20 Best Gtx 980 Ti Brand (2023 Updated)

This card for most people will just wind up being an overweight air cooled card. I would not recommend this card to anyone else. The only real benefit to this card is the hybrid cooling setup that will not work well for most people.

The card restricts flow too much and will impact your cooling unless on its own loop. Upon receiving mine and installing the card, the fittings both leaked (good thing I do a pump power only prime) and the card had a very turbulent impact on my system causing very restricted flow (my digital flow meters showed flow dropping to about 33% of what ti was with an EVGA 980 hydro Cu installed) and cavitation.

After taking fittings apart (the entire thing filmed because I was doing a review) I found out that one fitting was missing the lower o-ring (they are supposed to be on both sides of both fittings due to design) and the other had been over-tightened so much that the center part with the holes in it to allow the liquid to pass through had been crushed and the middle of the fitting was destroyed.

I contacted support and sent them the video with my findings and they basically (after 8 weeks of email tag) told me to bad you messed with it and would not even send me just replacement fittings,I even offered to pay for, for the broken one claiming that they do not keep inventory in them.

Being as I work on hydraulics for a living I was able to find so proper O. D. bulkhead fittings and took them over to the machinist at my work and he slotted the center for me and I was now able to use standard G1/4 fittings on the ends of the bulkhead fittings making it a more compatible system.

With the issues of leaks now resolved I put the card back into my system and ran well enough except the flow rates were still only about 40% of what they were with the EVGA 980 Hydro Cu installed. Now this is only a big deal for me because my system is designed to run at the proper flow rate to cool the best with me liquid medium so cooling was impacted and my pump had to work harder.

In the end I replaced this card with a EVGA 980ti Hydro Cu when they were in stock and haven’t had an issue since. Gave this card to a friend to replace his air cooled 660ti so he is happy and I no longer have the headaches.

So I have been waiting patiently for a REAL upgrade since my Asus 780 around 3 years ago. It has been lonely in my HAF-X case, shadowed by my air cooler in push-pull. I got the HAF-X a few years ago with the intent to do SLI and watercooling but funds made me wait.

SO – I finally picked up TWO of these beasts. put them in SLI on my Maximus VII Hero, converted my PSU to an EVGA 1300 G2, and slapped a Swiftech H220-X onto my 4690K – which btw keeps my CPU no hotter than 57 deg running 4.

8Ghz. SO the SLI piece requires some attention to detail or be ready for some heat issues. First thing I did was use a 1/4 rubber gasket to support the small gap between the cards. these are so heavy that my top card droops slightly near the end and it touches the second card as a result.

Gasket fixes this and allows a LITTLE room for airflow between the cards. Secondly, I threw a 120mm Noctua static pressure fan inside my drive bay which places the fan perfectly centered and blowing cool intake air up into and between the cards.

Thirdly the case has a 200mm side intake fan that happens to blow directly on the cards from the side too. Fourthly, I keep the cards running full time at 60% which is NOT loud on my rig. Yes I hear them but it is not annoying at all.

Cards idle like this at 26 dec C on bottom card and 42 deg C on top card. When pushed hard – the top card will hit 69-70. nothing out of the ordinary. but when I first put both cards in that top card would hit 90+ QUICK like, and idle around 60.

SO – now I’m satisfied, and better yet I have these tied to a brand new XB270HU at 1440p and 144Hz/G-Sync and the combo has completely transformed my gaming experience. No more screen tearing, no more micro stutters under 60 Hz, just amazing smoothness and high frames.

Assassin’s Creed Unity maxed out runs at 100-125 fps never dipping below 90. Crysis 3 never dips below 80 and this is COMPLETELY maxed out. Metro LL pegs at 120-144 the whole time. Tomb Raider is unreal at 144.

You get the point – if you are in the market for an amazing card besting the TITAN X without the TITAN X price and have a good case with proper cooling you CAN SLI these bad boys and they will keep you happy for years to come.

Get one errr two now!.

-Current OC is +65 (1483 Mhz) on core-clock and +225 (7650 MHz) on mem-clock and +130 on power; ZERO crashes on all games, no BSOD. -Current OC beats previous 970 SLI (OC’d mind you) Heaven Score of 3621 (ULTRA SETTINGS/8X AA for both setups) with a score of 4090.

Both scores are not earth-shattering, but you get the idea AND I’m NOT DONE OC’ing this Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti yet! -The current OC is on stock-voltage, as will be the next levels. -The first card I returned/RMA’d I had an ASIC score of 81.

3 and failed. The current card I have has an ASIC sore of. 70. 0, lol! Both use Samsung Memory btw. So, it just goes to show that ASIC means absolutely nothing folks. -OC Guru II has a long-running history of not working, regardless of which version is used; resets OC settings randomly and will not save profiles.

