GIGABYTE GTX 980 Ti G1 GAMING Video Card Review @ [H]

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GIGABYTE GTX 980 Ti G1 GAMING Video Card Review - Today we review a custom built retail factory overclocked GIGABYTE GTX 980 Ti G1 GAMING video card. This video card is built to overclock in every way. We'll take this video card, compare it to the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X and overclock the GIGABYTE GTX 980 Ti G1 GAMING to its highest potential. The overclocking potential is amazing.
 
Sick card and insane value, despite the absolute price.
That said, if I'm spending almost $700 on a card, I'd want it to look a LITTLE nicer. Add some flair, some gloss to that beast. Understated is nice, sometimes, but not here.

And alas, the Fury X is still left begging... what's the over/under on an impending price break?
 
Too bad mine and many other peoples G1's had serious coil whine issues and others have had problems with dead DVI ports outa the box. Pretty poor QA honestly. That and the fans get insanely loud too keep that card cool at higher temps with those dinky 80mm fans. I did a vid of it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAILvRdtP6s
 
Sick card and insane value, despite the absolute price.
That said, if I'm spending almost $700 on a card, I'd want it to look a LITTLE nicer. Add some flair, some gloss to that beast. Understated is nice, sometimes, but not here.

And alas, the Fury X is still left begging... what's the over/under on an impending price break?

On the silver metal pieces on the shroud, there is a shiny more mirror finished stylish line drawn on them which gives them a bit of a shiny gloss in light. Of course, most video cards are installed fan side down in cases, this is where the LEDs on the side pick up on the visual style with actual useful information like are my fans spinning or not.
 
Too bad mine and many other peoples G1's had serious coil whine issues and others have had problems with dead DVI ports outa the box. Pretty poor QA honestly. That and the fans get insanely loud too keep that card cool at higher temps with those dinky 80mm fans. I did a vid of it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAILvRdtP6s

Mine were definitely not that loud. I wonder if there is a difference in software people are using. I used GIGABYTE's OC GURU II to control fan speed. I wonder if other third party apps are taking the fans to higher RPMs than other software like OC GURU II because mine did not seem that aggressive at 100%. Just to make sure try OC GURU II 1.88.
 
Mine were definitely not that loud. I wonder if there is a difference in software people are using. I used GIGABYTE's OC GURU II to control fan speed. I wonder if other third party apps are taking the fans to higher RPMs than other software like OC GURU II.

Afterburner maxs them at about 4200 RPM and christ, that OC guru is utterly terrible in comparison when I had my G1, it doesn't hold OC settings worth a damn.
 
Afterburner maxs them at about 4200 RPM and christ, that OC guru is utterly terrible in comparison when I had my G1, it doesn't hold OC settings worth a damn.

Look what I get with OC GURU II, 3624 RPM.

http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTQzOTIwMjQwN2xzWXhUekIwczdfNF82X2wuZ2lm

I think other apps are raising the RPM to levels way over what GIGABYTE's own OC GURU II software does. This might not be how they are intended to work or run. I would suggest not going to RPMs that high, stick to what GIGABYTE recommends at 100%.

I had no issues with OC GURU II keeping my OC settings. You can setup profiles.

I did not ned 4200 RPMs to reach 1535MHz, OC GURU II's 3600 RPM at 100% worked more than well with 60c temps. I could have sustained an even lower RPM honestly and let the temp raise to the lower 70's. So fan noise wasn't an issue overclocking to max levels.
 
Look what I get with OC GURU II, 3624 RPM.

http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTQzOTIwMjQwN2xzWXhUekIwczdfNF82X2wuZ2lm

I think other apps are raising the RPM to levels way over what GIGABYTE's own OC GURU II software does. This might not be how they are intended to work or run. I would suggest not going to RPMs that high, stick to what GIGABYTE recommends at 100%.

I had no issues with OC GURU II keeping my OC settings. You can setup profiles.

