[n4p0l3onic]

I'm downgrading from gigabyte 970 g1 sli to a galax 980 ti hall of fame... this is the 1st time galax available on my country so I can't resist with the hof being so unique with it's white theme; that being said I don't plan on going water.

 

[benbenkr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CrazyElf

Zotac Amp I believe does, but the Amp Extreme does not. It's a custom PCB. It's a bit confusing how Zotac named its GPUs.

Also, the Amp should not be used as a bar for the Amp Extreme, which has a much thicker triple slot cooler.
The other non-reference PCBs generally have better quality components, like better power delivery.

It does make a difference for the more aggressive overclocks.
The Palit one does seem to be the most promising of the lot, very quiet and good temperatures. It might be worth noting that. Does anyone know if this is a reference PCB or not?

It'd be interesting to compare dual to triple slot (ex: Zotac AMP Extreme or Galax HOF or when it comes, the 980Ti Lightning).

Another thing worth noting - it will come down to silicon lottery more than anything else, although good cooling and VRM are important of course. Some cards like the Asus 980Ti Gold and perhaps the 980Ti Lightning may be binned. EVGA has been selling their 980Ti Kingpin by ASIC, with top ASICs commanding a price premium.
EK's 780 Classified block will fit.

Yeah... I agree that Zotac screwed up their AMP name thing. It used to be that moniker was their highest line, but then they had to add "extreme" just because...

The Amp Extreme is a custom PCB, no doubt.

As for better OCs or not, tbh... no, not really. Big maxwell, from what I've seen and experienced so far, you cannot push the card further than a 1.25v on the core anyways (water or air). So unless one is willing to hard-mod, ref cards will OC about just as well as custom cards. This is already proven by the Palit Jetstream, which is basically a 99% ref card, with just a few different regulators. Note I say different, not better.

All reference cards can hit 1.25v, so the custom cards are basically just... that, extras that won't be utilized. Better components to last longer, that's probably all it has going for.

Obviously the silicon lottery applies, but that's something only Nvidia controls and not the manufacturers. Unless you're willing to drop the wallet for those cherry picked ones from EVGA.

 

[KickAssCop]

It is not a downgrade.
Quote:

Originally Posted by n4p0l3onic

I'm downgrading from gigabyte 970 g1 sli to a galax 980 ti hall of fame... this is the 1st time galax available on my country so I can't resist with the hof being so unique with it's white theme; that being said I don't plan on going water.

 

[Azefore]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KickAssCop

It is not a downgrade.

Depends on the title, application, and the OC on the cards. I went from G1 970s to a G1 980Ti and not everything is greener on this side of the fence.

 

[ZXMustang]

Question for you guys. Im having a little buyers remorse because I had to settle (only thing in stock), and get the PNY branded reference 980ti. Now I cant seem to get any information to say otherwise, but is the reference card just boxed and shipped from the various companies, or is there a quality difference? I have been getting alot of flack from some of the FB groups for buying the "worst brand" 980ti. I keep telling myself that its a reference model and its the same as gigabyte and EVGAs reference model. But Im not positive. Plus PNYs so-called lifetime warranty is bogus. Its for the lifetime of the model run, not its actual life time. So once the card gets discontinued, its warranty is over. Luckily the card just came out, but still all this is adding up on me. Should I return it for another model?

The other issue is Im stuck with microcenter. I had made all my purchases from there, and they have the best prices. I dont want to return it there and go somewhere else, but looks like I might have too. There is no 980ti stock at either of the microcenter stores near me at all. What say the group?

 

[ZXMustang]

Oh and not sure if this matters, but the ASIC quality of the card I have now is 73.1. I think that is good?

 

[n4p0l3onic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Azefore

Depends on the title, application, and the OC on the cards. I went from G1 970s to a G1 980Ti and not everything is greener on this side of the fence.

well since I'm playing at 3440x1440 and playing many early access and kickstarter games that don't properly coded with SLI, I'm expecting better experience with my 980 ti

 

[KickAssCop]

All reference cards are equal. Problem is that you bought a reference card. Unless you water cool it it will run very hot. I have used PNY cards without issues in the past.

I would return the card and buy a non reference imo.

 

[ZXMustang]

So far its been good. I OCd it and set the fan profile to agressive. It gets a little noisey, but never gets over 68* under full load. Unless I run the GPU burn-in test, then it sits at 70* at like 70% fan speed. But it looks like that is a good temp compared to the non-reference cards out of the box.