OC Guru II also DOES NOT have OSD monitoring of your GPU usage stats, which is a HUGE fail. -Users of OC programs like MSI AB (like me) cannot alter the LEDs when doing so. WORKAROUND: Download latest version of OC Guru II (v1.

96) and make sure to SAVE the download file somewhere. Close AB or whatever OC program you have running, prior to doing this! Install OC Guru II, then choose your LED color/theme and SAVE it, ensuring your LEDs are working as you have chosen.

Then, uninstall OC Guru II, minus the downloaded install file. The LED/color theme will have saved to the GPU’s BIOS. Verify this by restart/shutdown. By saving the download file, you can go back and repeat these steps and change the LEDs as you wish.

It’s the only workaround, besides flashing the BIOS from non-Gigabyte enthusiast websites and is done at owner’s own risk and at the risk of voiding your warranty/RMA option. -With my current OC experience, this is definitely a wiser investment than SLI of a lesser GPU, if you are considering which to do as a first-time purchase.

The OC potential is pretty good thus far and with 6GB of VRAM, it allows for textures to be opened up to ultra/max with minimal to zero impact on my system, vs. my previous GTX 970 SLI setup. I can only imagine what 2 of these monsters would do in SLI (down the road) with my PLX chip.

Great card if you’re in the market for a GTX 980 Ti! EDIT/Update 08 March 2016: OC is now at +65 (1498 MHz actual speed) on core-clock and +300 on mem-clock (3902 MHz), with fan in Default User Defined setting and the temp now remains under 60*C in all games with settings maxed; all settings applied in/with MSI AB with no artifacts or BSOD.

These are in-game settings only. Bench settings can be pushed WAY higher, but I bought this to game with, not watch benchmarks run.

I upgraded from a GTX 670 to this behemoth and I must say I am very, VERY pleased. It is loaded with features, not the least of which being a hefty stock overclock. It has a ridiculously overpowered cooler, color-changing lights, an extra optional 6-pin power input for extreme overclocking, and much more.

I can run Fallout 4 with maxed out settings at 1920×1080 and get a constant 60FPS. If I had a newer CPU to go along with it, that’d be great, but my old-ish AMD FX8350 holds this card back. Typically, the CPU runs over 80% while the video card runs around 45%.

This is a pretty card, too. The lights, the fan shroud, the back plate. All these look very nice in my computer’s case. Now, the only downside I can think of is the rather counterintuitive control scheme for the lights.

There is a tool called OC Guru for the card straight off the Gigabyte website, and overall, it functions well. It has lots of overclocking options, lots of monitors, and a controller for the lights. The problem is that the NVidia GeForce Experience driver for the card also has a controller for the lights, and the two controllers do not get along.

If you try to use both at the same time, the lights just randomly blink on and off in no sensible manner. OC Guru is needed to change the color of the lights andhas a couple of generic styles, but GeForce Experience has a few more pattern styles to choose from (things like pulsing to audio, blinking, fading on and off, and so on).

What I did was set the color to what I wanted in OC Guru and, and then set the pattern in GeForce Experience. What I’d like to see is either OC Guru getting more options, or GeForce Experience getting a color-changing option.

I would recommend this card at this point. Water cooled is so much better then fan only. I replaced my GTX 980 Ti fan, with this unit. What a big difference in cooling and quietness. I think if they added screws and made the hoses longer, this would be a perfect card.

My FPS is also better but it varies depending on game and location in game. I haven’t had a chance to run it full out in the main areas where the FPS drops. Fingers crossed.

I didn’t want to list a bunch of pros and cons. I wanted to explain that after 4 years of using this product while only playing not so demanding games like Classic World Of Warcraft when that came out.

One day I booted up my PC to realize that I could not run any game past 20 frames and I did not think it was my GPU at first. I troubleshooted for about a week, and then one day I boot up the computer and I hear this awful sound in my computer followed by smoke coming out.

I immediately cut the power on the PSU and saw that the smoke was coming from the GPU itself. It was very hot and it was not dust that did it in. (the smell was awful too) I read that after awhile these versions of the card after awhile are prone to the same thing that happened to me.

I was lead to believe that a capacitor had exploded or something along those lines. Ordered a 30 series card and never looked back. If you are looking to purchase this GPU then be aware of the major drawbacks that it could have on your pc.

I was lucky that my PC was not damaged aside from the GPU, you may not be.

I was sent an open box unit for a my brand new 660 dollar EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 06G-P4-4995-KR 6GB SC+ GAMING w/ACX 2. 0+, Whisper Silent Cooling w/ Free Installed Backplate Graphics Card. The thing has extremely excessive coil wine that is louder than the 16 fans in my case.

I can hear it from other rooms in the house with the case closed and the AC running. One of the fans sounds like its about to fall apart at 70%. And worst of all. It makes my computer lag out and chop when performing just about any application that involves loading graphics memory, even the simplest of tasks like changing my screen saver.