I did not ned 4200 RPMs to reach 1535MHz, OC GURU II's 3600 RPM at 100% worked more than well with 60c temps. I could have sustained an even lower RPM honestly and let the temp raise to the lower 70's. So fan noise wasn't an issue overclocking to max levels.


You had better results then me all around. I RMA'ed it and went with MSI Gaming 6G in the end
 
My G1 at 3600 RPM was intolerably loud. It also couldn't sustain a 1500+ OC over 30 min without crashing. Did you guys purchase these off the shelf or did the manufacturer ship you a golden sample?
 
My G1 at 3600 RPM was intolerably loud. It also couldn't sustain a 1500+ OC over 30 min without crashing. Did you guys purchase these off the shelf or did the manufacturer ship you a golden sample?

It is a full retail boxed video card provided by GIGABYTE. All G1 GAMING 980 Ti's use GIGABYTE's GPU Gauntlet sorting to pick GPUs, so all are "golden" samples.

World’s #1 GPU cherry-picking process
Only the strongest processors survive the GPU Gauntlet.

GIGABYTE’s database analysis system evaluates the GPU core engine, shader engine. The GPUs with the best power efficiency and lowest power
consumption are qualified for the Super Overclock Series.

http://www.gigabyte.com/MicroSite/72/feature.html

http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTQzOTIwMjQwN2xzWXhUekIwczdfMV8zX2wuZ2lm

Overclocking can, and still does vary per-GPU as always, even within that group.
 
Custom 980 Ti cards are crushing Fury X. But that does not matter as AMD cannot even meet demand properly. So no price cuts for now, atleast until AMD can meet demand. Moreover both Fury X and 980 Ti are not enough for 4K and in CF the hybrid cooling radiator which exhausts heat outside the cabinet helps Fury X run at 1050 Mhz consistently while even the ref 980 Ti with blower cooler throttles badly. So with two custom 980 Ti cards with open air coolers the ambient temps are going to rise up quickly and maintaining these high clocks is more of a challenge.

http://www.hardware.fr/focus/111/crossfire-radeon-r9-fury-x-fiji-vs-gm200-round-2.html

"The $679 AMD Radeon R9 Fury X is performance competitive with the $479 GeForce GTX 980. The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X needs to be around $499 to compete with the GeForce GTX 980. At that price range the AMD Radeon Fury X would look a whole lot better and give NVIDIA competition against the GTX 980. Right now, AMD has no performance competition for the GeForce GTX 980 Ti or TITAN X. "

lmao. What the hell are you guys smoking ? Fury X crushes 980 at 1440p and even trades blows against 980 Ti at 4K. 20-25% avg faster than ref 980 ( in few games its more than 30%). Not even a 1500 Mhz GTX 980 can scale 25% perf over a ref GTX 980

http://www.computerbase.de/2015-06/amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-test/6/
http://www.computerbase.de/2015-06/amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-test/5/
http://www.sweclockers.com/test/20792-amd-radeon-r9-fury-fran-asus-och-sapphire/17#content
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...682-amd-r9-fury-x-review-fiji-arrives-22.html
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...R9-Fury-4GB-Review-CrossFire-Results/Crysis-3

I can agree that Fury X cannot compete with 980 Ti at 1440p but saying its competitive with only 980 is a sick joke. I never thought [h] will pimp Nvidia products so hard (alternatively bash AMD).
 
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My 980 Ti G1 can overclock to 1525Mhz at stock voltage and 1575Mhz with some voltage bump.
My unit also does not display any coil whine nor any other undesirable noises.

So it is a big hit for me. :D
 
As one other person indicated, just a heads up that coil whine is a huge problem with these cards. A very high percentage seem to be getting problems.

Otherwise it's a solid card.
 
Aren't you overplaying the 4 GB vs 6 GB issue? You have only demonstrated an impact in one game, and a known outlier at that. 4 GB is the least of Fury's problems.
 