 

[Killa Cam]

Keep the card and ignore what others say. PNY is a fine brand and other reference models with reference coolers are no different. Play some games and enjoy...

 

[ZXMustang]

Yeah so far its been awesome. I started out 3 weeks ago with a 390x. That sucked and couldnt play GTAV @1080p on max settings so I swapped it for a EVGA GTX980 SC ACX2.0. That was better, and I was able to overclock it to 1466mhz and it ran great. But still not enough. The valley bench score on it OCd was 3300ish. So I decided to say screw it and got the 980Ti. Once over clocked, the valley bench score was 4324 and it would rip through GTAV with all max settings @ both 1080p and 1440p. And also every other game I have at 1440p with no issue whatsoever. I was blown away. I read so many articles where it was said that a 980 to 980ti was not a worthwhile upgrade. Man were they wrong. This card is a BEAST. Once I uncapped the new batman game, I can run it at 4k and get a solid 50-60fps no problem. All other games I need vsync on to keep the screen tearing in check. Man I need a 1440p 144hz monitor.

 

[CrazyElf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chronicfx

I moved this to the owners thread and put my post as spoiler. May be more traffic over there.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

I get a second shot at my GTX 980 Ti model choice due to my awesome fraud protection on my credit card canceling my classy order almost 24 hours later... I lost it and now it is out of stock, oh well. I read some reviews and I did not love the 105 C FLIR of the back of the SC+ card review at guru3d. Not sure if that was a normal sample or if the 14+3 on the classy cools things down a touch, but hot components are kind of a turn off.

Sooo, down to business. I am on the fence for watercooling, I do have a loop on my CPU with a 360 and 120 rad but don't love the added cost of blocks and barbs to the already expensive GPU price. I am also not big into overclocking gpu's (love cpu overclocking however), I usually just buy multiple cards or replace it witha stronger one down the road. Please help me find a good choice for a pre overclocked 980 Ti.

Zotac: I was extremely tempted with plumbing in the arctic storm to my loop since the extra $50 for a water block over the AMP! extreme is enticing, although the AMP! extreme is a beast as well and I do have space for a triple slot card but makes a problem if I decide to SLI down the road since I have a SB Zx needing a 1x slot somewhere on the board. (Z97x gigabyte gaming gt mobo with PLX chip and 4970k at 4.7ghz)

Gigabyte: Beautiful windforce cooler, the coil whine complaints are obviously on top everyones mind. Without that I may have already purchased it.

Evga: Reputation, Reputation, Reputation, I have never had a bad experience with EVGA and have never owned another brand of nvidia card. My only RMA experience with them was for my G2 1300W PSU and they cross-shipped and sent me a cool T-Shirt as well as all the accessories on the PSU, I have two sets of cables.. cool huh. The bad is that the ACX cooler seems to run warmer on the core and much hottter in the backplate than the other customs, but has a lower fan noise as a plus.

MSI: I liks MSI and have never used them before. Their offering seems to have brought the most consistent performance, not the best in any single area, but more happy customers just by what I have read.

In the end I would imagine I am splitting hairs... In a closed case with earplugs in and framerate monitoring off no-one would ever know what card was in a system just by playing... But we like to go back look at reviews and say we made the right choice.

Will you help me choose? What would be your pick and why? and one question for Shilka.. I have a 1300W G2 in this system, would it be better to unshelf my HX850 as it would more closely match the system loads when I install the 980 Ti? I am asking if too much headroom matters for a PSU.

thanks guys! excited to hear back

Now that I think about it, it depends on whether you want a dual slot card, water cooling, or are ok with a triple slot.

If you are ok with a triple slot,

• The Galax 980Ti HOF would be a strong recommendation
• Zotac 980Ti AMP Extreme is also worth looking at
• Both companies seem to have a solid reputation for their support

If you are water cooling or want a dual slot

• EVGA 980Ti Classified has a block already, but the downside is they don't clock very well. The Kingpins might be better, but it's too early to tell. I suspect the higher ASIC ones might. EVGA support is pretty good.
• MSI 980Ti Gaming 6G might be having a block according to EK. MSI support is pretty solid as well; they can be slower with RMAs, but they come through in the end.

