Nvidia Launches GTX 980 And GTX 970 "Maxwell" Graphics Cards ($549 & $329)

I just pulled the trigger on Amazon -- ordered EVGA SC 970 (ACX 2.0)

What are the chances of coil whine on this one, 50/50 ?
 
I just pulled the trigger on Amazon -- ordered EVGA SC 970 (ACX 2.0)

What are the chances of coil whine on this one, 50/50 ?
It seems that way so far and I think it comes down to if you notice it or not. I haven't noticed it on my 970 or now my 980. I don't want to either, OCD will kick in.
 
OC'ed

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Going to pull the trigger on the GTX 970 from Gigabyte, any known disadvantage if I go with the ITX version? I've got the fractal node 304, and I'm pretty sure the full size would fit, but it might be cool to get the itx version. Any thoughts?
 
How can I tell? I'm getting what I percperceive to be great marks in valley (almost 3000 score at 1440p)

Does gsync cause a issues in firemark?

To check if you're throttling, include your load, temperature, boost clock and voltage in Afterburner OSD. Set your OC profile and run Firemark. Once you see your temp increases, check your boost clock. If you have a good sample and heat dissipation, your 970 boost clock should stay in the range of ~1500Mhz at 71C.

Unfortunately I don't have a GSync monitor so I don't really know.
 
Nope no throttling, don't know if I'm asked this here but the firestrike runs only at 1080p? Or does can it run at 1440p giving me a lowlower score?
 
I ordered my 970 from amazon.ca on Oct 14 and they have no ETA when they will deliver or when stock is going to arrive. Anyone else in the same boat? :(
 
I ordered my 970 from amazon.ca on Oct 14 and they have no ETA when they will deliver or when stock is going to arrive. Anyone else in the same boat? :(

Can you cancel the order? Better to do that and just order from Newegg, unless you reaaaaally want to buy it from Amazon.
 
From what i have read the gigabyte G1 has the best cooling (4 heat pipes, 3 fans) but it is also the loudest. A few of the others can turn off the fan when the card is under 60 (Celsius) - making those cards overall quieter.
It looks like the G1 is also using "cherry picked" chips , but i am not sure about that. If true it should be better for OC.

Thanks, will look into it. Also need to be sure if it fits in my case.
 
Just wanted to report in since I was so worried about the coil whine before buying the card and other people are worried as well

I have the GIGABYTE GTX 970 1 (Rev 1.1)

I've only tried The Witcher 2 (I think that one is known for causing coil whine during menus?) and Dragon Age 2

I've only played around 10 or 15 minutes in The Witcher 2 and I'm not sure when I heard it, but there was definitely some very light sound I've never heard before at some point when I played it, but it was for only a few second and then I heard nothing.

Dragon Age 2 - Nothing at all

I'm really pleased with my card temp - its 28C when idle and didn't pass 40C while playing Dragon Age 2 (not the most demanding game in the world)

I checked the temp while gaming by simply alt tabbing so I don't know if that's the ideal way
 
Anybody here try the Gigabyte GV-N970IXOC-4GD yet? Just curious because that one will fit in my case and I've actually heard of Gigabyte.(I know the Zotac will fit too but I hadn't heard of them before.)
 
I'm struggling to get a stable overclock with my Gigabyte G1 970.

I can manage +140 on the core fine, and have played a few games for hours with this just fine. It also passed Heaven @ +160 with no artifacts too, so the core is fine.

But my issue is with the memory clock, as soon as I adjust this, even just +50 it'll crash in games like Far Cry 4 or Battlefield 4. It passed a Heaven benchmark @ +350 and it seems that others are getting between +300 and +400 on the Memory Clock.

What could I be doing wrong or did I just lose the lottery with the memory on my card? I'm using Precision X with power at 112% and temp limit at 80C unlinked and prioritizing power. Temps never go above 70C and for most part hover around 65C while playing Far Cry 4 at 1440p.

Any tips? Should I link power and temps in Precision or prioritize temperature over power?
 
I'm struggling to get a stable overclock with my Gigabyte G1 970.

I can manage +140 on the core fine, and have played a few games for hours with this just fine. It also passed Heaven @ +160 with no artifacts too, so the core is fine.

But my issue is with the memory clock, as soon as I adjust this, even just +50 it'll crash in games like Far Cry 4 or Battlefield 4. It passed a Heaven benchmark @ +350 and it seems that others are getting between +300 and +400 on the Memory Clock.