Aren't you overplaying the 4 GB vs 6 GB issue? You have only demonstrated an impact in one game, and a known outlier at that. 4 GB is the least of Fury's problems.

Things can go just even worse with Games Like Shadow of mordor, Dragon Age Inquisition(specially with Mantle), Watch Dogs and few other vRAM hogs games...
 
Aren't you overplaying the 4 GB vs 6 GB issue? You have only demonstrated an impact in one game, and a known outlier at that. 4 GB is the least of Fury's problems.

Yeah, I agree 100%. It's like you are just keeping Dying Light around to say "YOU SEE, YOU SEE, 4 GB is NOT enough for 1440p gaming!!" Give us a break, there are plenty of newer games where 4 GB was enough even at CINEMA 4k running Fury Crossfire.

The 980Ti just keeps getting better (still better than the Fury X), and the review was great. We can do without the VRAM propaganda, though.
 
We can do without the VRAM propaganda, though.

Well, if it is just propaganda, I am sure you will be able to filter that out and not force people to believe it that you know.
 
Good review, much better sample than my G1. I'm doing all my over clocking with afterburner though, OC Guru is terrible.
 
Nice review! Looks like someone was sent a golden sample card.:D

But when I had a friend put the fans on 100% on his G1 it was way too damn loud, and the coil whine didn't help either.
 
But when I had a friend put the fans on 100% on his G1 it was way too damn loud, and the coil whine didn't help either.

Just set the damn fan speed at 60-70%, which is more than enough to cool most aggressive overclock!
My car can reach 150 mph but for some reasons I tend to keep it below 75 mph. :rolleyes:
 
But when I had a friend put the fans on 100% on his G1 it was way too damn loud, and the coil whine didn't help either.

I don't know anyone that runs there GPU fans at 100% - even when o/c. Pretty sure that speed is just for benching and clearing out the dust on boot up.

Kyle, Brent - anyway you guys can do crossfire with the 8 GB 390x cards? The 295x2 / 290x trifire review was awesome and at just above $400 each for the 390x, it would be nice to see how they compare especially since those trifire tests were done using 4 GB of memory at 4k.
 
I don't know anyone that runs there GPU fans at 100% - even when o/c. Pretty sure that speed is just for benching and clearing out the dust on boot up.

Kyle, Brent - anyway you guys can do crossfire with the 8 GB 390x cards? The 295x2 / 290x trifire review was awesome and at just above $400 each for the 390x, it would be nice to see how they compare especially since those trifire tests were done using 4 GB of memory at 4k.

It is planned
 
Great review. You guys have the best game suite in the business. So annoying to see major sites still using Tomb Raider and Bishock while avoiding Dying Light.
 
Yeah, I agree 100%. It's like you are just keeping Dying Light around to say "YOU SEE, YOU SEE, 4 GB is NOT enough for 1440p gaming!!" Give us a break, there are plenty of newer games where 4 GB was enough even at CINEMA 4k running Fury Crossfire.

The 980Ti just keeps getting better (still better than the Fury X), and the review was great. We can do without the VRAM propaganda, though.

It's as if a certain company has proclaimed loudly that 4gb is more than enough even for 4k heavy gaming. Calling the camps on their shit is pretty much what this site has done for the last 15 years. Just because it's currently AMD eating crow on a lot of the marketing bullshit doesn't mean nVidia has gotten away with much either.
 
Is there a SLI review planned for the 980Ti ?

I have an SLI of MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Gaming and it's great, DA:Inquisition is finally smooth _and_ gorgeous with the 4k monitor (the Philips one, amazing big 40" screen, but no G-Sync so I really need those 60 fps...)