I purchased a second card 3 months later to SLI and see if that would improve things at all. This one arrived with the box sealed and all of the stickers still attached in their original positions; it does not have excessive coil whine, and does not lag my computer out.

I tried to SLI them and it just results in the same issues. I also purchased a brand new EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G2 from Newegg when I bought the first 980 to upgrade from my Corsair 850. I am extremely upset that Newegg sent me a defective open box product that someone obviously with more knowledge than myself at the time realized there was an issue with and returned.

Had I more knowledge at the time I would have complained instantly, but since I was new to the high video card market I figured it must be my AMD FX8370, MB, or RAM that was not cooperating with the card.

However, I have since upgraded my system to an I7 5930K with an ASUS X99 PRO/USB3. 1 MB and an EVGA SuperNOVA 1600 T2 PSU, all purchased from Newegg. It has had no effect what-so-ever as to how the card performs solo or in SLI, there clearly was something wrong with the card, and someone sent it back.

Then Newegg apparently just sent it right back out hoping that some dumb**** like myself wouldn’t be smart enough to realize what was happening in time to do anything about it. Touché I’m not really sure how Newegg can even get away with sending an open box product to someone as “NEW” while charging them full price and act like its no big deal, especially on such an expensive and sensitive product such as a 660 dollar video card.

I know it was my fault for not saying anything at the time, but I figured the card must be good if Newegg is shipping it to me. That the already opened box and misplaced stickers falling off from someone trying to put them back on meant nothing.

That the stutter and lag issues must be something with my computer or my setup, but after purchasing a second card, another PSU, building an entirely new computer, minus these two video cards, and playing with both cards for a few months in two different computers it has become more than apparent to me that the first card is defective and I was taken to the cleaners by Newegg.

It’s been 8 months since having made my purchase so there is nothing I can do now except contact EVGA directly and see if they are willing to help me out. On top of it, I’m water cooling, of course, so I’m not sure if that voids any type of warrantee I might still have with EVGA or not.

I’m not sure how or why this happened, I’ve purchased my fair share of stuff from Newegg and never had a problem or experienced anything like this before. Rest assured though, if I ever receive anything like this from them again, it will be going back without hesitation.

I built my own bone pc -gaming computer. I have an ASUS ROG MAXIMUS IV GENE Micro-Atx motherboard in my mini-tower case included: – Intel i7 4770k 3. 5 GHz processor w/large heat sink & two fans – 32GB Memory – EVGA NVIDIA GTX 980 ti 6GB Superclock+ ACX 2.

0 with Backplate (supports 4K monitors and has a G-Sync port) – 2 Blueray Drives – Primary HD: 400GB HD – Secondary HD: 1. 5TB HD – ROG Swift PG27AQ Gaming monitor (4K -G-Sync) – Corsair K95 RGB Gaming Keyboard – Corsair Sabre Gaming Mouse That’s why I title this : “If you have the right set-up then this is the best video card for you ” Because you need a computer system that set-up like my bone pc-gaming computer to get the best performance and overclocking experience with this video card.

Mainly I used my computer for gaming but sometimes for in general use like checking emails or surf the web which works well too. But you must download the EVGA Precision X 16 utility program this is how you control your overclock and fans on this card and also through ASUS ROG utility program under Extreme settings section.

So when your playing a game for a long time you can actually control the fans to keep the GPU chip cool not to over heat. Also my mini-tower has 7 : 120mm fans and 1: 200mm fan – a total of 8 fans inside my minitower so my bone pc-gaming computer also stays cool.

Make sure you keep everything away from sunlight and make sure you have your computer and monitor in a COOL room that’s well ventilated. All these features are a big help especially if you have system like mine.

Once you get all that done -your ready to rock and play some great games like Battlefield 4 or Call of Duty:Advance Warfare. Man awesome graphics – my 4K monitor display at the top right corner the max 60 FPS, my resolution is set at 4k – the higher your resolution is set the better quality of graphics is displayed.

The length of the video card is 10 1/2″ long so this fitted well in my mini-tower. I would strongly recommend this video card for those who have powerful pc set-up like mine. This video card can work in computers with a low priority set-up but your not going to get great overclocking and a 100% high performance.

So its best to get this video card if you have super gaming pc. Overall the EVGA NVIDIA GTX 980 ti 6GB Superclock+ ACX 2. 0 with Backplate to my experience is just totally awesome! Hope this information helps you out.

Good luck.

I have not truly pushed its limits yet as I don’t want to stress the card unduly, and will settle for a medium overclock as adequate for everyday gaming. I was originally going to hang on to my GTX 670s until the next video card generation, but with their 2GB of VRAM they were going to be hampered in some of the newer games I recently bought, eg.