What could I be doing wrong or did I just lose the lottery with the memory on my card? I'm using Precision X with power at 112% and temp limit at 80C unlinked and prioritizing power. Temps never go above 70C and for most part hover around 65C while playing Far Cry 4 at 1440p.

Any tips? Should I link power and temps in Precision or prioritize temperature over power?
Could be the chip lottery or you to tune voltage settings. Some even flash the bios to unlock higher thresholds. That's all up to you though. I'd take what you got and just live with it. I've had more than a few graphics cards do that to me too. But most of the cars I get already overclocked another 20 or 30 percent like the triple or dual fan carts.
 
I'm struggling to get a stable overclock with my Gigabyte G1 970.

I can manage +140 on the core fine, and have played a few games for hours with this just fine. It also passed Heaven @ +160 with no artifacts too, so the core is fine.

But my issue is with the memory clock, as soon as I adjust this, even just +50 it'll crash in games like Far Cry 4 or Battlefield 4. It passed a Heaven benchmark @ +350 and it seems that others are getting between +300 and +400 on the Memory Clock.

What could I be doing wrong or did I just lose the lottery with the memory on my card? I'm using Precision X with power at 112% and temp limit at 80C unlinked and prioritizing power. Temps never go above 70C and for most part hover around 65C while playing Far Cry 4 at 1440p.

Any tips? Should I link power and temps in Precision or prioritize temperature over power?

Which brand memory does your card have? I don't know if the G1s all come with the same modules or not.

I'm settled at +600 memory with the Samsung GDDR5, but I was also using +600 on my GTX 770 which had Hynix memory (which gave it the same 8212mhz effective memory clock I do believe).

bc91Jwc.gif


I'm at 100% power and stock voltages too.
 
I installed 970s in SLI over the weekend and I'm noticing a definite increase in heat coming from my PC compared to my old SLI 760s. Should I be concerned?

I had a look at Afterburner and the max heat was 70 degrees, which I don't think is too bad?
 
I installed 970s in SLI over the weekend and I'm noticing a definite increase in heat coming from my PC compared to my old SLI 760s. Should I be concerned?

I had a look at Afterburner and the max heat was 70 degrees, which I don't think is too bad?

70 celcius is fine for a 2-way setup of those cards under load.
 
I just pulled the trigger on Amazon -- ordered EVGA SC 970 (ACX 2.0)

What are the chances of coil whine on this one, 50/50 ?

I have that one and coil whine has started after about two weeks of use. UGHHH so annoying. First noticed it in Far Cry 4. When I pause the game the whine immediately stops.
 
I have that one and coil whine has started after about two weeks of use. UGHHH so annoying. First noticed it in Far Cry 4. When I pause the game the whine immediately stops.

Have you tried using a frame limiter? Use Nvidia Inspector and limit your frames to 60-70 and see if that helps.
 
I made my first attempt at fiddling with OC'ing my 970 tonight. I haven't done any of that before, so I'm a little cautious. I got my Fire Strike benchmark to ~9900, and I'm pretty happy with that considering I'm still holding up with an OC'd i5 2500k.

Anyway, I got my card running with +140 Core and +450 memory (+10% power limit/stock voltage), and its been a nice little bump up, but I'm worried about temperature. It looks like its capping out at 75 degrees, and I haven't seen it go above that. Is that anything to be concerned about?

I doubt anything outside of the card is causing the heat, since I've got a minor heat issue all around. The ventilation in my case is pretty garbage. I need to invest in a new case one of these days.

EDIT: Well scratch that, I think. I switched my power settings back over to "adaptive" and it looks like its hanging out at 65 degrees now with no performance change.
Scratch that again, I just accidentally changed my fan settings. But now I know how to change my fan settings, so that helps the first question, too. But as a generic question, it 75 degrees at load too high?
 
Which brand memory does your card have? I don't know if the G1s all come with the same modules or not.

I'm settled at +600 memory with the Samsung GDDR5, but I was also using +600 on my GTX 770 which had Hynix memory (which gave it the same 8212mhz effective memory clock I do believe).

bc91Jwc.gif


I'm at 100% power and stock voltages too.

Mine is a revision 1.1 and also has Samsung memory according to GPU-Z.

While gaming the max TDP I got was 80% with +150 core and +300 mem (just to test the TDP) and it still crashes, even with temps below 70C. Beats me.
 
Mine is a revision 1.1 and also has Samsung memory according to GPU-Z.

While gaming the max TDP I got was 80% with +150 core and +300 mem (just to test the TDP) and it still crashes, even with temps below 70C. Beats me.

