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Nvidia's GTX980 Ti has stormed the performance benchmarks in the last couple of weeks and now modified, partner cards are hitting retail. We have already looked at the excellent EVGA model last week, and today we analyse the new Gigabyte G1 Gaming version which features a beautiful new cooler with backplate and a substantial out of the box, core overclock.
In the short time since launch, we have noticed the GTX980Ti has been warmly received by the enthusiast audience. The additional 2GB of memory over the older GTX980 will certainly help drive texture heavy titles at 4K resolutions in the coming year.
| GPU | GeForce GTX960 |
Geforce GTX970 | GeForce GTX980 |
Geforce GTX 980 Ti | Geforce GTX Titan X |
| Streaming Multiprocessors | 8 | 13 | 16 | 22 | 24 |
| CUDA Cores | 1024 | 1664 | 2048 | 2816 | 3072 |
| Base Clock | 1126 mhz | 1050 mhz | 1126 mhz | 1000 mhz | 1000 mhz |
| GPU Boost Clock | 1178 mhz | 1178 mhz | 1216 mhz | 1075 mhz | 1076 mhz |
| Total Video memory | 2GB | 4GB | 4GB | 6GB | 12GB |
| Texture Units | 64 | 104 | 128 | 176 | 192 |
| Texture fill-rate | 72.1 Gigatexels/Sec | 109.2 Gigatexels/Sec | 144.1 Gigatexels/Sec | 176 Gigatexels/Sec | 192 Gigatexels/Sec |
| Memory Clock | 7010 mhz | 7000 mhz | 7000 mhz | 7000 mhz | 7000 mhz |
| Memory Bandwidth | 112.16 GB/sec | 224 GB/s | 224 GB/sec | 336.5 GB/sec | 336.5 GB/sec |
| Bus Width | 128bit | 256bit | 256bit | 384bit | 384bit |
| ROPs | 32 | 56 | 64 | 96 | 96 |
| Manufacturing Process | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm |
| TDP | 120 watts | 145 watts | 165 watts | 250 watts | 250 watts |
The Nvidia GTX980 Ti ships with 2816 CUDA cores and 22 SM units. The memory subsystem of the GTX980 Ti consists of six 64-bit memory controllers (384-bit) with 6GB of GDDR5 memory.
The Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming has received a clock boost over Nvidia’s reference card, with final speeds set at 1,152 mhz(core)/1,241mhz (boost). The memory remains untouched and runs at 1,753mhz (7Gbps effective). This is the fastest GTX980Ti we have tested, to date.
Gigabyte are focusing on their creepy ‘eye' logo along with the ‘G1 Gaming' branding on the front of the box.
The rear of the box lists some technical details, with much focus placed on the cooler. We will look at it in more detail shortly. Our review sample shipped directly from Taipei so we didn't receive any retail accessories in the box.
The Gigabyte GTX980 G1 Gaming is an attractive looking dual slot card, weighty in the hand due to the metal construction and backplate. We were disappointed when the reference GTX980 Ti didn't ship with a backplate, so it is good to see Nvidia partners taking build quality a stage further.
The triple fans span the full length of the PCB. Gigabyte claim the fans produce 23% ‘more' airflow than a standard design and that the heatsink on the card is using a ‘special fin architecture'.
We think this card is a looker, Gigabyte have aimed for a simple colour ethic – by removing it all. It is just black and white. We can see the end of five thick heatpipes on one side of the card. More detail on this when we take the card apart shortly.
The ‘WINDFORCE' branding on the side of the cooler lights up when the card is in operation. The end user can change the colour of this backlighting via the Gigabyte OC GURU II software. This will be popular for those who like to colour coordinate system components. A total of 7 colours are offered.
The GTX980Ti is SLi capable in 2, 3 and 4 way configurations. The Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming takes power from two 8 pin connectors. The reference design and all other GTX980Ti's we have tested so far use a single 6 pin and 8 pin power connector, so this Gigabyte version is able to draw more power from the 12V rail.
Unlike all the other GTX980 Ti's tested so far, the Gigabyte G1 Gaming ships with dual DVI ports (1x DVI-I and 1x DVI-D). Also there is a single HDMI 2.0 port (with HD audio and Blu-Ray 3D movie support), and three DisplayPorts. The move to predominately Displayport connectivity is inevitable and welcomed. If you wish, you can use all these ports at the same time for triple monitor gaming.
The cooler is very substantial indeed. There are a total of 6 copper pipes that run into the base. Five of them (8mm) run parallel to the PCB, and one (6mm) bends around to run in the opposite direction, into a smaller, separate aluminum heatsink. The copper heatsink also directly cools the GDDR5 memory chips on the PCB.
