GTX 970/980 owners thread

[AdamK47]

It has been nearly three months since I've owned my four EVGA GTX 980 SC cards. I must say that I've been completely satisfied with them. I don't go to the edge of stability with my overclocks. The cards have been running with only a +37mV increase, which unlocks additional speed bins up to nearly 1.4GHz on the SC edition EVGA cards.

There have been no sudden display driver resets or lockups. The temperatures are low and power consumption much lower compared to the four Titans I was once running. DSR at 5K is amazing and the ability to max out SGSSAA is also amazing.

To sum up, I've never regretting going with the 4-Way SLI GTX 980s. Completely stable and fantastically fast.

 

[toyota]

its seems like a waste to use the extra voltage as I would think thats limiting your OC rather than helping as its making you hit TDP faster. my reference 980 does 1516 at voltage that is no higher than some cards run out of the box.

 

[AdamK47]

its seems like a waste to use the extra voltage as I would think thats limiting your OC rather than helping as its making you hit TDP faster. my reference 980 does 1516 at voltage that is no higher than some cards run out of the box.

No

 

[toyota]

No

so you have the worst overclocking 980 cards I have heard of then? an additional 37 mv and cant even do 1400 is crazy.

 

[Rvenger]

Stock voltage I am at 1450mhz, both cards have the same exact ASIC score and clock the same, oddly. Same wafer perhaps?

I played Diablo 3 last night for 2 hours and the cards just idled the whole time, kind of neat actually.

 

[AdamK47]

so you have the worst overclocking 980 cards I have heard of then? an additional 37 mv and cant even do 1400 is crazy.

Mr. Toyota, I value stability. With my hardware, I have ample room for concession.

 

[toyota]

Mr. Toyota, I value stability. With my hardware, I have ample room for concession.

no I was just saying that most 980 cards normally hit TDP long before they need more voltage. well at least the reference cards do.

 

[AdamK47]

no I was just saying that most 980 cards normally hit TDP long before they need more voltage. well at least the reference cards do.

You like to be the adversarial one on this forum. That much has been obvious over the years. The glass always half empty, is it?

I could increase the GPU +100MHz and hope for that game I'm enjoying to not ultimately lock up or fail in some manner. I could also unlock the extra speed bins and allow the GPU to boost higher along it's voltage scale and not really having to worry about the gaming experience.

I went with the unlock.

 

[toyota]

You like to be the adversarial one on this forum. That much has been obvious over the years. The glass always half empty, is it?

I could increase the GPU +100MHz and hope for that game I'm enjoying to not ultimately lock up or fail in some manner. I could also unlock the extra speed bins and allow the GPU to boost higher along it's voltage scale and not really having to worry about the gaming experience.

I went with the unlock.

no you always assume I am even when I make a simple comment.

 

[AdamK47]

I'll stick with the unlocked speed bins. Thanks for the concerns though Toyota. It makes me feel better that someone is looking out for my welfare. I don't know what I would do otherwise.

 

[toyota]

I'll stick with the unlocked speed bins. Thanks for the concerns though Toyota. It makes me feel better that someone is looking out for my welfare. I don't know what I would do otherwise.

yeah and thanks for the condescending and sarcastic attitude.

 

[Kenmitch]

Joined the dark side as I call it. :biggrin:

Picked up a reference design GTX 970 from BestBuy last night. Not the best place to buy but I used a 10% off coupon and $10 in reward zone bucks to make the deal tolerable.

Card seems pretty solid so far. Did a fresh install of Win 8.1 this AM so haven't done much more than Valley benchmarks and played around with Afterburner to see if she likes to overclock.

 

[PenguinJim]

Tried rubbing the exposed heatpipes with a rasher of raw bacon and it really does fill the room with the most wonderful smell when gaming now.

 

[Tech_Greek]

Tried rubbing the exposed heatpipes with a rasher of raw bacon and it really does fill the room with the most wonderful smell when gaming now.

:awe:

 

[dontsh00tmesanta]

I shall be joining soon
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GeFor.../dp/B00OQUMGM0

 

[Zenoth]

I have received (and just installed) my MSi GTX 970 (Gaming 4G). It's my first GPU upgrade since almost exactly 3 years, upgrading from my previous ASUS GTX 670 (my salute to you, 670, you served me very well).

So far it works well, but I have some questions...