Crashing even at +50 seems strange to me. Have you tried it while only boosting the memory and leaving the core at stock? I assume you've made sure your power supply is up to the task too? Memory has always been the easiest thing for me to overclock over the past few years; core is where I usually don't get very far.

It really could be a case of the memory just not being able to handle it at the current voltage/power settings, which would be a shame, but not the worst thing to be dealing with. You've still got a great core overclock going that seems stable from what you've mentioned.
 
We'll see a much more powerful Maxwell chip sometime next year. It'll probably debut first in a Titan-type part, then a couple months down the line be priced much more cheaply in the GTX 780's successor. AMD also have their next-generation 390X coming out sometime next year. I would say current stuff is sufficient for 1920x1080 and 60 FPS with reasonable settings for years, but something much more powerful will be releasing in 2015, maybe even the first half of 2015.

These will still be significantly more expensive than $350 (current approx price of 970s) though, right?

And I wonder how much an 8GB 970 would cost if it ever materializes.

I'm trying to figure out if the better message to give folks who are considering waiting ~6 months is that: more powerful cards will come out, but they're unlikely to have as good price/performance value as the 970 currently does.

If I'm not mistaken there hasn't been a high-end card from Nvidia this well priced in a long time, and there might not be another one for a while (lower-end Maxwells like the 960 notwithstanding). You can thank the maturing of the 28nm process for that.
 
These will still be significantly more expensive than $350 (current approx price of 970s) though, right?
Yea, almost definitely. I would guess something like:

$320 GTX970

$500 GTX980($50 price drop)

$700-800 Titan II(or whatever its called)

And I wonder how much an 8GB 970 would cost if it ever materializes.

I'm trying to figure out if the better message to give folks who are considering waiting ~6 months is that: more powerful cards will come out, but they're unlikely to have as good price/performance value as the 970 currently does.

If I'm not mistaken there hasn't been a card from Nvidia this well prices in a very long time, and there might not be another one for a while (except lesser-tier Maxwells, like the 960). You can thank the maturing of the 28nm process for that.
Difficult situation. I think if anything is going to rival the value of the GTX970 in the next 6 months, it would be an AMD 390(non-X version), which might cost a bit more than the 970, but might also be more powerful, with higher bus width and more vRAM.

I wouldn't expect a price cut on the 970. And I really don't think Nvidia is going to beat the bang-for-buck of the 970 for a while, either.

I suppose a used 970 in 6 months or so might be possible for like ~$250 or so? If that's something you'd be interested in waiting for.
 
I have to say that I'm slightly disapointed in the performance of my 970 in the context of new releases like DA or AC:Unity (ok, it's Ubi...) or Evil Wtihin...don't get me wrong, the card itself is great, cool and silent and quite strong and runs almost on 980 level but it seems like it won't be enough for nextgen ports at 60FPS. And that's what I bought it for. Lastgen Games ran at 60FPS on my 660TI already....
 
I have to say that I'm slightly disapointed in the performance of my 970 in the context of new releases like DA or AC:Unity (ok, it's Ubi...) or Evil Wtihin...don't get me wrong, the card itself is great, cool and silent and quite strong and runs almost on 980 level but it seems like it won't be enough for nextgen ports at 60FPS. And that's what I bought it for. Lastgen Games ran at 60FPS on my 660TI already....

Evil Within is terribly optimized. AC: Unity is also pretty bad from what I've read.
 
I have to say that I'm slightly disapointed in the performance of my 970 in the context of new releases like DA or AC:Unity (ok, it's Ubi...) or Evil Wtihin...don't get me wrong, the card itself is great, cool and silent and quite strong and runs almost on 980 level but it seems like it won't be enough for nextgen ports at 60FPS. And that's what I bought it for. Lastgen Games ran at 60FPS on my 660TI already....
Nothing is running those games at a solid 60fps, no drops, and I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see anything that does for quite a while.

Really wouldn't say its a hardware problem. You can turn the settings down in these games drastically and they still wont do a solid 60fps.
 
I have to say that I'm slightly disapointed in the performance of my 970 in the context of new releases like DA or AC:Unity (ok, it's Ubi...) or Evil Wtihin...don't get me wrong, the card itself is great, cool and silent and quite strong and runs almost on 980 level but it seems like it won't be enough for nextgen ports at 60FPS. And that's what I bought it for. Lastgen Games ran at 60FPS on my 660TI already....

You listed two known unoptimized games and DA(haven't read up much about DA to know about it). You'll be alright
 
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