Support NeoGAF

[Ally1987]

Nah they're super quiet. I'm running two NF-P12 PWM's on each radiator in push/pull, and I have them set-up with a custom fan curve. This chart will help give a better idea:

Here's a video too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWoSM70Ame4

At idle, while browsing the internet, listening to music etc. the fans are at roughly ~250rpm which is maybe 8-9db. The GPU temps sit in the low 30's.
For gaming I have the curve starting at about ~800rpm, ramping up to roughly 1100rpm maximum with GPU temps roughly ~45-55 degrees. I'm still tweaking it though, but the fans are close to silent even at the higher speeds, I can't even tell my PC is running while gaming.

Huge difference from the 980 Ti reference blowers, well worth the change. I have a Noctua DH-15 CPU cooler as well. And no, I'm not a Noctua salesman, but I guess you could call me a Noctua fanboy now

Why didn't I find out about those fans earlier before I bought those eLoops fans! I get about same temps as you, but my fans a bit too noisy, and its bothering me a little...

 

[ZOONAMI]

Yea, I'm pulling ~30k graphics score, but my overall score gets lowered significantly due to physics and combined tests.

Sli right? No way you are hitting 30k with a single card.

 

[Nick Pal]

After reading a ton of reviews I decided to go with the Asus Strix 980 Ti Direct CU3 mainly because of the build quality, noise levels and no coil whine which is a relief. Tuesday can't come soon enough!

 

[Trace]

Anyone in Canada know a place to get these at reasonable prices? $900+ is insane ;_;

 

[Nick Pal]

Anyone in Canada know a place to get these at reasonable prices? $900+ is insane ;_;

I bought my Asus Strix from these guys in Calgary. http://www.memoryexpress.com/

Total came to 891.49 before taxes + $8.99 flat rate shipping across Canada after they price matched and beat the difference by 10%. There's also a $30 rebate from Asus so you're looking at 861.49 before tax..yeah it's still insane but I doubt you'll find these discounted until HBM and 16nm arrive in 2016.

 

[Lord Phol]

Got myself an EVGA SC+ with backplate. It was a tough decision but it's definitely an upgrade from my 680. I've been doing alot of research and some testing to make sure that I got a good non-faulty card. This is what I got so far:

Temp: 50-55 idle, 70-80 gaming.
ASCI: 65%
OC limit: So far with EVGA precision I can get something like +124MHz @ core and +300 memory. Gonna try a bit more with afterburner and some tinkering.
Mark3D: ~18000 no stock, ~19300 at best OC.
Other: I've had sudden framedrops to the teens about 2 times in phantom pain and 1 time in dying light.

I also had screen freezes and a Grey screen when oc:ing above 124 core and starting 3DMark. These worries me a bit since I have to shut down the pc with the power button. Is it normal to get these kind of freezes when oc:ing? Sometimes it's just a simple driver crash though.
Overall I feel pretty good about it but when comparing to others my fps in witcher 3 novingrad and dying light seem a bit lower. Could be because of my CPU though which is an i5-3570k @ 3,4 Ghz.

Any thoughts on my results?

Rest of spec is:
16GB ram
Windows 10
600W PSU

 

[Lexxism]

Anyone in Canada know a place to get these at reasonable prices? $900+ is insane ;_;

Well, our dollar is insane too.

 

[baphomet]

Sli right? No way you are hitting 30k with a single card.

Yes, sli.

 

[Lord Phol]

Sweet! Did a clean install of the newest drivers while also removing EVGA Precision X. Installed MSI Afterburner instead, tried a quick clock of +133MHz on the core and set up a custom fan profile. A 3Dmark run later s and I got 19586 in graphics score . Now I feel a bit more confident about my purchase. Let's see what else we can do!

Edit: Okey might have spoken a bit too soon >>. Just got another complete PC freeze when upping the core to +169.

 

[PFD]

Anyone in Canada know a place to get these at reasonable prices? $900+ is insane ;_;

I got my MSI G6 from NCIX for $880 and only 5% tax for Quebec. It was pretty much the best deal around at the time (July). The prices are ridiculous, but I don't see them going down any time soon unfortunately

 

[Lord Phol]

Okey that was freaking scary.. Got another grey screen freeze. Hard rebooted the PC but nothing showed up on the monitor. Looked like the pc tried rebooting several times but failing. Noticed my card was making a sound even though it was turned off (could have been in sleep mode, I was panicking a bit), pulled the plug, waited a bit and put it back in. Looked like it booted like normal but still no monitor. Pulled the plug on the monitor, waited for it die completely, put the plug back in and now it's working.