An overview of the hardware in the latest version of GPUz – as discussed on the previous page. This overclocked GM200 core runs at 1,152mhz (1,241mhz boost) and is built on the 28nm process. The GTX980 Ti has 96 ROPs, 176 Texture units (Titan X has 192 texture units) and 2,816 CUDA Cores (Titan X has 3,072 CUDA Cores). The 6GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1753mhz (7Gbps effective) and is connected via a 384 bit memory interface. Gigabyte have not overclocked the GDDR5 memory, which is a little surprising.On this page we present some high resolution images of the product taken with a Canon 1DX and Canon 28-70mm F2.8 lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.
We tested all the solutions today at 1600p and 4K resolutions. All cards were tested in the last week with the Nvidia 353.06 Forceware driver, and the AMD 15.4 Catalyst driver.
If you want to read more about our test system, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page. We are using an Asus PB287Q 4k and Apple 30 inch Cinema HD monitor for this review today.
Comparison cards:
EVGA GTX980 Ti SuperClocked+ ACX 2.0+ (1102mhz core / 1753mhz memory) – Nvidia Forceware 353.06
Nvidia GTX Titan Z (706mhz core / 1753mhz memory) – Nvidia Forceware 353.06
Nvidia GTX Titan X (1000mhz core / 1753mhz Memory) – Nvidia Forceware 353.06
Nvidia GTX980 Ti (1000 mhz / 1753mhz memory) – Nvidia Forceware 353.06
Gainward GTX980 Phantom (1203mhz core / 1800mhz memory) – Nvidia Forceware 353.06
AMD R9 295X2 (1018mhz core / 1250mhz memory) – AMD Catalyst 15.4 Beta
Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X OC 8GB (1020mhz core / 13752mhz memory) – AMD Catalyst 15.4 Beta
Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
Games:
Grid AutoSport
Tomb Raider
Grand Theft Auto 5
Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt
We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.
Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.
Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.
Super out of the box performance, scoring 62,995 points.3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads. If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.
The Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming scores 25,025 points in the graphics test, placing it ahead of the low clocked Titan Z dual GPU card.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.
Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.
To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”
Fantastic performance results in the latest Futuremark benchmark, scoring 18,797 points – just ahead of the EVGA GTX980 Ti Superclocked+.Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.
Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:
- Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
- Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
- Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
- Multicore CPU support
- Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
- Powerful C++ API
- Comprehensive performance profiling system
- Flexible XML-based data structures
We test at 2560×1600 with the quality set to ‘ULTRA', tessellation on ‘NORMAL' and Anti Aliasing set to 2x.
The Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming averages 72.3 frames per second, putting it around 7 frames behind the Nvidia Titan Z.
Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia).
We test with 8x anti aliasing enabled and the quality setting at ‘ULTRA'. shown above.
The EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+ averages 130 frames per second at 1600p, even with 8 times anti aliasing enabled.
Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia)
We test with 8x anti aliasing enabled and the quality setting at ‘ULTRA'. shown above.
This engine isn't one of the most demanding right now, however we can see that the single GTX980Ti can power the engine at 4K – while maintaining frame rates above 70 at all times.Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia).
We test at 1600p with the ‘ULTIMATE' image quality profile selected.
Tomb Raider is demanding at these settings, although the GTX980 won't struggle. We can easily achieve a solid 60fps with the Gigabyte GTX980Ti G1 Gaming.
Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia).
We test at 3840×2160 (4K) with the ‘ULTIMATE' image profile selected. We normally reduce the image quality profile to ‘ULTRA' at this resolution, but not today.
Super smooth performance at 4K, although some way short of the constant 60 frames per second that many gamers will demand.The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Polish: Wiedźmin 3: Dziki Gon) is an action role-playing video game set in an open world environment, developed by Polish video game developer CD Projekt RED. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt concludes the story of the witcher Geralt of Rivia, the series’ protagonist, whose story to date has been covered in the previous versions. Continuing from The Witcher 2, the ones who sought to use Geralt are now gone. Geralt seeks to move on with his own life, embarking on a new and personal mission whilst the world order itself is coming to a change.
Geralt’s new mission comes in dark times as the mysterious and otherworldly army known as the Wild Hunt invades the Northern Kingdoms, leaving only blood soaked earth and fiery ruin in its wake; and it seems the Witcher is the key to stopping their cataclysmic rampage. (Wikipedia).
We select a 2560×1600 resolution with postprocessing at ‘HIGH' and graphics at ‘ULTRA', as shown above.
This is an incredibly demanding engine with all the eye candy settings enabled. We manage to get over 40 frames per second at all times however, which will be enough for most people. A few image quality settings could be disabled to increase frame rates further.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Polish: Wiedźmin 3: Dziki Gon) is an action role-playing video game set in an open world environment, developed by Polish video game developer CD Projekt RED. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt concludes the story of the witcher Geralt of Rivia, the series’ protagonist, whose story to date has been covered in the previous versions. Continuing from The Witcher 2, the ones who sought to use Geralt are now gone. Geralt seeks to move on with his own life, embarking on a new and personal mission whilst the world order itself is coming to a change. Geralt’s new mission comes in dark times as the mysterious and otherworldly army known as the Wild Hunt invades the Northern Kingdoms, leaving only blood soaked earth and fiery ruin in its wake; and it seems the Witcher is the key to stopping their cataclysmic rampage. (Wikipedia).