Shadow of Mordor, GTA V, etc. , especially at 1440p. When I saw the promo price + rebate + free Tomb Raider game I decided to take the plunge, and so far have not regretted my purchase. My older cards in SLI performed quite well, but ran quite hot (and loud) in the H440, which is more suited to a single card setup (unless watercooled) due to its middling airflow capability.

My setup: Case: NZXT H440 Mobo: ASUS Z170-A CPU: i7-6700K @ 4. 7 GHz Cooler: Corsair H100i w/ SP120 Quiet Edition fans RAM: 32GB GSkill TridentZ @ 3000 MHz SSD: Samsung 950 Pro M. 2 (boot drive) OS: Windows 10 Home GPU: EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC ACX 2.

0+ (reviewed product) vs. ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU II SLI (comparison product) Benchmark results: Unigine Valley (1920×1080, 8xAA, Extreme HD preset): GTX 670 SLI – FPS 81. 0 (Min 38. 3, Max 156. 1) Score 3392 GTX 980 Ti – FPS 96.

2 (Min 43. 6, Max 183. 2) Score 4026 Firestrike (1080p): GTX 670 SLI – 11172 GTX 980 Ti – 16141 Firestrike Extreme (1440p): GTX 670 SLI – 5954 GTX 980 Ti – 8224 The 670s (@ 1215 MHz) would reach up to 90 degrees in the above tests, while the 980 Ti (@ 1458 MHz) never went above 65 degrees, and the 670 fan noise was subjectively twice as loud.

Towards the end of testing the GTX 670s started glitching out and freezing, needing a forced reboot to recover, so I may have been driving them past their limit, whereas the 980 Ti reformed flawlessly throughout.

I also had the chance to test a friend’s GTX 780s (ASUS Poseidon, though not watercooled) in SLI on an i7-4790K rig – they managed 14000+ in Firestrike without overclocking, which is pretty close to the 980 Ti.

In that situation I would probably hang onto them for a while, despite their 3GB VRAM disadvantage. Final notes: I believe the Nvidia promo for the free Tomb Raider game is until 2/16/16 (or possibly they run out of codes) – don’t quote me on that, it’s “to the best of my knowledge”.

At any rate, I got my Steam code within an hour of my purchase on 1/14/16. This is my first EVGA video card. I am very happy with its performance and quality, and glad I did not wait for the next generation of GPUs before upgrading.

Upgrading from an EVGA GTX 760, I was looking for something quieter, cooler and more powerful, and so far this card has met every expectation. A quick rundown on my build, for reference: i5-4690k 3. 5 GHz (OC to 4.

4) Kraken x61 AIO cooling unit 8 GB DDR3 1600 RAM Rosewill 80 Plus Gold 550W PSU NZXT Phantom 530 case I mention the case and PSU specifically as I think they make a great fit for this card — keep in mind, the card is pretty heavy and definitely very long — granted, the 530 is a big case and I have plenty of room for it, but not every case will be this way.

Definitely measure your headroom — some cases will probably need to move some drive bays. The other aspect was the PSU. I was considering a couple different cards at different price points, including the Sapphire 290x, but realistically it was always going to be the 970 — because of the power draw.

With everything listed above, 550W and a good 12V rail has been enough to power this card beautifully. If I’d gone a different route, I would have had to also upgrade my PSU. Aesthetically, this card makes me happy to have a windowed side panel.

It’s great to look at, with the subtle MSI dragon logo on the backplate and green side LED, which you can control with the NVIDIA software included. You can alter the brightness or blinking pattern, but not the color — if you don’t like the green light, you can also just turn it off.

The price is of course not “budget,” but when you consider how it performs, it will still feel like a great deal. I haven’t even begun to tinker with overclocking, but many reputable OC sites have the 970 clocking in close to the much-more expensive 980, which is crazy.

I’ve been cranking up all the graphical settings on GTA V, The Witcher 2 and Far Cry 4, and all run smoothly at 60 FPS, except Far Cry, which is closer to 48-52. (By the way, the Witcher 3 free game inclusion is nothing to sneeze at, either.

I was emailed my download code the day of purchase. ) Ultimately, if you’re in the mid-range right now with a card like the GTX 760 and you’re wanting to upgrade, I think you’ll be really happy with the 970, provided you have the space for it.

I definitely am so far.

After several times running the 3Dmark FireStrike benchmark, with an ambient temperature of (25°C). The graphics card ASIC is 77. 2%, and was overclocked with the following settings, +20mV, core offset +90 and memory offset +250.

Looking just at the GRAPHICS SCORE, taking the HIGHEST VALUE from the runs, FireStrike Performance got 16796, FireStrike Extreme got 9049, and FireStrike Ultra got 4925. Also, I made another test with the Heaven benchmark.