Thought I had seriously bricked something there or everything for awhile x.x.

 

[Lord Phol]

Well my Pc is pretty much dead now, I've had bio artifacts, corrupted windows, pc not going past the bios screen, my gpu getting power through the display port even though the pc is turned off and other weird stuff. I've just given up, no way to make sure what's at fault here without throwing even more money away. It was nice while it lasted.

 

[Kezen]

Well my Pc is pretty much dead now, I've had bio artifacts, corrupted windows, pc not going past the bios screen, my gpu getting power through the display port even though the pc is turned off and other weird stuff. I've just given up, no way to make sure what's at fault here without throwing even more money away. It was nice while it lasted.

What is your PSU ?

 

[Nick Pal]

Well my Pc is pretty much dead now, I've had bio artifacts, corrupted windows, pc not going past the bios screen, my gpu getting power through the display port even though the pc is turned off and other weird stuff. I've just given up, no way to make sure what's at fault here without throwing even more money away. It was nice while it lasted.

Oh shit..sorry to hear that. Yeah..did you make sure had enough juice to run it? 650+ psu is recommended to run a 980Ti. If you get your system up and running again my advice is don't overclock it. The sudden frame rate drops seems like your card is throttling.

 

[paskowitz]

Please note this is not even remotely realistic in any game... sometimes it is just fun to see how high you can go....

 

[Ally1987]

thats on a custom loop, right?

 

[paskowitz]

thats on a custom loop, right?

Nope... air. I was like lol... it hasn't crash yet... (it crashed at 1560).

 

[jim2point0]

Custom look would be WAY cooler than 68 degrees... otherwise it's not a very good job

 

[Nick Pal]

So I just got my Ti the other day and I'm a bit confused with all the options available in the Nvidia Control Panel. It's a bit more comprehensive than the old Catalyst panel I was used to so I was wondering if you guys have default settings you use for every game or can you recommend what settings are good to have besides AFx16. For DSR I'm going with 1.5x my native resolution but is DSR smoothness all that important? Thanks!

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

So I just got my Ti the other day and I'm a bit confused with all the options available in the Nvidia Control Panel. It's a bit more comprehensive than the old Catalyst panel I was used to so I was wondering if you guys have default settings you use for every game or can you recommend what settings are good to have besides AFx16. For DSR I'm going with 1.5x my native resolution but is DSR smoothness all that important? Thanks!

Quite so! It's a trade off between sharpness and smoothness and minimizing AA artefacts.

Normally, the 33% default is adequate, I think. Might want to tweak it just in case you find the result too soft. Set it lower for more sharpness, or the other way around for a softer image. Setting it too sharp might not work too well if you're not doing a proper 4x DSR though.

Just experiment with the options there! Sometimes, it might be a good idea to tinker with other settings as you see fit, too. Sometimes you might want to opt for transparency SSAA instead of DSR if the UI doesn't scale well, for example, and the game happens to support MSAA. Of course, if you're able to use DSR, use that.

 

[Nick Pal]

Quite so! It's a trade off between sharpness and smoothness and minimizing AA artefacts.

Normally, the 33% default is adequate, I think. Might want to tweak it just in case you find the result too soft. Set it lower for more sharpness, or the other way around for a softer image. Setting it too sharp might not work too well if you're not doing a proper 4x DSR though.

Just experiment with the options there! Sometimes, it might be a good idea to tinker with other settings as you see fit, too. Sometimes you might want to opt for transparency SSAA instead of DSR if the UI doesn't scale well, for example, and the game happens to support MSAA. Of course, if you're able to use DSR, use that.

Thanks for the info. I set the smoothness to 50% but the 1-5x DSR doesn't scale so well on my ultrawide 3440x1440p monitor so I'll try SSAA instead and play around with the other settings. Good to know all that. Cheers!

edit. sorry one more question, does texture filtering -trilinear optimization have much of an effect? If a game supports trilinear filtering I usually enable it in-game.

 

[therealminime]

Moved my rig from a 4 year old mid sized case to a full sized one and load temps on my GPU have come down a ton, which is really welcome. The 980ti ran noticeably hotter than my 980, now in the new (still air only) case load temps are low 60's instead of high 60's into low/mid 70's. And even with my OC enabled it's not even touching 70. Even though I know low/mid 70's under load is totally reasonable, just nice to have everything running a bunch cooler now. Happy times. Very ready for extended PC gaming over the next few months.