We select a 3840×2160 (Ultra HD 4K) resolution with postprocessing at ‘HIGH' and graphics at ‘ULTRA', as shown above.
At 4K this game is best enjoyed with two Nvidia graphics cards. The single Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming delivers a good experience, but the frame rate drops a little lower than many people would want. Disabling Nvidia Hairworks and dropping image quality a little would help increase minimum frame rates. Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story.
Outside of missions, players can freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world of Grand Theft Auto V is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series.
The world may be fully explored from the beginning of the game without restrictions, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content. (Wikipedia).
We used high image quality settings – shown in the screenshots above with 4xMSAA enabled. ‘Ignore Suggested Limits' was turned ‘ON'. We found some intensive sections of the Grand Theft Auto 5 world and tested each card multiple times to confirm accuracy.
We do not use the built in benchmark as the results are not indicative of real world gaming situations. The results below are strictly worst case scenario.
A great experience at 1600p, holding above 40fps at all times.Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story.
Outside of missions, players can freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world of Grand Theft Auto V is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series.
The world may be fully explored from the beginning of the game without restrictions, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content. (Wikipedia).
We used high image quality settings – shown in the screenshots above with 4xMSAA enabled. ‘Ignore Suggested Limits' was turned ‘ON'. We found some intensive sections of the Grand Theft Auto 5 world and tested each card multiple times to confirm accuracy.
We do not use the built in benchmark as the results are not indicative of real world gaming situations. The results below are strictly worst case scenario.
Some of the image quality settings would need dropped a little to increase frame rates at 4k.The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.
Idle temperatures are improved over the reference card by 16c, under Furmark load and 23c when gaming. Class leading results.
The GPU is using Nvidia’s GPU Boost 2.0 which dynamically adjusts clock speed and voltage settings, factoring in temperatures.
We install the graphics card into our system and measure temperatures on the back of the PCB with our Fluke Visual IR Thermometer/Infrared Thermal Camera. This is a real world running environment.
Details shown below.
Gigabyte have added a backplate to this card which helps reduce hotspots across the rear of the PCB. The backplate measures up to 65c – excellent results for maximum board longevity.
We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.
We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum
The Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming is a relatively quiet card under load, although fan noise will be evident. When idle, the card is basically silent as the fans disable. We noticed that less demanding games didn't raise the core temperature enough for the fans to spin. Once temperatures of the core reach 55c, the fans kick in.
We tested for coil whine by running via software at up to 500fps, we are happy to report, while the reference design produced some noise the Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming doesn't.
To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the whole system when idle and when gaming, excluding the monitor.
Maxwell cards are always extremely power efficient. As we can see the GTX980Ti system consumes 329 watts under gaming load and the EVGA overclocked card takes around 7 watts more.We use MSI's Afterburner to overclock the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+.
We managed to get another 8.3% from the core before instability would come into play. Overclocking the memory doesn't really make much of a difference to the results, unless you can push it significantly above the reference speeds.
The manually tweaked card exhibits considerable performance benefits from the ‘out of the box' speeds. The final score of 26,604 points puts it ahead of the Nvidia GTX Titan Z.
The GTX980Ti, for the time being is leading the way in regards to outright performance, particularly when overclocked. The Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming is the fastest sample we have received from an Nvidia partner, to date.
I have reviewed some great high end graphics cards lately, notably the EVGA GTX980 Ti Superclocked+. Out of the box the Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming is clocked a little faster than the EVGA counterpart, and both manually overclock to very similar levels via software tools. We are seeing closely matched maximum stable speeds from all the GTX980 Ti cards we have tested in the last month.
While performance between all GTX980 Ti cards is closely matched, the Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming comes out top in regards to cooling performance. The custom cooler implementation on the G1 Gaming is extremely noteworthy. When gaming, the core runs 23c cooler than the Nvidia GTX980 Ti reference card, which is a remarkable achievement.
System builders with windowed panels will undoubtedly appreciate the option to change the onboard lighting colours to match their coordinated scheme. Gigabyte have opted to use a backplate, unlike the reference card, which helps reduce card hot spots on the rear of the PCB.
You can buy from Overclockers UK from £629.99 inc vat HERE. It slots in at the upper price point for GTX980 Ti partner cards, but the formidable cooler design justifies the small premium.
Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.
Pros:
- noticeably faster than the GTX980Ti reference card.
- built for 4K gaming.
- quality backplate.
- 23c cooler than reference design.
- additional core clock head room available via software.
- no coil whine.
Cons:
- Titan X is only £170 more expensive and has 12GB of GDDR5 memory.
- GDDR5 memory isn't overclocked.
KitGuru says: The Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming is equipped with one of the best cooling solutions we have tested to date. You pay a small premium for this board, but if you demand maximum cooling performance, it is a MUST HAVE.