Palit seems to have great hardware, but I"m not as sure about the support is with Palit. Most experiences seem solid though on this forum, but Palit isn't as popular here on OCN, so I don't know them as well.

I recommend against the reference EVGA due to loud coolers and against the Gigabyte G1 due to high rates of coil whine, despite both companies having pretty good support. The Asus Strix seems to have had their cooler misaligned, so I'm going to recommend against it until the new revisions come out. Asus I have found does not have good RMA support either (they tend to try to deny warranties).

Edit:
There's no "awesome" choice that stands head and shoulders over the others (perhaps the EVGA 980Ti Kingpin might, but the good OCers but they are expensive). The triple slots I think are the best from Galax and Zotac. MSI is to release a 980Ti Lightning, so we'll see how that comes out in a couple of months.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZXMustang

Question for you guys. Im having a little buyers remorse because I had to settle (only thing in stock), and get the PNY branded reference 980ti. Now I cant seem to get any information to say otherwise, but is the reference card just boxed and shipped from the various companies, or is there a quality difference? I have been getting alot of flack from some of the FB groups for buying the "worst brand" 980ti. I keep telling myself that its a reference model and its the same as gigabyte and EVGAs reference model. But Im not positive. Plus PNYs so-called lifetime warranty is bogus. Its for the lifetime of the model run, not its actual life time. So once the card gets discontinued, its warranty is over. Luckily the card just came out, but still all this is adding up on me. Should I return it for another model?

The other issue is Im stuck with microcenter. I had made all my purchases from there, and they have the best prices. I dont want to return it there and go somewhere else, but looks like I might have too. There is no 980ti stock at either of the microcenter stores near me at all. What say the group?

PNY has pretty good tech support so if you're happy with a reference, it's ok.

Otherwise you'll have to return it and consider the top custom PCB. Reference might be an issue for very heavy overclocks (due to not as good VRMs), and the stock blower is not that great (louder and noisier than I'd like), but is otherwise solid. The other benefit is that you have a waterblock for sure.

 

[Reystar]

So ZOTAC AMP! seems to be the card to go with?

 

[el-jorge]

I thinks it is between the Palit and the MSI.
At first I wanted to go for the MSI, but after founding this topic and searched some reviews of the Palit, that is one good card. The only thing is, I am not familiar with this brand, is it any good? The Palit is also € 20,- cheaper, but that is not really important If you look at the pricetag of these cards.

 

[JoHnYBLaZe]

I look around for information about SLi with these aftermarket cards and I never find any....

So I bought 2 Gigabyte g1's from amazon and 2 reference evga's

Both the gigabytes had coil whine and more importantly, could not hold temps under 80 even at their stock clocks with 100 percent fan speed

In case your wondering I have a silverstone RV03 RV05 case with 90 degree rotated motherboard and 180mm air penetrator fans blowing at the cards

With higher fan speed the reference cards could hold the temps under 70 most of the time with 74 being about worst case scenario even when matched with stock clocks of the gigabyte!!

The gigabyte overclocked better but only by 50 or so mhz so not really missing much there either....

Every one claims the reference are loud but the sound is just of moving air with no mechanical noise whatsoever, my audio system drowns it out easily

I also found the noise of the gigabyte roughly matched the reference at same fan speed

 

[Killa Cam]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoHnYBLaZe

I look around for information about SLi with these aftermarket cards and I never find any....

So I bought 2 Gigabyte g1's from amazon and 2 reference evga's

Both the gigabytes had coil whine and more importantly, could not hold temps under 80 even at their stock clocks with 100 percent fan speed

In case your wondering I have a silverstone RV03 case with 90 degree rotated motherboard and 180mm air penetrator fans blowing at the cards

With higher fan speed the reference cards could hold the temps under 70 most of the time with 74 being about worst case scenario even when matched with stock clocks of the gigabyte!!

The gigabyte overclocked better but only by 50 or so mhz so not really missing much there either....

Every one claims the reference are loud but the sound is just of moving air with no mechanical noise whatsoever, my audio system drowns it out easily

I also found the noise of the gigabyte roughly matched the reference at same fan speed

Wow, great insight. +rep

Yeah, i think the reference pcb still holds its own and some have been able oc their reference cards to 1500+ boost. The reference cooler from nvidia still suck, but if you air cooling in sli - its the most sensible option.

I think the regular zotac amp (not the omega or extreme) is definitely the best value being the cheapest with the best cooler albeit a reference pcb.

