980Ti: Normal or busted heatsink?

[kamikazekyle]

Trying to confirm my suspicions before I seek an RMA or replacement. I recently nabbed a Gigabyte Windforce 980Ti to burn up some gift cards that were about to expire, and I think the heatsink might be damaged or not properly seated to the GPU. Or it sucks very much badly.

Desktop idle seems OK. 35ish C with the fans totally off, and it pretty much stays there. But then again the GPU is massively underclocking in that state.

Whenever the GPU gets any significant load, the temps immediately spike to the mid 80's Celsius as the fan ramps up. When total GPU load is over, oh, 75-80% the card starts to throttle, sometimes heavily.

Running Furmark the card spikes to 99% use and 91C before throttling and staying at 595 MHz with the fan at 100%. Temps cool down to around 87-89C under those conditions. I've read some reports of throttling, but not THAT extreme. It also seems to carry over to general gameplay from time to time. Assuming a 60 Hz vsync, the core tends to hover around the base clock, though it does throttle a bit from time to time depending on the intensity.

So, basically, am I right in assuming that something's amiss? Under continual max load my 970 blows away the 980 Ti thanks to the throttling.

 

[master_shake_]

furmark is not an accurate representation of gaming.

i'd rma it as faulty.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GTX_980_Ti_G1_Gaming/34.html

your temps are pretty high compared to theirs.

although i think they use an open air test bench.

but again furmark is not a good representation of gaming.

 

[kamikazekyle]

furmark is not an accurate representation of gaming.

i'd rma it as faulty.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GTX_980_Ti_G1_Gaming/34.html

your temps are pretty high compared to theirs.

although i think they use an open air test bench.

but again furmark is not a good representation of gaming.

Yea, I was using Furmark to test worst-case scenario throttling, plus it's easy to find various other sites/people who have stats for Furmark. I tend not to play most of the games that are commonly benched, so I just picked a more common benchmark for a larger stats pool.

I did actual in game testing and while I didn't get as severe or continuous throttling, I was getting dips down to 825 MHz or so. Random example: FF14 would dip from locked 60 FPS down to 35-40 FPS due to thermal throttling when my 970 would just piddle along at 55-60 FPS and hangs around 51C at 100% utilization.

Welp, back in the mail it goes. Just have to argue with Tiger Direct over it.

 

[master_shake_]

Yea, I was using Furmark to test worst-case scenario throttling, plus it's easy to find various other sites/people who have stats for Furmark. I tend not to play most of the games that are commonly benched, so I just picked a more common benchmark for a larger stats pool.

I did actual in game testing and while I didn't get as severe or continuous throttling, I was getting dips down to 825 MHz or so. Random example: FF14 would dip from locked 60 FPS down to 35-40 FPS due to thermal throttling when my 970 would just piddle along at 55-60 FPS and hangs around 51C at 100% utilization.

Welp, back in the mail it goes. Just have to argue with Tiger Direct over it.

i hope you don't have to argure.

it's pretty defective in terms of perceived performance.

 

[Techhog]

THis sounds as if they completely forgot to use thermal paste. lol

 

[master_shake_]

THis sounds as if they completely forgot to use thermal paste. lol

it would void the warranty (i think) but i'd love to see the contact between the cooler and the gpu.

bet there was protective tape that forgot to be taken off.

 

[kamikazekyle]

it would void the warranty (i think) but i'd love to see the contact between the cooler and the gpu.

bet there was protective tape that forgot to be taken off.

Heh, my friend did that once installing a CPU heatsink. He caught it before it did any damage so it wound up funny instead of expensive

I've read on a post or two that Gigabyte (and maybe MSI) are OK if you reapply thermal paste and won't void your warranty, but I'm not going to try without their explicit blessing. I actually thing the heat pipes are damaged and/or there's no coolant in the heat pipes. The back half of the cooler (connect by pipes) is at ambient temperature even when under load, but the front half (over the die) is warm, but still not hot to the touch. I would like to pick it apart though and see just what the heck is messed up.

/shrug. I decided to order an AMP! Extreme from Amazon in the interim and just return this card to TD. Doesn't help that I found out that the same card I'm returning is $100 less on Amazon. Yay wasted gift certificates :/ Oh well, they were about to expire anyway.