised your card couldn't overclock worth a damn.
 
Do you know why it was open box? I don't either, but I am willing to bet that the previous owner also found out it was a poor overclocker. I'm also willing to bet that for every open box card that was returned due to incompatibility or second thoughts, there's one that was returned because of poor overclocking performance. However, it sounds like you paid a fair price for what you got.
 
You just need a serious attitude adjustment. I got my G1 at full price, and couldn't get it to overclock at all, and I still haven't considered returning it, for no reason. It's this kind of opportunistic crap, that makes retailers change their warranty policies for the worse. And the guy who just wants to exchange a product that's really faulty gets the short end of the stick all the time.
 
Not sure why a lot of people are hating on the asic numbers. Asic quality is there to give you a general estimate of the overclocking capabilities. Asic won't be 100% correct sometimes as there are always outliers to the average but in general on average higher asic means better clocks on air and watter.

The problem with Maxwell 2 is that these cards don't scale at all with voltage past 1.25V unless you have a golden card. Water cooling doesn't help either, you have to freeze the cards to get meaningful results.
 
You just need a serious attitude adjustment. I got my G1 at full price, and couldn't get it to overclock at all, and I still haven't considered returning it, for no reason. It's this kind of opportunistic crap, that makes retailers change their warranty policies for the worse. And the guy who just wants to exchange a product that's really faulty gets the short end of the stick all the time.

This is already a returned product. If I returned it myself, I wouldn't have said anything was wrong with it. That means they would have just resold it for the same price if not more, since I'm keeping it in perfect condition. There are no delivery expenses, either since I am driving on my own wallet and car. What you're saying doesn't really make much sense in this context. Furthermore, you can't just blanket apply your values to everyone else. To some people getting a product that is supposedly designed and advertised to overclock (via Gigabyte's OWN marketing), yet does not do so worth a crap (comparatively), despite its premium pricing... is a bit of a big letdown. I would say returning a card for that is far from being opportunistic or anything else you state. It's a grey area. The manufacturer is at fault, and the consumer is being a bit picky.

Well going any further with this will turn it into a morality/ethics debate, or something equally fruitless and banal. I would prefer we didn't delve further into that territory.


Doesn't quite work that way for Maxwell per my post above.

I would like a full-scale (ie high sample size) empirical study proving your post. I based my initial attitude off of it and it has proven to be a bit faulty... I need more evidence. Considering just evidence in this topic, you cannot find causation between overclocking and ASIC. The best you could do is correlation. And that would in itself be difficult.

Do you know why it was open box? I don't either, but I am willing to bet that the previous owner also found out it was a poor overclocker. I'm also willing to bet that for every open box card that was returned due to incompatibility or second thoughts, there's one that was returned because of poor overclocking performance. However, it sounds like you paid a fair price for what you got.


I had some idea that it was due to low ASIC and mediocre overclocking. I'm actually not going to say "crappy" at this point, because I think at worst this card can just be called mediocre. I'm guessing the other card was, too. Either that or they just had buyers' remorse and did not want them... that being said it's not actually all THAT bad of an overclocker...

I'll give you $500 for it if you don't want to keep it.

Slide power to max, slide voltage to max. Keep memory overclock low and focus on core overclock. Should do fine with max power/voltage.

I'm going to guess you are just joking, so I won't bring forum rules into this. Either way, that would be crazy of me to sell this for 500 considering I haven't even gotten it down to that price myself. I would need to sell the game code (which I might just use) and retrieve the rebate. Plus on Ebay I could easily sell a used G1 (that is practically like new) for probably at least 600$. Perceptually it is still considered a higher end card, considering it comes with a decent cooler and backplate. It's not like I have any ethical or moral obligation to mention mention ASIC or overclocking capability on Ebay considering the manufacturer wouldn't either.
 
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Well at stock volts and fan profile, I just "played" Shadow of Mordor for over 10 hours straight on my RoG Swift. The 144Hz kept my GPU usage maxed out the entire time, and my memory was nearly maxed the entire time. At the very end I did a huge brawl where I killed a lot of stuff. Everything went flawlessly. I guess after 6 hours in Heaven and ~10-11 hours in Shadow of Mordor (which is one of the more demanding games at 144Hz), I can call the 1440 overclock fairly stable. At least stable enough for most gaming sessions. For the price, I'm pretty satisfied with this kind of overclock on the card. It might even go higher with some volts. No more need to ask now.
 