 

[benbenkr]

That's... what I've been saying. There is a reason why the Palit Jetstream performs as well if not better than its more expensive counterparts, yet using a 99% reference board. Only difference it has are 2 regulators.
The only downside of the Palit is that it uses a triple slot cooler, so space may be an issue if you're ITX or even MATX config.

For custom cards, the MSI Gaming does have coil whine reports as well. In fact really, it's time people just accept coil whine. It's been there since more than a decade ago, it's not going away. It's been getting more prevalent I guess, but coil whine has always been around.

Also, people need to stop thinking about "brands" as the sole reason to go for something... simply because it's more popular. It's as blind as choosing a PSU just because there is a Corsair logo on it. Doesn't work that way.

 

[rolldog]

This is excellent information, and is exactly what I was looking for to help me with my decision making on a card. Is it possible for you to add other cards to this as they become available? Like the Classified and the Kingpin (Pre-binned if possible)? Thanks.

 

[CrazyElf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killa Cam

Wow, great insight. +rep

Yeah, i think the reference pcb still holds its own and some have been able oc their reference cards to 1500+ boost. The reference cooler from nvidia still suck, but if you air cooling in sli - its the most sensible option.

I think the regular zotac amp (not the omega or extreme) is definitely the best value being the cheapest with the best cooler albeit a reference pcb.

The reason why the reference gets a bad reputation is because it needs a higher dB level to achieve the same level of core cooling.

Triple slot coolers like the Palit or the Zotac AMP Extreme or the Galax HOF will always outperform a dual slot, as the third slot allows for a thicker heatsink and perhaps better quality fans. The issue of course is that you need 3 slots and ideally 4 (in order for the triple slot to breathe, much like how a dual slot needs at least 3 slots for breathing).

The top card though in SLI will always be perhaps 10-15C hotter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by benbenkr

That's... what I've been saying. There is a reason why the Palit Jetstream performs as well if not better than its more expensive counterparts, yet using a 99% reference board. Only difference it has are 2 regulators.
The only downside of the Palit is that it uses a triple slot cooler, so space may be an issue if you're ITX or even MATX config.

For custom cards, the MSI Gaming does have coil whine reports as well. In fact really, it's time people just accept coil whine. It's been there since more than a decade ago, it's not going away. It's been getting more prevalent I guess, but coil whine has always been around.

Also, people need to stop thinking about "brands" as the sole reason to go for something... simply because it's more popular. It's as blind as choosing a PSU just because there is a Corsair logo on it. Doesn't work that way.

It's more a matter of the percentage of coil whine. The model of inductor that Gigabyte used has a history of coil whine, which means that if you buy it, there's a higher probability of coil whine. It's like if you buy model A, 20% odds of problems, while model B, 5% odds of problems - obviously model B is the model to get.

Anyways, here is an article about coil whine:
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/67822-graphics-card-coil-whine-investigation.html

Look at the PCBs listed in the article.

Often coil whine is a barometer for very high temperature Mosfets or other parts of the PCB being hot. You'll notice something - the custom PCBs with overkill VRMs generally are far less prone to coil whine than the other cards. The 7970 and 290X reference had bad coil whine too.

That's why I generally am "anti-reference PCB". You do have the convenience of an assured water block, but against it, Nvidia, unlike AMD, uses the cheapest VRMs they can get away with on their reference boards. AMD, whatever their other flaws, usually leaves more margin on their PCBs (although as you can see in the HW Canucks review, it didn't help the coil whine - probably due to the inadequate reference cooler - I bet had they tested with a full coverage waterblock, the coil whine would have disappeared).

It's also good for the longevity of the card, low temperature VRMs + lower load temperatures due to a very well designed cooler mean that the GPU is more likely to last longer.

There is actually a very good reason to go with brands by the way. Good support. Companies like EVGA have a good reputation in no small part due to the fact that if something goes wrong, you have a company that stands behind their products. It's why I am willing to recommend EVGA, MSI, Galax, and if in your nation, Zotac. I'm far more hesitant to recommend Asus for that reason.

 

[shilka]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rolldog

Is it possible for you to add other cards to this as they become available? Like the Classified and the Kingpin (Pre-binned if possible)? Thanks.

As soon as i see TechPowerUp has a new GTX 980 Ti review i am going to add it.