According to some reviews I've read this card's fans simply don't spin at all unless the core's temperature reaches 60º (Celsius), after which it starts spinning. Now this is my first GPU since three years, things have changed (technology, components quality, etc). What I was doing with my 670 (and got used to do that like a reflex) as soon as I got to my desktop (after a system restart that is) was to start up EVGA Precision and manually adjust the fan speeds even for 2D mode.

That way, my 670 would have its fans spinning at 70% even in 2D mode and the card's temperature was sitting at a comfortable 35º or so (in 2D mode). When I knew I was about to play some games I would sometimes increase the speed to around 75%, or 80%+ during really hot and humid summer days (no conditioned air). So I had that tranquility of mind thing going on I guess, it wasn't exactly placebo either since I knew the numbers. I knew the fan speeds and I knew the temperatures for my card.

Now as I type this the fans indeed don't spin (I've looked). I know it's supposed to work that way and I shouldn't worry about it. But MSi do have their own Afterburner software for monitoring stuff (temps, fan, frequencies, etc). So I'm wondering if I should at least manually "force" the fans to spin at least a little bit even in 2D mode? Right now the temperature is 44º which is about 10º more than the temps of my 670 in 2D mode. Again... I guess that I shouldn't worry about it because "it can take it" and because "it was tested like that" in MSI's labs, etc. I mean the card is already factory-overlocked to start with.

And side note, this is the very first time I've bought a factory-OC'ed GPU, ever. I never did that before because I was always worried about instability issues. I guess I'm trusting MSi that they've tested everything anyway and - once more - I shouldn't worry about it being OC'ed. I've read some reviews as I mentioned earlier... I know that some reviewers managed "stable" OC's that were quite beyond that of the factory OC settings. I think that I'm just pampering my new baby here... considering the amount of money I spent on that beast is also a reason to do so (not to mention that I only upgrade my GPUs once every three years or so). Maybe I'm worrying about things that I really shouldn't even think about.

So what do you guys recommend about the fans? Should I force them to spin in 2D mode? Should I just leave everything as is? If it matters to mention I do not plan to overclock this card any further than it already is (even if I know reviews say and proved that it can still be OC'd considerably more). And, P.S/ I will upgrade the rest of my system (specs in signature) in the coming months (new CPU, motherboard and memory, etc).

 

[96Firebird]

You can force the fans when idle, there is no problems with that. I did it on my 970 with MSI Afterburner. Create a custom fan profile that fits what you like. I can give a more detailed way to do it later when I get home.

 

[HumblePie]

You can force the fans when idle, there is no problems with that. I did it on my 970 with MSI Afterburner. Create a custom fan profile that fits what you like. I can give a more detailed way to do it later when I get home.

Did the same. I have my fans go at 40% at all times as a min. Just peace of mind for myself.

 

[Kenmitch]

You can force the fans when idle, there is no problems with that. I did it on my 970 with MSI Afterburner. Create a custom fan profile that fits what you like. I can give a more detailed way to do it later when I get home.

I've bios modded my reference 970 for clocks, boost, power target. Took some trial and error as I was boosting to almost 1600 in Valley at times. I want to mod fan profile but haven't looked into it yet. I'd prefer no software needed.

 

[JeffMD]

Your piece of mind isnt really needed. The chip is clocked so low it is using as much power as your cell phone when in desktop mode. I mean looking at evga precision tells you why, it clocks everything down to nonvisable levels.

 

[Zenoth]

Yep thanks for the advice and input guys, appreciated.

It's more of a "peace of mind" thing, above anything else really. I know that purely on a technical-and-component side of things I shouldn't even have to think about it. I believe that over some time (a few days I guess) I'll forget about my [now] old reflexes.

I've activated the fan via MSi's Afterburner. I didn't have to create the fan profile since it was already there apparently. I only went to Settings > Fan (tab) and activated it. There's already nicely-adjusted fan speed % Vs. degrees values (40% speed for 30º, and up). I'm happy with that setting. I guess that my ultimate goal was to mostly reduce the 2D idle temperature which I found to be unnecessarily high considering it's doing nothing. It was sitting there in 2D at 45º, now with the fans at 40% it's at 31º.

And it's absolutely dead silent, quite an amazing GPU indeed.

 

[HumblePie]

Yep thanks for the advice and input guys, appreciated.

It's more of a "peace of mind" thing, above anything else really. I know that purely on a technical-and-component side of things I shouldn't even have to think about it. I believe that over some time (a few days I guess) I'll forget about my [now] old reflexes.