For my 970 my card wasn't stable at the highest clocks until I maxed out the volts. Zero problems since.
 
I would like a full-scale (ie high sample size) empirical study proving your post. I based my initial attitude off of it and it has proven to be a bit faulty... I need more evidence. Considering just evidence in this topic, you cannot find causation between overclocking and ASIC. The best you could do is correlation. And that would in itself be difficult.

If Kingin's (Vince Lucido) words are not enough I don't know what else would convince you.

But in any case this is what he said:

I Tested around 15 pieces or so of KP980Ti these days, all different asic levels. Some as high as 81% all the way to 64% (which we wont even sell :) the average clocks on air were roughly 1550mhz Lowest was 1526mhz, highest was 1592mhz . Seemed like every card went to 1539mhz or so :) Most of the higher asic cards did as expected and hit the upper 1550's. None could pass 1600mhz, but some came really close! Those were mostly higher ASIC%'s.

Yeah I know only a sample size of 15, but it's a start.
 
If Kingin's (Vince Lucido) words are not enough I don't know what else would convince you.

But in any case this is what he said:



Yeah I know only a sample size of 15, but it's a start.

Wow... So the definitive, world-famous authority on the subject CONFIRMS that ASIC quality is important:

It could mean the difference between 1525 Mhz or 1550 Mhz...

25 Mhz... Thats what ASIC matters? an i486? A Playstation 1?
 
To echo what others have said; yes, the ASIC should just simply be ignored. Focus squarely on the actual mhz overclock you're getting, that's all that counts.

And if I remember rightly, someone over in the Kinpin forums said that Maxwell craps out at around ~1500mhz for all brands and all asics. Water/Air makes little difference. Only under DICE can you even consider 1600mhz+ and that'll be with stupid voltages (1.6v+) and, apparently, lower ASIC is favourable in this setup.

980ti @ ~1450mhz on air, stock volts with no heatsink re-seat (presumably) is pretty good!

:cool:
 
Wow... So the definitive, world-famous authority on the subject CONFIRMS that ASIC quality is important:

It could mean the difference between 1525 Mhz or 1550 Mhz...

25 Mhz... Thats what ASIC matters? an i486? A Playstation 1?

The spread is about 70 MHz. Regardless, simply pointing out if you're the type that wants to squeeze every last FPS out of their hardware, then yes ASIC does come into play for Maxwell.
 
Well at stock volts and fan profile, I just "played" Shadow of Mordor for over 10 hours straight on my RoG Swift. The 144Hz kept my GPU usage maxed out the entire time, and my memory was nearly maxed the entire time. At the very end I did a huge brawl where I killed a lot of stuff. Everything went flawlessly. I guess after 6 hours in Heaven and ~10-11 hours in Shadow of Mordor (which is one of the more demanding games at 144Hz), I can call the 1440 overclock fairly stable. At least stable enough for most gaming sessions. For the price, I'm pretty satisfied with this kind of overclock on the card. It might even go higher with some volts. No more need to ask now.

1400MHz is poor imo, most cards can beat that easily.
1440MHz is ok, there isnt much point trying to get a faster card unless you have spare cash.

My 68.9% EVGA SC+ ACX2.0+ was stable at 1440MHz also. With the unlocked power and voltage 1.25V Bios (load voltage is always 1.25V), I got it working fine at 1500MHz but temps were too high for me (over 80C).
To keep it very quiet I ran it at 1410MHz ish.

For giggles I fitted an Accelero Xtreme IV cooler which didnt really help improve max clocks apart from bringing the noise level down.
Because its quiet now I run stable at 1470MHz with the unlocked BIOS at standard voltage and +87mV (I changed the 1.25V setting back to standard)
Memory is +500MHz (4001MHz).
So it cost £45 to get approx 4% higher performance and almost silent operation.

Moral of the story, not worth getting better cooling unless you want it to be quieter.
 
Well, mine has 66% ASIC, and I can manage [email protected]. So maybe you need to bump the voltage a little bit.

Granted, mine's only a 970 though. And I had to force voltage via BIOS mods, but it can be done.

You cant compare with cards that have parts of the core disabled.
They dont have the same power density. For the same core space less heat is generated.

ie
I had a GTX980 (non ti) and that was stable at 1600MHz with acceptable fan noise and it would run at 1650MHz on max fan.
 
