GTX 970/980 owners thread

[RaistlinZ]

Ok, I suck. I thought I had an SLI bridge handy when in fact it was a Crossfire bridge. 😡

But I have a question, when I have both cards hooked up MSI Afterburner won't let me overclock. It works fine when one card is installed though.

 

[toyota]

What are your temps like? You may want to look at max power and temp settings.

temps are in the 60s or just over 70. and yeah I know about all that but that is not the issue at all. there was a 980 review I saw and they were showing the same thing with occasional little drops here and there even with power limit raised.

 

[fixbsod]

Just installed my MSI 970 Gaming, compared to my 580 it's insanely colder, no noise and twice as fast...!! Loving it!

 

[RaistlinZ]

I can barely hear the fan on my MSI Gaming when under 70% fan speed. Load temps are at least 15C lower than on my old 770.

 

[fixbsod]

nvm working now, think cable wasn't fully in the card... that helps.

 

[dmoney1980]

My 980's arrived earlier today! Stock EVGA SC blower model. Installed the latest driver, SLI enabled thru GeForce experience automatically.

Only had time to play BF4 MP map - 1440p, all max settings, with vSync off I was getting over 110+ FPS, both cards were over 96% utilization, top card topped out at 82*, bottom card at 77*.

With vSync on, the cards were only @ 45% utilization, locked at 60 FPS, temps in the high 60's. Regarding noise, I have to say that these cards are pretty quiet for a dual GPU setup. You can hear them, but it's not annoying. In fact, I had a single 780ti classified that was much louder than these 2 cards. I also had an XFX 290x DD card that was louder than this as well.

Very pleased so far, and I really don't see a need to overclock. They both run over 1360 mhz with vSync on, 1240 with vSync off and I haven't touched any settings.

Now, perhaps I should start looking at 4k or a 144hz 1440p monitor to stretch the legs on these two cards.

Apologies for the crappy cell pic:

 

[felang]

temps are in the 60s or just over 70. and yeah I know about all that but that is not the issue at all. there was a 980 review I saw and they were showing the same thing with occasional little drops here and there even with power limit raised.

You seem to be TDP limited, 110% max is just way to low for these cards.

 

[toyota]

You seem to be TDP limited, 110% max is just way to low for these cards.

these oc cards are already boosting much higher so they will usually have a lower value to raise it to for the slider. my speeds fluctuate even when I am not close to exceeding TDP.

 

[Grooveriding]

Had a little time to install, do a fast overclock and a valley run. MSI Gaming 970 @ 1500/8000. Held the clock throughout the run.

Can't hear it at all. The only thing I don't like is that the fans totally stop at under 60C. Normally this would be a good thing, but it takes a long time for the card to cool down after use.

 

[wand3r3r]

Had a little time to install, do a fast overclock and a valley run. MSI Gaming 970 @ 1500/8000. Held the clock throughout the run.

Can't hear it at all. The only thing I don't like is that the fans totally stop at under 60C. Normally this would be a good thing, but it takes a long time for the card to cool down after use.

I wonder if you can disable it? To me it sounds ideal, but Idc how long it takes to cool down.

I love the crossfire feature where the second card's basically off (no fan) until you fire up a game or something which uses it.

To me it's a win/win, there when you need it but silent until you do. The 970 probably never hits 60 until you fire up a game.

 

[gevorg]

Is Asus the only 970 card that can turn off its fans when in idle mode (desktop 2D)?

 

[Cerb]

Is Asus the only 970 card that can turn off its fans when in idle mode (desktop 2D)?

The fans don't come on until the temperature rises to some threshold. What power/performance mode it is in doesn't seem to have an effect. At the least, MSI's Twin Frozr model, and Palit's Jetstream, also have that same behavior.

 

[gevorg]

The fans don't come on until the temperature rises to some threshold. What power/performance mode it is in doesn't seem to have an effect. At the least, MSI's Twin Frozr model, and Palit's Jetstream, also have that same behavior.

Do they all have the same threshold and/or can you change it manually? Asus seems to be the only one advertising "0dB fan technology lets you enjoy light games in complete silence". I would hate getting a card that has a minimum fan speed requirement even when GPU performs simple 2D tasks and there are relatively low case/room temps.

 

[IllogicalGlory]

Gigabyte GTX 980 at 1501/7860

 

[Cerb]

Do they all have the same threshold and/or can you change it manually? Asus seems to be the only one advertising "0dB fan technology lets you enjoy light games in complete silence". I would hate getting a card that has a minimum fan speed requirement even when GPU performs simple 2D tasks and there are relatively low case/room temps.