The settings of the benchmark were DirectX11, quality on Ultra, tessellation on Extreme, AA on 8x, resolution 1080p. The graphics card was overclocked with the following settings, +20mV, core offset +90 and memory offset +250.

After several runs of the benchmark, with an ambient temperature of (25°C), and taking the HIGHEST VALUES, I got 178. 1 FPS, and 4553 score. The temperature goes up to 78°C. The total power consumption of my system was 445W according to my APC 1500VA UPS.

I understand that this card can be pushed more on air, but I am not interested in doing that. Obviously, the true performance of this graphics card will be revealed if you use an LN2 configuration. Unleash the beast with LN2! If you are going to install the LN2 base, you need to remove the MSI VOID seal placed in a screw on the video card.

My recommendation is to first call MSI and discuss this with them. It is not fair that a card comes with the LN2 configuration base, but you VOID the warranty if you remove the seal. Obviously, if you damage the video card you are doomed.

In the past, I have removed MSI VOID seals to upgrade MSI laptops RAM memory or to upgrade to a SSD. But, first I called MSI, and let MSI know what I am doing, they warn me that warranty is void JUST if I damage something.

At the end, MSI give me the go ahead to upgrade. For now I have a domestic beast. Sorry for any typo, or misspelled words. Hope this review help you to decide. Test system: Intel 4790k OC to 4. 4Ghz MSI 980 Ti Lightning, ASIC 77.

2%, 16x bus 32GB GSkill Trident X PC3-19200 MSI Z97 Gaming 7 Motherboard Corsair AX860i PSU Thermaltake Water 3. 0 Ultimate, 360mm AIO 3x Samsung 850 Pro 250GB, on Raid 0 Windows 10 x64 nVIDIA drivers 355.

82 Case Full Tower Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced.

So I have had this card in my system since October 2015 and it has been absolutely beautiful. It does everything I thought it would do and in some cases more. I couldn’t be happier and I haven’t even had to OC the card to get it to run nice and fast (got lucky on the draw I suppose) So my main complaint now after 4 months of scattered gaming and some attempts at OBS recording/twitch streaming is.

The card has now developed a high pitched coil whine after about 10-15 minutes of anything GPU intensive. I noticed it first (quite easily since my poor card was screaming in my ear) after 3 rounds of BF4 at 1440p.

Between the last 2 games I didn’t notice any noise so it started up sometime between the start and finish of the last round which was about 25 minutes or so. Got to the end screen to see my awards and ending K/D ratio and all I can hear through my headphones I might add which were playing music at decently high volume is this ungodly high pitched screaming sound.

I close out everything and go to the desktop to check changes and the pitch had changed. I listened closely and then started stopping fans one by one to see if maybe a fan bearing was gone but no luck.

Not even the GPU fans. Then I opened MSI Afterburner and turned off the fans on the GPU and the pitch altered slightly but the real giveaway was when I upped the Memory speed by about 200mhz and the pitch change dramatically changed and was higher.

My card was whining. 4 solid months and now I have a screaming brick that yells at me if I do anything GPU intensive. 5 stars until now. Now I’m trying to figure out how I ended up with an 800+ dollar nightmare.

Originally built PC couple years ago and after doing some reading I went with said Radeon card since a very highly played game (still playing) is Final Fantasy XI and read Nvidia drivers seem to crash constantly when playing the game.

Sadly this remains true to the 980 TI, again not the card’s fault but annoying since I still avidly play the older game. With this minor stumble, I can’t wait to throw some of the newer games at this thing.

Specs state Boost to 1076 MHz, however Precision X shows -IDLE = 135 MHz -Under load = 1201 Using Precision X and adjusting the fan curve I was easily able to put a +250 and currently testing it at 1451 MHz.

Temps raise pretty quickly, but once I adjusted the fan curve I stay usually in the 60’s up to 68, the fan kicks in at I believe 70 percent and then revs down when the temp drops to 50’s. Still working on it.

-Many are still waiting for June 16th to see what AMD can do with the Fury.

for 650$(590$ for me cos i was gonna buy arkham knight anyway) you can not beat this price for the amount of horsepower this thing has. once again nvidia strikes again. i am very satisfied with this purchase.

if you have full 4k display you might need to run sli if you want 60fps stable.

Good GPU for 1080p gaming, even in 2021, roughly somewhere around 1050 in performance. It basically doubled the 7950 it replaced in an older rig and brought it up to spec for newer games. It’s a good choice if the price is right relative to other options (so $200-300 as of crazy 2021, maybe ~$100 non-inflated).

Blower design is decently quiet, however even with a fresh pasting of MX4 it gets up near 80C at max load which leaves very little room for any consideration of overclocking, and requires decent case cooling and reasonable ambient temps to not throttle at stock.