 

[Darkone]

So I found an untouched Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming for 595$ who had no use for it and i bought it.

My question is it was bought overseas so I cannot use local store warranty if something will happen.
Anyone know what are Gigabyte policy on this?

 

[Auto-Reply]

...
edit. sorry one more question, does texture filtering -trilinear optimization have much of an effect? If a game supports trilinear filtering I usually enable it in-game.

I believe it can have an effect but I base this more on articles I have read and not on personal experience. GTAV is such a case where you can improve the picture by forcing 16xAF even if you have it set in-game already, according to df (I believe).

 

[Lord Phol]

What is your PSU ?

600W internal unkown ATX PSU, might very well be the problem in this scenario.

Oh shit..sorry to hear that. Yeah..did you make sure had enough juice to run it? 650+ psu is recommended to run a 980Ti. If you get your system up and running again my advice is don't overclock it. The sudden frame rate drops seems like your card is throttling.

Yeah after my little drama stunt there I went ahead and started tinkering again. Ended up removing a hdd and moving my USB keyboard to another slot. Somehow this seems to have done the trick! Noticed low framrates in mgsv yesterday though, opened up my case and customized the fans with afterburner, worked better after that.

I think you might be right about it being a PSU issue. Could be something with bios or heat as well. Gonna keep it at stock speeds, it's still a great card and witcher 3 runs great, but I'm a bit worried it will slowly kill my PC. I was dumb to buy a HP PC to begin with but I've learned my lesson after this whole thing.

This is my PC BTW (with added 8GB ram): http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=c03446546
Not sure if I can replace the PSU, the case is small and hard to tinker with as is. Worst case scenario I can still keep the card and RAM, and build myself a new PC, but that will have to wait.

Found a manual for replacing the PSU for my PC: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03280829. So I guess that's a possibility, now to find something that fits and has all the cables I need.

 

[Felix Lighter]

I would definitely consider replacing the PSU. With prebuilt PCs from Dell or HP, motherboard and power supply are always a crapshoot.

 

[Nick Pal]

I believe it can have an effect but I base this more on articles I have read and not on personal experience. GTAV is such a case where you can improve the picture by forcing 16xAF even if you have it set in-game already, according to df (I believe).

Good to know, thanks. I plan on buying GTAV soon. I always thought anything forced through your drivers takes precedent over anything in-game

 

[Mineshaft_Gap]

I just bought a reference gigabyte gtx980ti for $630 after tax. Did I do gud?

 

[Nick Pal]

600W internal unkown ATX PSU, might very well be the problem in this scenario.



Yeah after my little drama stunt there I went ahead and started tinkering again. Ended up removing a hdd and moving my USB keyboard to another slot. Somehow this seems to have done the trick! Noticed low framrates in mgsv yesterday though, opened up my case and customized the fans with afterburner, worked better after that.

I think you might be right about it being a PSU issue. Could be something with bios or heat as well. Gonna keep it at stock speeds, it's still a great card and witcher 3 runs great, but I'm a bit worried it will slowly kill my PC. I was dumb to buy a HP PC to begin with but I've learned my lesson after this whole thing.

This is my PC BTW (with added 8GB ram): http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=c03446546
Not sure if I can replace the PSU, the case is small and hard to tinker with as is. Worst case scenario I can still keep the card and RAM, and build myself a new PC, but that will have to wait.

Found a manual for replacing the PSU for my PC: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03280829. So I guess that's a possibility, now to find something that fits and has all the cables I need.

I'd keep an eye on how much power your GPU and CPU is using exactly. You can see it onscreen with a host of other GPU/CPU settings by customizing it under the monitoring tab in Afterburner. Don't go frying it again..

I just bought a reference gigabyte gtx980ti for $630 after tax. Did I do gud?

Yep..that's a good deal after tax. Going rate is about $650+tax..

 

[Retromelon]

I bought a corsair cx600 psu that i found out is tier 4 quality well after the purchase. How fucked am i

 

[Nick Pal]

Is this a decent score? I know very little about the various 3D benchmarks.

 

[AmyS]

TSMC to manufacture Pascal, not Samsung.

According to a report by BusinessKorea TSMC has been selected to produce the upcoming Pascal GPU after initially competing with Samsung for the contract.

http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/Report-TSMC-Produce-NVIDIA-Pascal-16-nm-FinFET
http://fudzilla.com/news/graphics/38771-samsung-will-not-make-pascal
http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-g...hip-single-chip-card-feature-16-gb-hbm2-vram/

GTC Japan - September 18th.

http://car.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20150911_720754.html

 

[paskowitz]

Is this a decent score? I know very little about the various 3D benchmarks.

