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Hardware Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Review Roundup: feat. ASUS, EVGA and MSI

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Dogbert666, 19 Sep 2014.

  1. Shirty

    Shirty W*nker! Super Moderator

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    Please would anyone buying a blower-style 970, let me know how you feel about the noise levels?

    I keep my Node 304 on the desk next to my ear, so I don't want a jet engine in my left ear...
     
  2. Umbra

    Umbra What's a Dremel?

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    I wouldn't really call it that bad, assuming you are looking at the 'Power consumption gaming' graph, which is the graph that really matters to gamers, the 970 is way down the list compared to many other cards that have a lot less performance, the 970 has near 780 Ti performance for a lot less money so that saving should easily cover it's power consumption and with the cooling systems used the heat is not going to be a problem.

    Bottom line, the 970 is an great performing card that not surprisingly eats up quite a lot of power, but you buy cards like this to play games not worry about the power bill, the 970 is a classic bang for bucks card and if I hadn't recently bought a 780 which cost £100 more than the 970 I would have already bought two 970's :duh:
     
  3. loftie

    loftie Multimodder

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    The issue about power consumption becomes a problem if a game pushes a card closer to it's 'maximum' draw, which is 100w more than nvidia says it'll draw.

    The other issue is, where is it getting this power from? IIRC, 2x6pins+pcie give a max of 225W, yet Tom's is showing ~240w/~280w for the 970/980.
     
  4. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    Those limits have been treated as suggestion rather than rule for quite some time already and as long as the PSU can handle it is no problem.

    Also fake TDP numbers are nothing new, just take Intel cpus for example where like half the product range comes with the same TDP despite actual power consumption varying a lot.
     
  5. Dogbert666

    Dogbert666 *Fewer Lover of bit-tech Administrator

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    Hi SchizoFrog,

    We do have a Gigabyte card review planned, but it's for the GTX 980 (using the same cooler though). However, the temperatures on the cards were never high when overclocking, so I doubt two fan cooling would be a limitation on a chip this efficient. A lot of the time, differences in partner cards when overclocking can be as simple as variation in the GPUs and memory chips (power circuitry may also help). MSI overclocked best here, but mileage can vary greatly.
     
  6. SchizoFrog

    SchizoFrog What's a Dremel?

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    Cheers Dogbert666.

    I have seen elsewhere that the G1 970 clocked to around 1550 stable and was apparently virtually silent, it can just be a little hard to make comparisons without direct comparisons within reviews. I'll be interested to see how the cooler stacks up with the 980 though as if it is good with that then surely it has the 970 in it's pocket.
     
  7. Xploitedtitan

    Xploitedtitan What's a Dremel?

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    Bought the blower-style 970, from Gainward. Will arrive tomorrow or the day after, from I gathered (already gotten a tracking number, but nothing on the tracking site yet ^^).

    Decided to go blower-style, due my use of a Node 804. Case is bit small, and my current Gainward Phantom GTX 580 is heating up the case quite a bit (motherboard sensor showing 60+ degrees Celcius after intensive playing).

    With lower TDP and blower-style fan, I think the case will run cooler, as will the card.
     
  8. t5kcannon

    t5kcannon Minimodder

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    I gave in and bought a MSI 970 GTX. Large upgrade over my current 560Ti
     
  9. Shirty

    Shirty W*nker! Super Moderator

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    ^^ MASSIVE upgrade!
     
  10. Neogumbercules

    Neogumbercules What's a Dremel?

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    Not that I suddenly dislike my 290, but these cards really do make it look like a stinker. We (290 owners) sacrificed noise, power and heat because it was such a great price/perf card. And here comes nvidia crapping all over it.
     
  11. Saivert

    Saivert Minimodder

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    Also going 560Ti -> GTX 970 now. Gainward card.
    Was thinking it was time for an upgrade. Sick of playing BF4 at Medium (It used to handle high somewhat with a few < 60 fps here and there) but since latest patch I had to go down to Medium for a more stable framerate.
     
