Well, this took a long time to come! But finally, here is our review of the NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti and the Gigabyte G1 Gaming WINDFORCE Edition GTX 980 Ti. At the risk of giving away the verdict before the review proper, we love these babies. We got two of these cards to get our paws on, one reference and one from Gigabyte, their G1 Gaming WINDFORCE Edition. And we were blown away by the performance, to say the least.
Nvidia GTX 980 Ti (Reference) — IT’S ALIVE! IT’S ALIIIIIIIVE!
Well, it’s here. And it kicks butts left and right. The 980 Ti features the a cut down version of the GM 2000 GPU present in GTX Titan X and as a result performs within the actual margin of error when compared to the Titan X. Featuring just over 2,800 CUDA Cores and memory clocked at 7GHz, this card goes head to head with the most powerful consumer grade GPU and holds it’s own. We at GC are humbled by the smallness of the margin by which the GTX Titan X beats this card. Plus the card is whisper quiet. Too bad Nvidia doesn’t sell the card with the reference cooler, as it’s just perfect for small PCs with the rear exhaust that doesn’t raise temperatures inside the case. In our tests the card never went above 85C (Measured by MSI Afterburner), but your mileage may vary.
GIGABYTE GTX 980 Ti Windforce Edition — It’s a Stallion, baby!
Gigabyte was one of the first third party board partners who got the custom cooler 980 Ti out, and have put out an absolutely marvellous product, as striking in looks as it is in performance. The Heatsink is all metal and looks marvellous in white and black, with it’s black PCB and that beast of a heatsink. Serioously, that heatsink is large.
What differentiates it from the reference model is the somewhat mild 10MHz overclock on the memory and the 1291 MHz Boost clock with the base clock being 1190 MHz (as opposed to 1075 MHZ and 1000MHz respectively on the reference model)
OVERVIEW
The product itself is slick, with a seriously gorgeous metal WINDFORCE cooler and one of the sexiest backplates on the market. The Cooler itself is a three fan affair finished in black and white, and packs some serious heat dissipation power: it has six, count ‘em, six heat pipes dissipating heat into the aluminium heatsink. And unlike some manufacturers, Gigabyte also covers the VRM, so it won’t overheat when you further overclock this not-so-little beast. Surprisingly, more cooling doesn’t mean it’s loud, as the card was whisper quiet at idle (the fans didn’t even spin) and was very quiet under load too. Part of this has to do with Gigabyte’s specially designed fans and fin architecture on the heatsink. So you can overclock and overvolt this baby without fearing about high temperatures. Plus the backplate adds much needed rigidity and support to the card, as the heatsink is MASSIVE!
PERFORMANCE
We were awe-stricken, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and other words that mean impressed to an, well, impressive degree when we found out that the 980 Ti WINDFORCE Edition outperforms the Titan X in many games. I mean look at the figures! I think we can all agree that the performance is freakishly amazing. This card goes a long, long way in the VFM quota, especially with the Titan being priced at eighty friggin grand and the G1 Gaming coming in at 50 thousand. And it’s not just 1-2 FPS within-margin-of-error outperforming, its- well, take a look at it yourself:
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- GTA V at 2560×1440, 2xMSAA
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- Far Cry 4 at 2560×1440, All settings PUSHED TO THE LIMIT
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- These Benchmarks are 3DMark Fire Strike (Synthetic benchmarks) provided by Nvidia
(One thing about the WINDFORCE: Install the bundled software, Gigabyte’s OC Genie, set the mode to “OC” from “Gaming” to PUSH IT TO THE LIMIT!)
FEATURES:
Maxwell brings many new features to the table, and we have covered this previously. But the overclocking potential on these cards are just marvellous, especially the G1 Gaming, as the tempratures were not very high at stock speeds. Plus, the cooler covers VRMs and the RAM chips too, meaning VRM overheating due to overvolting shouldn’t be a problem with it. We didn’t overclock our cards, so we cannot really tell you how well it DOES overclock.
The OC Genie software bundled with the WINDFORCE is nice and allows control over the LED logo that sits atop the card. While this logo isn’t strictly RGB, it can be configured to light up in seven different colours to go with your build. Plus it also has Gigabyte’s Flex Display technology, which allows you to connect up to five displays on a single card. The card is also whisper quiet, with the fan not spinning at all at idle, and even the spinning fans were quiet due to Gigabyte’s specially designed fans.
What really impressed us was the heatsink: the contact points and heatpipes are all copper, and it dissipates heat so well that the G1 gaming barely touches 70C at load.
VERDICT
If you’re looking to play games on 4K or 1440p, this is the card you should buy. Especially more so seeing the WINDFORCE beat out the frickin’ Titan X. Although the software is no MSI Afterburner, it’s still pretty good. These are very good buys.
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