It is a very very good score.

 

[Nick Pal]

It is a very very good score.

Thanks that makes me very happy. I might try overclocking it slightly although I'd hate to run the fans at 100% since they're so quiet at the default setting.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

So I found an untouched Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming for 595$ who had no use for it and i bought it.

My question is it was bought overseas so I cannot use local store warranty if something will happen.
Anyone know what are Gigabyte policy on this?

Gigabyte warranties based on your serial number but I don't know if they will look at your serial number, determine it was originally sold outside your region, and deny your warranty unless you are in the region you purchased it or not. That's something you should actually email them and ask.

 

[jim2point0]

Is this a decent score? I know very little about the various 3D benchmarks.

What is this silly benchmark? I only know Firestrike

 

[dmr87]

Combining MSI's expertise in graphics cards and Corsair's closed loop liquid-cooling solution, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti SEA HAWK was born. This latest addition to the MSI Hawk graphics cards family provides outstanding gaming performance at low temperatures.

The MSI GTX 980 Ti SEA HAWK utilizes the popular Corsair H55 closed loop liquid-cooling solution. The micro-fin copper base takes care of an efficient heat transfer to the high-speed circulation pump. The low-profile aluminum radiator is easy to install and equipped with a super silent 120 mm fan with variable speeds based on the GPU temperature. However, to get the best performance, the memory and VRM need top-notch cooling as well. Therefore, the GTX 980Ti SEA HAWK is armed with a ball-bearing radial fan and a custom shroud design to ensure the best cooling performance for all components.

Boost Clock / Base Clock
1291 MHz / 1190 MHz
6144 MB GDDR5 / 7096 MHz Memory

Available now, MSRP: US $739.99

http://www.msi.com/product/vga/GTX-980Ti-SEA-HAWK.html#hero-overview

 

[paskowitz]

Thanks that makes me very happy. I might try overclocking it slightly although I'd hate to run the fans at 100% since they're so quiet at the default setting.

Lol... I thought that was firestrike... yeah IDK if that is a good score. Run 3DMark Firestrike and report back.

 

[dr_rus]

TSMC to manufacture Pascal, not Samsung.

Funny how the same KoreaTimes is reporting this as they've reported that thing with Samsung as well during Spring time.

I highly doubt that NV even looked to Samsung for desktop GPU manufacturing ever. Samsung doesn't have neither tech nor capacity needed for this. Tegra manufacturing may happen though but as for GPUs - GloFo has a much bigger chance of getting this contract than Samsung.

 

[Nick Pal]

What is this silly benchmark? I only know Firestrike

I dunno, I've never ran one of these before and it was the only freebie out there..guess I'll have to pay for Firestrike then.

 

[lordfuzzybutt]

I dunno, I've never ran one of these before and it was the only freebie out there..guess I'll have to pay for Firestrike then.

You do not have to pay, you can download the free version. Only difference is that you have to sit through the demo in the free version.

 

[Nick Pal]

You do not have to pay, you can download the free version. Only difference is that you have to sit through the demo in the free version.

That's good to know, thx. I'll do another search.

 

[Ally1987]

That's good to know, thx. I'll do another search.

dont forget to post your score in firestrike as well. I wanna know

 

[Nick Pal]

dont forget to post your score in firestrike as well. I wanna know

Will do for sure

edit: Any tips on trying to get the best possible score? Does offloading the physics to GPU or CPU in the Nvidia Control Panel make a difference or my screen resolution?

Anyway I decided to run it first with PhysX offloaded to my CPU and I got a disappointing score of 15204.

Then I switched PhysX to my GPU and turned off Afterburner and Geforce Experience and Streamer and it improved slightly but not by much.

Meh. I've seen some the scores on here and I expected to do better with the 4790K and the Asus Strix OC DCU III which comes factory overclocked.

 

[Dusktildawn48]

Can someone tell me the top 3 980ti non reference versions?

 

[PFD]

Can someone tell me the top 3 980ti non reference versions?

This might help

http://techreport.com/review/28685/geforce-gtx-980-ti-cards-compared

 

[paskowitz]

Can someone tell me the top 3 980ti non reference versions?

It depends on what you consider to be "top". It depends on what you want. Stock performance? Silence? "Value"? Overclocking performance? OC performance on air/water/LN2?

