Thinking of getting a 980ti(used). Questions

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a3venom

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Want to upgrade my r9 290, I see some good deals on non-ref 980tis here in Canada.
It would be atleast $150 cheaper than a new 1070 + tax

Is it worth it?

Also, I have a spare H60 Hydro lying around, i would love to use it on the 980ti and overclock it to the absolute limits but I can't find those HG10 brackets on sale anymore. What would be the easiest option to achieve AIO on this thing? I will be having a non-reference PCB most likely.

Don't wanna spend to much buying a bracket if it doesnt add that much to performance, but i like to overclock my stuff to the max generally.
 
A highly over-clocked 980Ti will usually perform close to a stock 1080. So that's a good place to start.

I wouldn't buy expecting a SUPER high overclock though, because it's the usual silicon lottery, you never know exactly how that card will perform. So as long as you'll be happy with something between a 1070 and a 1080, you will be happy with a 980Ti.

If it's worth it or not is up to you. Depends on the games you're playing, the resolution and the frame rates you're seeing. If you're on a 60Hz monitor and getting 60fps on all your games, it's not going to be worth it. If you're getting less than 60fps, then it will probably be more of a consideration for an upgrade.

WC will give you a bit of a boost on a 980Ti, but not a whole lot. It'll help keep temps down, and give you a bit more headroom for more voltage/freq, but it's not going to be a huge difference in speed over a good air-cooled card. WC for Maxwell and Pascal helps with temps and noise, but it's not required for a good overclock IMO.
 
What I am buying this for is 4k @ 45fps-ish on some games that I like, I think this card should be able to do it on High / Very High settings. Just had a H60 lying around so if i could use it to get an extra 5% perf out of this while being quiet, it would be really worth it for me.

There is no way I could afford a 1080ti so this is like an entry level for a 4k tv (I'd rather buy a better Vizio TV with lower input lag with my cash)
 
a3venom said:
What I am buying this for is 4k @ 45fps-ish on some games that I like, I think this card should be able to do it on High / Very High settings. Just had a H60 lying around so if i could use it to get an extra 5% perf out of this while being quiet, it would be really worth it for me.

There is no way I could afford a 1080ti so this is like an entry level for a 4k tv (I'd rather buy a better Vizio TV with lower input lag with my cash)
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A 980Ti will let you sort-of run 4k. As long as you're willing to turn a lot of eye-candy off, you can get decent framerates out of it. It's going to vary widely from game-to-game, and depending on what you personally call a "decent' framerate. Some people will have a heart attack if they're <120fps, some of us are happy with 45-60fps.

If you have the WC parts laying around, they're certainly going to make things better. Even if you don't get a higher OC, you'll at least have a quieter and cooler card. I wouldn't spend the extra cash for it if I was in your shoes, but if you already have it, why not use it?
 
Bandalo said:
A 980Ti will let you sort-of run 4k. As long as you're willing to turn a lot of eye-candy off, you can get decent framerates out of it. It's going to vary widely from game-to-game, and depending on what you personally call a "decent' framerate. Some people will have a heart attack if they're <120fps, some of us are happy with 45-60fps.

If you have the WC parts laying around, they're certainly going to make things better. Even if you don't get a higher OC, you'll at least have a quieter and cooler card. I wouldn't spend the extra cash for it if I was in your shoes, but if you already have it, why not use it?
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I have a CPU Cooler Corsair H60 lying around, as far as I know there were cheap brackets that would allow these coolers to be mounted on Nvidia GPUs. I'l look into that.

Even without it, you said it comes close to a 1080 if OCed? Is that really the case, I had an impression it's slightly behind 1070 in most titles. If it indeed is faster, i am jumping on it today
 
a3venom said:
Even without it, you said it comes close to a 1080 if OCed? Is that really the case, I had an impression it's slightly behind 1070 in most titles. If it indeed is faster, i am jumping on it today
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That's because more sites tend to test the 980ti vanilla/stock cooler which tend to run at ~1100mhz-1150mhz a custom 980TI with good cooling isn't hard to run over 1450mhz with couple of BIOS modifications you should be able to go over 1500mhz which is a solid 20-30% bump in performance over vanilla 980Ti and as Bandalo said it put near stock GTX 1080 performance.
 
OC to OC a 980 Ti at 1500MHz will be slightly faster than a 1070 in quite a few games, and not very far off from a stock 1080 - perhaps 10% slower depending on the test/game, up to 30% for DX12 games since Pascal is better optimized for it. I had two 980 Tis (1500 and 1580MHz with AIO cooling, air was 1425 and 1500 receptively), a 1080 (2202MHz AIO cooling, never air), and now a 1080 Ti (2063 MHz AIO cooling, never air) for reference points.