Just be aware that it’s not going to give a lot of thermal headroom.

It is imperative (IMO) that I point out that I acquired my two cards as part of a new build. Therefore, all of my parts are newer (and admittedly higher end components. much to the chagrin of my wife).

This certainly limits my ability to provide an accurate picture of what the card may perform like alongside hardware that is not as new. So I do think it is vital for those considering an upgrade to this card that they dig deep and establish how it might perform if they are running DDR3, a mid-range or somewhat dated processor, relying on a spinning disk HDD versus a SSD or perhaps a Hybrid SSD, using the minimal PSU required, etc.

With that being said, this is hands down the most potent flagship card I have owned to date. Admittedly, I did not own a Titan, nor did I upgrade to 780 Ti from the 780 when that addition to the series was released.

However, I did run the 780 (still strong), the HD 7990 before that, and the HD 6970 X2 prior still. Never have I added a card to a rig and felt it flow with the system as seamlessly as I have experienced with this card.

Considering all the predecessors were on a relatively even keel with their counterpart equipment; I believe comparing their relative performance and ease of use to be relevant. Aside from a handful of personal preference pieces in the console I have needed to implement zero changes to the configuration of my cards.

There has been absolutely zero tweaking from one game title to the next, and I am honestly sad to say that those configurations from game to game were always an annoyance I had with the previous cards.

To me, if the card was strong enough to perform with the most advanced games, I should need to do zero (and I really feel zero) modifications to the card settings to accommodate older or less demanding titles.

I should be able, if I want, to opt for the “application to decide” and let it roll, but that never proved to be the case and more often than not I would find myself creating individual profiles from one game to the next… to date I have experienced nothing like that with these cards.

I guess what it ultimately boils down to with the GTX 980, is that I have every confidence in its abilities at this point, and that is admittedly a new feeling for me when it comes to the GPU. Thus far they have not balked at a thing, temps have remained low, and this makes me quite excited for the future and upcoming games! NVIDIA took a brave step with the GTX 980, and rather than move forward with some newer technologies available to them… they took some of the previous tech available and worked hard to improve, if not downright perfect it.

Provided your computer can keep up with this card, it is a purchase likely to leave you with zero regrets (but perhaps an agitated significant other).

Upon first putting a new computer together, I ran into a bunch of issues, many of which were quelled when I updated/installed all of my motherboard & video card drives. Over the next few weeks, I ran into mountains of issues, and spent days on end doing nothing but troubleshooting my new rig, installing updates, looking online for reasons for my issues, nothing fixed my issues, and nothing seemed like it was really the cause.

During this time I had run into BSODs, Windows Starting freezes, “Overclocking failed” messages after forcing a restart, even though nothing was overclocked (I believe this is because if the computer is forced to shut down the motherboard thinks it was because of an overclocking issue), the crash/freeze in the first place because I saw this error message lead me off track, and looking into motherboard bios for days.

Once the system seemed simi-stable by running my ram at 2100 instead of it’s 3200 that it, and the motherboard said they both should be able to handle, most of my issues stopped. Thing is, that’s when I started getting games crashing after playing for a while.

Warframe, and Assassin’s Creed Unity, running of course at 4k, since this is being sold as a 4k card, would crash after around 5-30 minutes in game. I checked heat, power usage, and other things to see if the card was having issues in that way, nothing.

I found that shadowplay being running would almost guarantee the game would crash within 5 minutes, but if this was disabled, the game, and often the computer would still blue screen. If the computer didn’t bsod, I would get a NVIDIA Kernel crash error when the program failed, this, and the fact that I wasn’t getting any results showing my issues online related to my motherboard lead me to start doing research online about this graphics card.

Even though NewEgg is showing a mountain of good reviews, I was able to find a fair few other people with similar issues when using this card, after looking around, upping the power going to the card by 15%, checking it’s temps again, and doing even more research, I finally broke down & contacted EVGA support for help.

Upon which they told me to put the card in another computer to see if the problems followed the card :] Thank goodnessI have a second computer, so I could do this, otherwise I would have probably been up rubbish matter creek.

Anyhow, stuck the 980 sc into a slightly older computer, and stuck that computers 690 in my new rig. Well what do you know, Benchmark crashes, game crashes, lag on Windows Startup- all on my old computer with the 980 sc installed in it.

On my new computer? With the now installed on it? Laggy, laggy, benchmarks, but NEVER crashing, hell, I was even able to run Warframe @ 4k 120 fps, for over half an hour. even with shadowplay running, and not a single crash.

Needless to say, the card is clearly at fault, not just for the games crashing, but for all the agonizing issues I have been getting for WEEKS! RMAing.

