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We have been impressed with the wide cross section of GTX970's and GTX980's we have reviewed since Nvidia's official launch. It was interesting to note on launch day that Nvidia didn't sample a reference GTX970, instead relying on partners to supply custom cooled overclocked solutions. Nvidia's distinctive reference cooler has a devoted, loyal user base … who were royally miffed that a GTX970 reference card was not available. Andrew ‘Gibbo' Gibson in Overclockers UK was keen to resolve the problem and he worked hard to create an ‘improved' reference design – a worldwide exclusive.
Looking at the image above, you would rightly think this was an official Nvidia launch part. This may be a simple looking reference style board, but Gibbo is adamant that no corner has been cut in the development and creation of this ‘Nvidia 970 Cooler Edition'.
I was initially quite surprised to see this card retailing for £319.99 inc vat, which is considerably more than some of the models we have already reviewed. I asked Gibbo why people should consider this card over others and he was keen to break it down for me.
He said that the card is fitted with a genuine Nvidia cooler and there is absolutely no cost cutting in the choice of components selected. He specifically instructed the factory they partnered up with to use the best quality components. The PCB is actually from a GTX980 – Nvidia's flagship model.
Additionally, we have been reading reports from users who seem to be experiencing GTX970 coil whine (including readers on our Facebook page).
I can't say I have had the issue myself with any of the cards we have reviewed, but it could be in some way related to specific power supplies. Gibbo highlighted that reducing coil whine was a primary focus for the design of this card. He said they set the inductors in ‘different containers' which ‘yielded the best effect of reducing coil whine'.
This is not something I can analyse in a real world test today however, because even though I have been listening hard for noise related issues all our test systems have paired up perfectly with any GTX970 we have reviewed to date. Nvidia will undoubtedly be pleased to hear that.
The Maxwell architecture has been designed to deliver twice the performance per watt of previous generation Geforce hardware. It sounds easy enough on paper, 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 OCUK GTX970 ‘Nvidia 970 Cooler Edition' is a reference card, and is therefore obviously shipped at the Nvidia recommended clock speeds. The GDDR5 memory also remains untouched, as we would expect.
The OcUK GeForce GTX 970 ‘NVIDIA 970 Cooler Edition' ships in a rather abstract looking box with ‘Manli' highlighted in the middle.
The bundle includes some video and power converters, literature and a software disc. We do recommend you download the newest official or beta drivers direct from the Nvidia website however. They are constantly improving performance and fixing bugs. There is no poster of Gibbo in the box.
The card looks like any Nvidia reference card we have reviewed to date. As I have said in previous reviews, I am one of the ‘believers' – I have always loved Nvidia's reference design as it is relatively quiet and looks fantastic in any system build. It is an elegant and somewhat industrial looking design.
This card, like the GTX980, ships with a complete backplate. The ‘Geforce GTX' lettering will glow green when the card is powered on.
If you have been paying close attention, you will see that part of the backplate is a little higher than the rest – we have highlighted the area in red.
This part is removable. