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Nvidia launched their new GTX970 and GTX980 solutions last week, and there is no doubt that they have pushed the ‘performance to watt' ratio to a new level. We have already reviewed the reference GTX980, the ASUS StriX GTX970 and the MSI GTX970 Gaming 4G. Today we look at the Palit GTX970 JetStream which actually features the highest overclock of them all- out of the box.
The Palit GTX970 Jetstream ships with a gold and black cooler. Gold is a colour that generally doesn't appeal to European tech readers, however the Far East readers seem to find it more appealing. I think it looks fine, but it does pale in comparison next to the beautiful MSI GTX970 Gaming 4G.
Even though we have a handful of reviews already published, Nvidia’s Maxwell architecture deserves a little discussion before we get into testing the Palit GTX970. If you are a regular reader of KitGuru then you will already have studied our multiple analysis of the lower level GTX750Ti solution throughout the year.
The GTX750ti has been one of the most exciting cards that Nvidia have released in recent years – performance is close to the HD7850 while consuming half the power at the socket – and all without the need for a PCIe power cable. It produces such a modest heat emission that the Asus GTX750Ti Strix OC we reviewed recently didn’t need to spin the fans most of the time, even when gaming.
The Maxwell architecture has been designed to deliver twice the performance per watt of previous generation Geforce hardware. It sounds easy enough on paper to achieve, but the real world challenges for Nvidia have been complex.
| GPU | GeForce GTX 680 (Kepler) | GeForce GTX 980 (Maxwell) | Geforce GTX 970 (Maxwell) |
| Streaming Multiprocessors | 8 | 16 | 13 |
| CUDA Cores | 1536 | 2048 | 1664 |
| Base Clock | 1006 mhz | 1126 mhz | 1050 mhz |
| GPU Boost Clock | 1058 mhz | 1216 mhz | 1178 mhz |
| Total Video memory | 2GB | 4GB | 4GB |
| Texel fill-rate | 129 Gigatexels/Sec | 144.1 Gigatexels/Sec | 109.2 Gigatexels/Sec |
| Memory Clock | 6000 mhz | 7000 mhz | 7000 mhz |
| Memory Bandwidth | 192 GB/sec | 224 GB/sec | 224 GB/s |
| ROPs | 32 | 64 | 64 |
| Manufacturing Process | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm |
| TDP | 195 watts | 165 watts | 145 watts |
The new GM204 GPU is very efficient. The Maxwell SM has been rebalanced so that the CUDA cores are fully utilised more often. Doing so saves power and enhances overall performance. The L2 cache size in the GM204 is 2MB, or four times larger than the GK104. The addition of extra cache means that fewer requests to the GPU memory are needed – again reducing power consumption and pushing more performance.
The Geforce GTX 970 is equipped with 7Gbps memory. Those of you with higher resolution monitors, or running in a multi screen configuration will also be pleased to hear that there is 4GB of GDDR5 memory on the card, not 3GB – this memory will push 224 GB/s sec. Nvidia have added a new compression engine to reduce the demand on DRAM bandwidth.
The Palit GTX970 JetStream OC has received a core clock enhancement to 1,152mhz, from 1,050mhz on the reference design. The GDDR5 memory remains untouched, as we would expect – its certainly not going to be a bottleneck.
