.PSA: It looks like Best Buy has 970's with reference "Titan" coolers in stock now. Several of my nearby stores have them in stock! Price is kinda steep tho. Somebody on slickdeals claims they price matched off another 970 that was $315. If my dieing Radeon 7970 can't hold on then I'll likely be trying to get one of these babies.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/nvidia-...lack/9855169.p?id=1219441201895&skuId=9855169
If you plan to overclock it, you might want to dig up some reviews to see what kind of performance you get out of it. Fan noise might be an issue too, although I suppose you could setup a quiet fan profile for it somehow.
I don't think I've heard anything about coil whine from reference 970s, so those might be a good option, especially if you're going to SLI them.
Have they improved their warranty registration? Because whenever I got Galaxy cards in the past, I kept finding that their warranty registration page didn't exist.
Just anecdotal but I went from an EVGA FTW (RMA'd three of them actually) to the MSI Gold Edition and there's a marked difference. It runs cooler, faster, and much quieter. I'd describe the FTW's coil buzz as "light" which I could probably only hear because my PC is otherwise silent. Can't hear the MSI unless I open the case and put my ear next to it, and it might actually not do it at all anymore. Virtually silent. I'd assume other MSI cards are similar. I can't recommend EVGA after going through three, even though their CS was super helpful.
PSA: It looks like Best Buy has 970's with reference "Titan" coolers in stock now. Several of my nearby stores have them in stock! Price is kinda steep tho. Somebody on slickdeals claims they price matched off another 970 that was $315. If my dieing Radeon 7970 can't hold on then I'll likely be trying to get one of these babies.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/nvidia-...lack/9855169.p?id=1219441201895&skuId=9855169
Titan cooler plus the reference plugs, so three display ports instead of one display port and DVI ports.
When I used to game with a 16:10 monitor, I used a program called Flawless Widescreen that got rid of black bars and let me change FOV options. It might be worth a shot.
Its not that the cooler is *that* good(though its perfectly fine), its that it works differently than most of the non-reference design coolers that have fans that blow down. If you have two(or more) GPU's, having the top cards blowing down on the other ones is obviously not good as its blowing hot air at the bottom cards and also limits the amount of room for the hot air to dissipate, reducing the cooling potential of the top card as well. The Titan cooler blows out the side of the card, out of the back of the case.
