Hardware Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti G1 Gaming Review

With negligible f/ps differences between the Gigabyte, ASUS and MSI cards I gues it comes down to which one is cheapest when you actually buy you card... Which would put the MSI at the top of the list right now.

 

I'm not sure what the point is. What games really stretch this sort of thing?

 

None of them, at lower resolutions.

Crank it up to 4K and it is largely comfortable in most games - for that investment, you'll want at least a smidgeon of wriggle room to accommodate new games.

 

it's £150 too expensive, for the love of all things holy lets see some serious GPU competition to bring these insane prices down.

I hope the upcoming 16nm (or 14nm as reported in certain quarters) products bring with them a high enough production yield to allow for lower pricing, that said, there's no rush, I'm not gaming at 4k and my 770GTX isn't overly stretched at 1080P - although I'm not keen on 4K gaming 1440P would be nice so I'll probs upgrade to the Pascal version of the 970GTX when it's available and get a 144hz monitor to suit.

 

Maybe I have had a bad experience with Gigabyte cards but my 560Ti "OC" triple cooler edition needs underclocking + chip voltage increased in afterburner to keep it stable. Wouldnt prefer buying a Gigabyte card in the future TBH.

 

vr games that need 75fps / 90fps @ 1920x1080 and higher critically need this kind of card

 

£570 to play £30 console ports...****s sake.

 

If all your playing is console ports a 970 for £230 - £250 is more than enough for 1080p 60fps with better settings.

Personally still think this is crazy money for a card that will bearly cut it in 4k in 1 years time. Once the next gen cards hit you could see a massive increase in performance from both sides. I do wonder what the price of those cards will be though.

 

I have a 980 right now (for job reasons, I hasten to add) and I can more or less max everything on a 1920x1200 display. I do have a 4K monitor but I very rarely use it - the ten-year-old Dells have much nicer blacks and better viewing angle. I have no idea when or why monitor design fell off the perch, but for that reason alone I don't use the 4K.

The other thing is antialiasing. I have a friend who likes to play Mechwarrior Online and Elite Dangerous on this machine, neither of which seem to support antialiasing to any worthwhile degree. Fine lines look awful. Same on World of Warships, with the rigging flickering and buzzing away. Not quite sure what to do, I can hardly throw any more hardware at it!

P

 

There's a G1 Gaming version of the 970 as well, I would wonder where that would end up in these charts.

Also, didn't "Power and Thermals" used to include a (subjective) indication of noise?

 

Nice cards, but as a 970Sli owner, I just know I would not be satisfied with just one of them in my system, and try as I might I simply cannot justify in any whatsoever spending over a £1000 on graphics cards.

..especially as I know less than 12mths from now, two Pascal cards that replace the 970, will probably deliver 90% of the performance of two 980ti's, for half the price.

Add that to the fact that there is nothing due to be released on the PC in that time frame which will bring my two 970's to their knees, then waiting for Pascal is really a no brainer.

 

Thought nearly all 560tis were pants and many manufacturers gave up or released a BIOS update to add more voltage, there is a massive thread at Nvidia about it - https://forums.geforce.com/default/...narrowing-down-the-cause-of-reported-issues-/

 

Disappointed to find mine has an ASIC quality of 64.1% which doesn't bode well with "Gauntlet binning" promises of good electrical characteristics and improved power efficiency ensuring higher overclocking capability.

Memory o/c to 8GHz which is excellent. Core o/c to 1225MHz actually boosts to 1402MHz and I am not intending to go any higher as above 60% the fans are too noisy with the usual air movement whoosh (acceptable) but an unfortunate ringing sound which gets progressively worse (unacceptable), captured perfectly in this clip.

http://www.computerbase.de/videos/2015-06/geforce-gtx-980-ti-partnerkarten-lautstaerke/

Minor irritation is my rig is themed red and the LED logo which can be set to red via the OC_Guru_II app does not stick after a reboot. Nobody on overclock.net seems to have found the solution.

My final analysis is it's a good card, but if you intend to o/c core much past 1400MHz it needs to be under water or your environment noisy. OC_Guru_II needs to be fixed and either "Gauntlet binning" or ASIC quality is completely irrelevant.