Some cards overclock high on air cooling but are really meant for LN2 extreme cooling. They are technically the fastest (even on air), but come at a very high price premium.

For extreme overclocking...
1. EVGA K|NGP|N
2. Galax HOF LN2
3. MSI Lightning (not actually all that fast on air... and not really proven on LN2 either... but it just released)

On air there is no better card that one with the best luck in the silicon lottery (IE certain chips just perform better than others).

The excluding the cards above, which are not made for the average user, the best stock clocks are...

1. Zotac AMP! Extreme (1355/7210 MHz)
2. Asus Strix (1317/7200 MHz)
3. (TIE) EVGA Classified & Gigabyte G1 Gaming (1291/7010 Mhz)

Overclocking (on air) is a different story and is not cut and dry. Some reference cards overclock better than some non reference cards. With that said, in my view there are some top performers.

1. EVGA Classified (Not every card will hit 1500Mhz, but the majority do. Some have 1550 or higher!) (Full disclosure, this is the card I have an it is an absolute beast)
2. Gigabyte G1 Gaming (Same story, these cards just seem to OC well)
3. EVGA Hybrid (AIO water cooling helps keeps temps down, thus making it more consistently hit higher clocks... even though it is a reference card underneath)

HOWEVER, this does not take into account noise. In which case the MSI Gaming 6G is the clear winner according to the majority of professional reviews.

IMO there really isn't a bad choice out of the cards mentioned above.

 

[jim2point0]

Will do for sure

edit: Any tips on trying to get the best possible score? Does offloading the physics to GPU or CPU in the Nvidia Control Panel make a difference or my screen resolution?

Anyway I decided to run it first with PhysX offloaded to my CPU and I got a disappointing score of 15204.

The overall score is primarily affected by your CPU clock and your GPU. The Physics test is 100% CPU, so how high you overclock that will change your score.

Personally I think that score means jack monkey squat because a better CPU definitely does not get you more FPS in games beyond a certain point. So I only look at the graphics score.

19105 is ok\average.
20000+ is pretty good.
21000+ is stellar.
22000+ is like... water cooling \ LN2 territory.

 

[Dusktildawn48]

It depends on what you consider to be "top". It depends on what you want. Stock performance? Silence? "Value"? Overclocking performance? OC performance on air/water/LN2?

Some cards overclock high on air cooling but are really meant for LN2 extreme cooling. They are technically the fastest (even on air), but come at a very high price premium.

For extreme overclocking...
1. EVGA K|NGP|N
2. Galax HOF LN2
3. MSI Lightning (not actually all that fast on air... and not really proven on LN2 either... but it just released)

On air there is no better card that one with the best luck in the silicon lottery (IE certain chips just perform better than others).

The excluding the cards above, which are not made for the average user, the best stock clocks are...

1. Zotac AMP! Extreme (1355/7210 MHz)
2. Asus Strix (1317/7200 MHz)
3. (TIE) EVGA Classified & Gigabyte G1 Gaming (1291/7010 Mhz)

Overclocking (on air) is a different story and is not cut and dry. Some reference cards overclock better than some non reference cards. With that said, in my view there are some top performers.

1. EVGA Classified (Not every card will hit 1500Mhz, but the majority do. Some have 1550 or higher!) (Full disclosure, this is the card I have an it is an absolute beast)
2. Gigabyte G1 Gaming (Same story, these cards just seem to OC well)
3. EVGA Hybrid (AIO water cooling helps keeps temps down, thus making it more consistently hit higher clocks... even though it is a reference card underneath)

HOWEVER, this does not take into account noise. In which case the MSI Gaming 6G is the clear winner according to the majority of professional reviews.

IMO there really isn't a bad choice out of the cards mentioned above.

Thank you so much. That's exactly what I was looking for. I should mention I already have a g1. But I'm building a pc for a friend and he's gonna try to stretch his budget to get one.

 

[Nick Pal]

The overall score is primarily affected by your CPU clock and your GPU. The Physics test is 100% CPU, so how high you overclock that will change your score.

Personally I think that score means jack monkey squat because a better CPU definitely does not get you more FPS in games beyond a certain point. So I only look at the graphics score.

19105 is ok\average.
20000+ is pretty good.
21000+ is stellar.
22000+ is like... water cooling \ LN2 territory.

Good to know all that, thx. I'm gonna try overclocking it slightly and see what kind of scores I get. Yeah even today a 4790k is overkill for most games. Cheers.