MSI is calling it Zero Frozr.

 

[gevorg]

^^ Thanks!

 

[krumme]

Do they all have the same threshold and/or can you change it manually? Asus seems to be the only one advertising "0dB fan technology lets you enjoy light games in complete silence". I would hate getting a card that has a minimum fan speed requirement even when GPU performs simple 2D tasks and there are relatively low case/room temps.

I think its a fantastic feature to turn off fans completely. We should have had that for years. I would put the threshold at 90c lol. As i can see from the AT review of the evga 970 its unfortunate not for that brand at least.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Anandtech bench hasn't been updated yet. Anybody have some decent numbers comparing a 660Ti to a 970? I think that might be my next card after tax refund time.

 

[Cerb]

I think its a fantastic feature to turn off fans completely. We should have had that for years. I would put the threshold at 90c lol. As i can see from the AT review of the evga 970 its unfortunate not for that brand at least.

Part of the problem is that there are components on the board that need cooling that passive cooling may not provide for. I'm sure being able to reach a point where this was feasible took no small amount of testing, and was probably either specified as viable somehow in the reference design (if not with the reference cooler), or something that needed the low low-load power use and self-throttling of the new chip to handle.

Asus and MSI have both been working on making quieter and quieter cards for years, with varied success (they have BOM limits, after all). It seems like if it were just a matter of total power use, they'd have done it sooner, done it with Radeons as well, and one of them would have done it before another.

 

[krumme]

Part of the problem is that there are components on the board that need cooling that passive cooling may not provide for. I'm sure being able to reach a point where this was feasible took no small amount of testing, and was probably either specified as viable somehow in the reference design (if not with the reference cooler), or something that needed the low low-load power use and self-throttling of the new chip to handle.

Asus and MSI have both been working on making quieter and quieter cards for years, with varied success (they have BOM limits, after all). It seems like if it were just a matter of total power use, they'd have done it sooner, done it with Radeons as well, and one of them would have done it before another.

Agree this must have demanded a lot of testing and beeing in reference design. Its no easy task. Regarding bom dont know if 105c capacitors is dirt cheap these days. And perhaps a way to overcome those fragile and life shortening capacitors - and not using tantalum - is just to skimp on it - perhaps giving the very short burst we have seen on thg?

But regardless of the engineering effort its still simple tech with huge effect for comfort for all users. And the cooler will last better 🙂

 

[Cerb]

Caps are likely fine. But, the VRAM, MOSFETS, and any high-current parts that are SMD, are going to be partially cooled by the PCB, even if they also have heatsinks on them. Can they handle being cooled by the PCB with just convection, with the heatsink, fan, and shroud in the way?

One could add several more temp sensors around the board, and have custom fan control based on those readings, but that's going to be no small addition to costs, if you also consider the R&D and validation that will go into it, and losses from RMAs on screwups. OTOH, if they can reasonably predict that the VRMs will not be able to pull more than xW, then they can also predict it will not waste more than yW, at any given ambient temperature. If the power throttling is indeed done by HW, that could make modeling and testing such scenarios a lot easier than just hoping for the GPU temp to be a good indicator.

 

[gevorg]

I think its a fantastic feature to turn off fans completely. We should have had that for years. I would put the threshold at 90c lol. As i can see from the AT review of the evga 970 its unfortunate not for that brand at least.

The AT EVGA 970 review shows just 28C at idle, your fan threshold don't need to be anywhere near 90C, LOL.

 

[Rvenger]

Its a shame that FTW GTX 970 got the same PCB as the vanilla model. According to the pictures it appears to be the same 4+2 phase design. No backplate, VRM cooling, or VRAM cooling. Wow.

 

[tviceman]

I really have no idea why EVGA continues to be the most popular Nvidia AIB. Most of the other vendors have been out performing them in cooling solutions for years now.

 

[Subyman]

Its a shame that FTW GTX 970 got the same PCB as the vanilla model. According to the pictures it appears to be the same 4+2 phase design. No backplate, VRM cooling, or VRAM cooling. Wow.

Yup, just noticed that although Ryan didn't mention it at all. I think he even said EVGA told him it had one more than the vanilla model, but it obviously doesn't from the pictures. That's why he really needed to do the review with other brands as well. In a vacuum the EVGA cards look fine, but when compared to MSI, ASUS, and Gigabyte, they are really lacking. Showing the ACX 2.0 cooler compared to old reference cards doesn't mean much.