1400MHz is poor imo, most cards can beat that easily.
1440MHz is ok, there isnt much point trying to get a faster card unless you have spare cash.

My 68.9% EVGA SC+ ACX2.0+ was stable at 1440MHz also. With the unlocked power and voltage 1.25V Bios (load voltage is always 1.25V), I got it working fine at 1500MHz but temps were too high for me (over 80C).
To keep it very quiet I ran it at 1410MHz ish.

For giggles I fitted an Accelero Xtreme IV cooler which didnt really help improve max clocks apart from bringing the noise level down.
Because its quiet now I run stable at 1470MHz with the unlocked BIOS at standard voltage and +87mV (I changed the 1.25V setting back to standard)
Memory is +500MHz (4001MHz).
So it cost £45 to get approx 4% higher performance and almost silent operation.

Moral of the story, not worth getting better cooling unless you want it to be quieter.

I won't really comment on what is average and what is poor. People seem to have differing opinions on it. As for the cooling, I already have two Kraken G10's lying around. I had them on my 780's originally. I also have a pair of Noctua fans on one of them.. Right now I'm just too lazy to install it on this 980 Ti, but I have read that lower temps help Maxwell stay stable at higher clocks. Honestly the thing is like you said even between 1400->1500+ when I think about it, it's not that big of a performance increase anyway necessarily. I just went and retrieved my Syndicate coupon and plan to mail in the Gigabyte rebate a bit later. Hopefully I'll be happy with this card for a good long while. Depending on how Pascal is, I may sell it off when it hits and just upgrade. The G1 gaming is one of the higher end models so hopefully the resale value will be fine.
 
Mine now shits at anything over 1405 and that's WITH +87mv. Sometimes it will run 1420-30 for an hour and sometimes for 5 minutes before the game crashes. A replacement is already on the way. I don't feel remotely bad about it either at $650. A reference card could do that speed for $100 less. I will keep the card that ends up performing the best but I don't see how the replacement could possibly do as poorly as this one. My FT-02WRI case is a work of art with perfect cooling so the issue is with the card. At least all of the ports work on this one, the new one who knows...
 
Mine now shits at anything over 1405 and that's WITH +87mv. Sometimes it will run 1420-30 for an hour and sometimes for 5 minutes before the game crashes. A replacement is already on the way. I don't feel remotely bad about it either at $650. A reference card could do that speed for $100 less. I will keep the card that ends up performing the best but I don't see how the replacement could possibly do as poorly as this one. My FT-02WRI case is a work of art with perfect cooling so the issue is with the card. At least all of the ports work on this one, the new one who knows...

I don't remotely blame you for that at all. If I paid 650 (basically full price) for something that was advertised as a good overclocker/performance card, I wouldn't be satisfied with what that one can do at all.

Honestly I've found out that Far Cry with all the settings jacked up at 1440p/144Hz (not that it ever hits 144 fps on those settings...) seems to be the ideal "let's rape your overclock" test. My previous 1440 failed quite quickly. I've set it all the way down to 1410, but even just now failed in the 8th hour of stress testing.

Honestly... I don't know. I'm having second guesses at this point. I wonder if this can even do 1400 stable long term. If I take it all the way down to 1350 (almost stock) or something before it's seriously stable, then that means I'll have gotten little value out of this markdown. It's missing ~10% performance over what almost any card should be able to do. I've already retrieved the game code so that part is in the bag regardless of what I do... hmmm.

Honestly these Gigabyte G1's are a joke. Like seriously a joke. As are most reviews that mention overclocking, because it looks like reviewers just get golden samples....
 
No it's because most reviewers don't run 8h stress tests lol

I find GPU overclock stability is very relative. I have certain overclocks that can run games for 3 hours before crashing. Most wouldn't consider it stable, but as long as I don't game continuously for more than 3 hours (even a 30 second pause seems to help) I'm totally fine. Crashing never happens until about 3 hours in, then it's simply a matter of time before the inevitable freeze that requires a hard reset.

Which is why I don't take user reported overclocks too seriously, because it could be stable for that particular user's usage pattern, but stress the GPU long enough and it could eventually crack, as you've seen.

In all honesty though, unless you're the type that frequently goes on 6h+ gaming sessions, if an overclock survives past the 4th hour in the most demanding games in your library I'd just call it a day.
 
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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