A Kraken G10 or G12 bracket might be compatible, yet you'll have to check the manufacturer's website. The G10 can be had for around 25 or 30 dollars. I used a G10 with all my cards to great effect, with a Corsair H55 (55C 980 Ti), a Kraken X41 (46C 980 Ti, 39C 1080), and now a Kraken X61 (43 to 49C 1080 Ti). I did pay out the nose for Noiseblocker eLoop fans for quiet, 100% fan speed operation.
 
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I am strongly leaning towards the 980ti used now, it is going to cost me about half of a 1080, seems like a no-brainer.
Might delid my i5-6400 too finally
 
Another question - This person has told me his card clocks to 1450 Max, EVGA SC one.
If i slap an AIO on this, it will surely go to 1500, won't it? Can't seem to find anecdotal evidence but I know for sure EVGA coolers are the warmest of the bunch and that might limit the clocks.
 
a3venom said:
Another question - This person has told me his card clocks to 1450 Max, EVGA SC one.
If i slap an AIO on this, it will surely go to 1500, won't it? Can't seem to find anecdotal evidence but I know for sure EVGA coolers are the warmest of the bunch and that might limit the clocks.
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No way of knowing without trying it. Some chips aren't temp limited, some are. I wouldn't count on getting over 1450 if that's the best he's gotten.
 
a3venom said:
Another question - This person has told me his card clocks to 1450 Max, EVGA SC one.
If i slap an AIO on this, it will surely go to 1500, won't it? Can't seem to find anecdotal evidence but I know for sure EVGA coolers are the warmest of the bunch and that might limit the clocks.
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I run an evga 980ti sc + evga aio cooler for it. Card tops out around 1440 mhz. No mods to bios.
 
a3venom said:
Another question - This person has told me his card clocks to 1450 Max, EVGA SC one.
If i slap an AIO on this, it will surely go to 1500, won't it? Can't seem to find anecdotal evidence but I know for sure EVGA coolers are the warmest of the bunch and that might limit the clocks.
Click to expand...
probably not. mine is under water and i've tried the bios mods for extra voltage and i couldn't get mine stable above ~1470 MHz.
 
I have a MSI 980 Ti with a Corsair H55 mounted on it using the NZXT Kraken G10 bracket. Works great, but the AIO cooler mostly game me much lower noise rather than higher overclock. Even with the stock cooler it did something like 1479 MHz fine but doesn't seem to work well above that. Haven't tried a custom BIOS though.

I run mine with 1440p resolution and everything still runs great at max or almost max details, maybe dropping AA to FXAA/SMAA if needed.
 
Odellus said:
probably not. mine is under water and i've tried the bios mods for extra voltage and i couldn't get mine stable above ~1470 MHz.
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is not a matter of only add more voltage with a BIOS most card to go beyond 1500mhz need a tailored BIOS with modified power tables specifically for your model, as typically you can not add more power to the GPU than what the VRM is able to deliver properly, that's where the heavy customized PCBs AIB models shine as those tend to be in some cases overkill.
 
So, I ended up getting a 980ti used which didnt work properly (EVGA) and they were amazing with the warranty service and sent me a 1080 SC! 7 days from me sending the card and receiving it back, holy shit this company is simply the best.

Now the question is, will a 4.7ghz i5 bottleneck this
 
a3venom said:
So, I ended up getting a 980ti used which didnt work properly (EVGA) and they were amazing with the warranty service and sent me a 1080 SC! 7 days from me sending the card and receiving it back, holy shit this company is simply the best.

Now the question is, will a 4.7ghz i5 bottleneck this
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Just wow, what a great experience!
 
a3venom said:
So, I ended up getting a 980ti used which didnt work properly (EVGA) and they were amazing with the warranty service and sent me a 1080 SC! 7 days from me sending the card and receiving it back, holy shit this company is simply the best.

Now the question is, will a 4.7ghz i5 bottleneck this
Click to expand...

That's why I try to buy EVGA - great warranty, great customer service in the US (EU has some issues).

The i5 shouldn't bottleneck too bad in games that aren't CPU bound. Those that are, you'll notice the GPU consistently getting way less than 90% usage (assuming no gsync / fast or V sync turned on).
 
Amazing videocard, couldn't be happier with it. I guess the i5 is a little bottleneck but I can only see that when benchmarking AAA games.
Hopefully the new 6core intel coffee lake works on z170 and i will upgrade someday.

Thanks for all the advice in this thread, got a good product unexpectedly. This is about 120 fps on heaven whereas the 980ti was 103 after OCing
 
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