I've activated the fan via MSi's Afterburner. I didn't have to create the fan profile since it was already there apparently. I only went to Settings > Fan (tab) and activated it. There's already nicely-adjusted fan speed % Vs. degrees values (40% speed for 30º, and up). I'm happy with that setting. I guess that my ultimate goal was to mostly reduce the 2D idle temperature which I found to be unnecessarily high considering it's doing nothing. It was sitting there in 2D at 45º, now with the fans at 40% it's at 31º.

And it's absolutely dead silent, quite an amazing GPU indeed.

Pretty much what I did at first, but I didn't like the slow ramping fan speed for the temps. I made the fan profile a bit more aggressive when doing 3d so the fan hits 100% at 70C. Still quiet enough to me.

Side note, I sold my old 6950s (unlocked to 6970 with the bios mod) for about $100 each. I usually don't wait so long between upgrades, but there wasn't a huge upgrade step for the price until now. Just sucks because I paid $250 each and to sell them at $100 each feels ugh. I'm used to buying something and selling it 6-10 months later at about 90% of what I paid to get the next big thing. Which in the long run ends up cheaper if I can keep on top of the upgrades. But since there wasn't a huge incentive to upgrade during these last 3 years over what I had I took a larger loss on the sale of my old stuff that I'm used to.

Speaking of which, I put together a low budget gaming comp for a friend this weekend with some of my extra older parts and some other stuff for him. This is what I ended up doing for him

I5-4440 ($150 from another forum member here)
Biostar Z87x 3d Hifi board ($70)
8GB DDR3 2100 G Skill ripjaws I had extra (I paid like $50 for them and sold them to him for $50 since they still go for that new)
1TB Samsung drive I had extra ($40)
Rosewill redbone case ($35)
EVGA 500B PSU ($35)
ATI 6950 ($100)

Total price was $480 for everything. He gave me $500 so the extra $20 was for me to put it all together and load windows on it. I put windows 8.1 on it for him as well as all the software he would like to have pre-loaded which included a few games.

This was what I would call a decent budget gaming setup with some extra room for upgrades later if he wanted. He can swap out the video card for someone more powerful later if he wants, but the 6950 will still get the job done for many games for the resolution he plays at.

I did run some benchmarks and man it was night and day difference. Firestrike from 3dmark was just over 3K score on his machine. I was at 9K with a single 970 on my machine and 15K with both my cards. Didn't realize how much that benchmark would chug that setup I made him. Funny thing is, that setup was top of the line gaming 4 years ago Now it's a budget entry setup. Still, better than it used to be where top of the line was bottom of the barrel 12 months later instead of 4 years later.

 

[Jhatfie]

Nabbed an open box Asus Strix GTX 980 to play with for $450. To bad the Strix is limited to 1.2v, even adding 37mv in AB does nothing, but regardless it still does 1508/8000 perfectly game stable and a bit higher for benches. Suppose if I want higher I may need to mod the bios.

I decided to see how it compared performance wise to my MSI GTX 970 Gaming in a few titles both overclocked to the same 1508/8000 and the performance gain was pretty consistent at about 12-14% for Metro LL, Bioshock Inf, Shadow of Mordor, AC Unity. Valley fps was bout 18% higher on the 980.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3520879

Worthy of note, the Strix fans start to get pretty noisy at about 70% where the MSI is a fair bit quieter at the same percentage. The MSI cooler seems to be slightly more efficient as well, keeping the gpu cooler with the same fan profile even though it is running higher voltage.

 

[Pneumothorax]

Do you need to do a complete reinstall of win8.1 when going from a 780 to a 980? I'm running nvidia's latest beta drivers on my 780 which ran flawlessly. As soon as I put back in my gigabyte 980 G1 card and reinstall the drivers, I start to get random crashes in Internet explorer and in DAI. Problems go away as soon as I put the 780 reference card back in. Defective 980 or reinstall?

 

[aigomorla]

Do you need to do a complete reinstall of win8.1 when going from a 780 to a 980? I'm running nvidia's latest beta drivers on my 780 which ran flawlessly. As soon as I put back in my gigabyte 980 G1 card and reinstall the drivers, I start to get random crashes in Internet explorer and in DAI. Problems go away as soon as I put the 780 reference card back in. Defective 980 or reinstall?

do you use display driver uninstaller?

i noticed i had a problem as well unless the previous install was completely wiped out with DDU, and a fresh install was done.

Also if its just in regards to DA:I its the 344.75 drivers.
While it fixed a lot of issues with the screens flickering and sleeping, it seemed to have broke my DA:I game even more with random crashes, that i just gave up playing it on the second run.