Didn't get to OC my setup yet.
According to Google, results vary wildly depending on the brand. Don't know if it's true or just a rumor.
And if it's true, it seems that maybe I did go wrong with MSI but then again maybe it's just because only the people with issues take the time to post about it.
Moreover I seem to remember from [H] 980 SLI review that the cards couldn't OC as much in SLI than alone. Same issue with the 980Ti ? I don't really know if I can trust non-SLI OC reviews to get an idea of what I can expect with my own set up. I'm really not an expert at OCing GPU, so I tend to put much value on [H] reviews :)
 
Nice results. I can do 1506/8200 on my classifieds with default volts. Need to push 1.23 through these cards to see what they will get me :).
 
Also curious to know why the power target can go to 139% on this sample but mine only goes to 130%
 
Why is this fan design so popular? I had some 580 cards with the same cooling design and had over heating issues in SLI. I switched to some 680 EVGA with blower style coolers and heat was no longer a problem. Would the blower style not be better suited for an SLI setup? I am asking because I want to upgrade to 980 ti from my R9 290's(these were my first AMD cards and probably will be my last, Crossfire is more of a pain than SLI) and I may not go SLI to begin with but I eventually will.
 
Why is this fan design so popular? I had some 580 cards with the same cooling design and had over heating issues in SLI. I switched to some 680 EVGA with blower style coolers and heat was no longer a problem. Would the blower style not be better suited for an SLI setup? I am asking because I want to upgrade to 980 ti from my R9 290's(these were my first AMD cards and probably will be my last, Crossfire is more of a pain than SLI) and I may not go SLI to begin with but I eventually will.

It really depends on the airflow in your case, blower style are better when airflow is somewhat limited, as they blow the hot air outside of your case, but with sufficient airflow to get the heat out of the case you can get better results with these multi fan non-reference coolers.
 
Plus most reviews are done in open air testing setups so numbers look better in tests.

I was a big fan of MSI gaming GTX 770 until i've noticed that it started to throtle itself under heat when I moved from Raven 2 to Evolve m-atx case.

So now i've got reference 980ti and the only thing that could be better is power limit. If I had more than 110% I'd be able to hit clocks above >1400 on core and >7400 on memory.
 
Plus most reviews are done in open air testing setups so numbers look better in tests.

I was a big fan of MSI gaming GTX 770 until i've noticed that it started to throtle itself under heat when I moved from Raven 2 to Evolve m-atx case.

So now i've got reference 980ti and the only thing that could be better is power limit. If I had more than 110% I'd be able to hit clocks above >1400 on core and >7400 on memory.

Were you really surprised that heat became an issue when you switched from a full size case designed for airflow to a compact case designed to save space?
 
The Gigabyte 980 Ti G1 actually has a power limit of 130% - the article has a typo in it stating 139%.

"To our surprise, and delight, the power target is able to be raised from 100% to 139%! This therefore gives us high hope of achieving a high overclock. We are happy to see a power target finally give us some leg room to work with."

As far as OC Guru II - the overclocking settings are nice, but I can't use it. When I enable the OSD (Control + F1) and load up any game, the game just crashes immediately. Disable OSD in OC Guru II and the game will load right up. Uninstall OC Guru II and use Afterburner instead - works just fine.
 
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Aren't you overplaying the 4 GB vs 6 GB issue? You have only demonstrated an impact in one game, and a known outlier at that. 4 GB is the least of Fury's problems.

But when AMD cards began to appear with 6GB as standard (back in the 7970 days, IIRC), AMD fans crowed about the advantage over NV's measly 4GB, better for xfire etc. [H] failed to find much support for that line of thinking in testing the AAA titles that were current at the time.

Now the shoe is on the other foot, and 2-3 years down the road there are titles where 4GB is just not enough. [H] demonstrates the truth of this with one representative sample, and you are offended, it seems.

That's the thing about computing technology--the bits don't lie. And neither does the [H].
 
Now the shoe is on the other foot, and 2-3 years down the road there are titles where 4GB is just not enough. [H] demonstrates the truth of this with one representative sample, and you are offended, it seems.

That's the thing about computing technology--the bits don't lie. And neither does the [H].


Who keeps GPU's 2 to even 3 years though if your a semi hardcore gamer?
 
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