  12. Dogbert666

    Dogbert666 *Fewer Lover of bit-tech Administrator

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    Hi guys, EVGA has since released a statement in respose to concerns raised in this article and in others across the web about the effectiveness of the ACX2 cooling solution:

    The way the EVGA GTX 970 ACX heat sink was designed is based on the GTX 970 wattage plus an additional 40% cooling headroom on top of it. There are 3 heat pipes on the heatsink – 2 x 8mm major heat pipes to distribute the majority of the heat from the GPU to the heatsink, and a 3rd 6mm heatpipe is used as a supplement to the design to reduce another 2-3 degrees Celsius. Also we would like to mention that the cooler passed NVIDIA Greenlight specifications.

    Due to the GPU small die size, we intended for the GPU to contact two major heat pipes with direct touch to make the best heat dissipation without any other material in between.

    We all know the Maxwell GPU is an extremely power efficient GPU, our SC cooler was overbuilt for it and allowed us to provide cards with boost clocks at over 1300MHz. EVGA also has an “Cheesecake” version for those users who want even higher clocks.

    http://www.evga.com/images/forum/precision_gtx970sc.png

    Regarding fan noise, we understand that some have expressed concerns over the fan noise on the EVGA GTX 970 cards, this is not a fan noise issue but it is more of an aggressive fan curve set by the default BIOS. The fan curve can be easily adjusted in EVGA PrecisionX or any other overclocking software. Regardless, we have heard the concerns and will provide a BIOS update to reduce the fan noise during idle.


    The article has been updated with the same statement.
     
  13. woods

    woods What's a Dremel?

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    Just placed order for MSI 970 should be a big upgrade from my HD5850, feel a bit if a traitor switching from amd but just couldn't resist this card
     
  14. Shirty

    Shirty W*nker! Super Moderator

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    Lol at archaic forum autocorrect (that almost nobody can remember the reasons for) being applied to an official press statement. :lol:
     
  15. t5kcannon

    t5kcannon Minimodder

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    Yes certainly. I ordered from Scan, and the card was delivered today. Installed and running well. I've tested out some games, and what a difference! Huge upgrade from my old 560Ti to the MSI GTX 970; I've got a 2500K cpu.
     
  16. somidiot

    somidiot Minimodder

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    Curse you, now I want to upgrade my 560 Ti !!! *le sigh*

    One of the features I'm most excited about is DSR. There are some older games I still enjoy that I'd like to update the look of through that. :) Borderlands 2 should look pretty good with it. I wonder if there are plans to include some benchmarks and/or some testing done with it to see what bit-tech thinks? Nobody seems to have any official reviews on how well that works.
     
  17. runadumb

    runadumb What's a Dremel?

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    My Palit 970GTX arrived today. Bit pissed that OCuk dropped the price by a tenner on release screwing over pre-orders, cheers.

    The box comes with just the card, no sli connector or adapters for the mini only versions of DP and HDMI. I guess that's what I get for going cheapest possible. The card seems quiet enough but I haven't put it through the ringer yet.
     
  18. Xploitedtitan

    Xploitedtitan What's a Dremel?

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    Must admit I am pissed. Still haven't gotten my GTX 970.
    Arrived at 1:30 PM in my town's parcel center, took those guys 14 hours to move the parcel from my town's parcel center to my town's distribution center!

    So, hopefully, I'll get it tonight. ><
     
  19. Xir

    Xir Modder

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    +1 for the addition of the Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 GAMING

    it has a higher factory overclock, yet is cheaper than the MSI (at least here in Germany).

    Would it also have the "semi-passive" mode like the MSI and the ASUS?
     
  20. Xploitedtitan

    Xploitedtitan What's a Dremel?

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    Just gotten the card and installed it.

    Pushed the card a bit to the 60+ degrees Celsius, the blower can be heard, but still less loud than the 3 fans from my Phantom GTX 580. The sound is bit higher pitched in tone though.

    That said, case temperature is noticeably lower. Blower fan was indeed the right decision for me.
     
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