I thought my 2009 Mac Pro had reached the end of it’s life. Apple hasn’t released ANY new computer worth replacing it. I was depressed at the idea of having to switch back to MicroSoft. Then I discovered an article that showed me how to upgrade my machine to a 12 core, 64Gb machine running Sierra! The only thing missing was a good graphics card that would be compatible with my system.

This turned out to be an excellent card and very capable of running 2 monitors while I work in CAD software, and video and still image processing. It’s quiet, draws surprisingly little power, and is completely compatible with my Mac except it doesn’t show the Mac boot screen.

I knew about the boot screen before I bought it. I could have the card flashed for full Mac support, but since I run Windows through Parallels instead of Bootcamp, I don’t need the splash screen. Great card at a good price, and I am happily running a state-of-the-art Mac pro again!.

For reference, this card has replaced the SLI 670s (Gigabyte windforce coolers) I had in my mATX build. In 3Dmark benches at stock, it performs slightly better or ever so slightly worse than that setup depending on the particular test.

After overclocking, it outperforms them quite nicely but with much less noise and heat. I’m looking forward to enjoying this card as not every game is properly optimized for SLI right away and I love having this much muscle in a single GPU (until I grab a second one of these).

I’d like to update this review after owning the card for more than a few days, after overclock gets stable, and eventually once I can SLI this bad boy. Sidenote: at the time when I bought this, the PNY card was the only 980 offering that worked with Shoprunner 2-day shipping, so that influenced my purchase :).

I bought this card for almost $100 less than buying it from major etailers. Card was still sealed in original condition. Overall it performs great at 1440p and can easily max out almost any game @1080p.

It is a reference design which I like but I have seen it reach 85c which will thermal throttle it, although a custom msi afterburner fan profile will keep it in the 70s with more noise. If that bothers you you are better off with a custom cooler version like the ones from EVGA, ASUS, MSI, etc.

I did not buy it this time from New Egg as PNY had a better deal this time around. I have always bought PNY for their great lifetime warranty, that being said I have never had to use the warranty as PNY sells quality products, even their reference cards are of high quality.

I think PNY demands the best chips from Nvidia. I read about other people saying what great RMA service they get from EVGA MSI etc, thats all good but whats better is not having to RMA a product which like I said I have never had too with PNY.

I have PNY ssd’s and memory, no problems with those products either.

This was replacing a dying GTX 550 Ti of mine that had a faulty temp sensor cause system instability randomly. Worked just fine in Linux Ubuntu 14. 04 using 346. 46 drivers (latest online drivers had problems installing DKMS modules, but meh) I use this card in Blender with Cycles which gets about 2m17s with the bmw27.

blend benchmark file (versus 6-7min on an AMD FX-6300). When I do render, 1 core of my CPU maxes out and I don’t quite get the lowest benchmark numbers for this card, so I suspect my CPU is limiting this cards full potential! It’s not the fastest GPU in the world, but ideally I would like the buy a second for Cycles.

Wait, a second GPU 960? Yes! While it totally isn’t worth in the price/performance context, understand that with Blender Cycles you don’t use SLI! Instead you use a separate dedicated primary video card (and one that can at least do _some_ gaming as you aren’t using SLI), while you tell cycles to use the second card for the realtime rendering.

This way you get perfect flawless UI and editing performance while also getting nice realtime cycles, but only if you don’t use SLI. Besides, who want’s to buy a pair of Titans in non SLI when your primary GPU would mostly be idle when using Blender? So, if you are looking for a cheap card that works fine and can do some gaming, and cheap enough to add a second one later, this card is fine!.

I wanted more performance at 1440p than my 290x could offer, so I decided to bite the bullet and try the 980ti. I have generally liked MSI graphics cards and they once again have impressed. The card is fairly hefty and looks great.

The glowing logo looks excellent in my case without being obnoxious. The cooler does a fantastic job while keeping the acoustics in line. Even at 100%, once in a closed case, is not what I would call loud at all.

The sound profile is about the same as my Asus DCII 290X at 55% fan. Overclocking the card is easy and only let down by the 109% power limit which causes some throttling from time to time. For instance with +120 caor and +500 memory, Witcher 3 at max detail and 1440p and 99% gpu load bounces around from 1509Mhz to 1468Mhz depending on what is being rendered.

Temps with 80% fan hold steady in the 74-75C range. Other games do not throttle and others like Metro LL, will drop to as low as 1455Mhz on occasion. Regardless, the performance is awesome at these speeds.

Compared to my 290X, with both cards overclocked, I see about a 60% increase in performance with the 980ti (depending on game). In 3dMark Firestrike it scored a graphics score of 21063 which is not to shabby.

Overall, I am very pleased with MSI’s offering. $680 is a lot of dough, but is the going rate for this kind of performance. It runs pretty quiet, has NO coil whine, looks great and performs awesome overall.

5 star as far as I am concerned.

This is my first high end card and it did not disappoint. I built my new computer with this card in mind as the center piece and once the build was complete, I installed Battlefield 4 and cranked everything to the highest “ultra” setting (bear in mind, I do not have a 4K monitor so everything was kept at 1080p), and I consistently averaged over 200 fps.

The Windforce fan only turns on when the GPU is being worked, otherwise it turns off keeping the PC eerily quiet during normal usage. The LED indicators will let you know when it’s on or off in style.

Paired with the Fractal Design R4 case, and honestly (even during gaming) it’s hard to tell it’s on without the Windforce light because it’s so quiet. The con I have listed isn’t really a con, but more of a warning, plan your build with this card, because it is huge.

It should fit in most mid towers such as the one I mentioned earlier, but it’ll be a tight fit. If you’re looking for a top tier card, but not about to drop $1000 on a Titan, this is a great choice.

This card comes factory overclocked from the stock frequency found in standard 980 ti’s. I purchased two of these and they run perfectly stable and very cool at the Gigabyte OC. I have also been able to push these to the same frequencies as the EVGA KiNGPiN 980 Ti, and they have maintained rock solid stability under several different bench marking programs.

The cooling on these cards is excellent, however it is the only down side to this card. The triple fans and open cooling style is effective on the card but blasts heat into a computer case. If you do not have excellent ventilation in your case this card will heat everything in your case including itself if used under heavy load for extended time.

This is easily solved with cross flow ventilation that exits the case just after passing over the card.

So, I originally tried installing this card on a MSI H170A gaming motherboard and there seems to be some conflict between the two components. I originally thought this was caused by a defective unit, but after encountering the same issue with a different Gigabyte 980 Ti I confirmed this wasn’t the case.

(I also confirmed the board works using different model video cards, like that GTX 760 I mentioned previously. ) I understand that there’s a lot that goes into these types of issues, but I did reset the CMOS, flashed the most up-to-date BIOS, reinstalled windows, and of course ensured the previous drivers were completely nonexistent.

Other users have posted about this on different forums but there does not appear to be a workaround when using this combination of components. Now that I have everything working (with a different motherboard) I’m extremely satisfied with my purchase and would highly recommend this card to anyone looking to upgrade.

I can’t really find anything bad to say about it other than I wished it worked with my original board, but I’m having a hard time faulting Gigabyte for the issue which is why I’m still going to give this 4 eggs.

Over all, this is essentially a reference card, just put out by MSI instead of directly from nvidia. That’s why I bought this card. I knew it had High temps, and was originally planning on a custom cooling solution.

However, closed loop was not what I expected, and honestly, i couldn’t be happier. In a few years, when the price goes down, ill buy another card and do the same thing to that card. The low (relative) cost of this card is a great solution for those looking to do custom work without having to overspend on high end cards with decent but expensive coolers.

If you aren’t prepared for this, please, save up a little longer and get a twin frozr or other 980 ti with an open design. This card is not for new builders, or even those who know what they are doing and just want the cheapest 980 ti.

The low cost isn’t without its holdups, but if you are willing to go custom, this is your card. Kraken G10 Link: http://www. newegg. com/Product/Product. aspx?Item=N82E16835146038 PS the video on the page from NZXT was extremely helpful, as well as LinusTechTips review of this product.

I had a chance to upgrade to this card from my vanilla GTX 980 for about $150 after selling my 980 and throwing in a GTX 660 that doesn’t even work properly. Not much of an upgrade you might think from a 980 to a 980 Ti? Oh no.

It was! This card is absolutely amazing and dead silent. I’m running two 27″ IPS monitors, one is a ASUS 2640×1440, and the other a Dell 3840×2160 @60Hz (UHD or 4K). They say this isn’t a true “4k” card by itself, but it is.

I can run BF4, all setting maxed and only AA and AA post turned off (everything else on ULTRA and HBAO on) and it stays around 65-70FPS. In 4k! Wow it looks absolutely stunning. It freaks you out the first time you see it.

Simply incredible. On the 1440p monitor it stays in the (90’s and spikes over 100 FPS). This card is really a fantastic top shelf card and if you have the money get it. You won’t need any new graphics card for years.

There is nothing really negative about it other than the price. And it is a better card than the AMD Fury. I could have had either card, and I picked this one without a second thought. Oh and MSI Afterburner works great controlling the Twin Frozr fan speed and Oc’ing the card.

Just getting started OC’ing but it looks like it will do very well. Just FYI – Better have a good CPU for this one guys. I have an i7 4790k running at 4. 6GHz so no issue there. But your CPU could be a bottleneck if its older.

The market for gfx cards is terrible atm. However I had a specific need for this card only. I just wish they would have said “repack” some where on the details. The card does seem to be new as there was nothing obvious to tell me it wasnt.

But its super sketch to not say anything and sell it as “new” only to receive a box that is not.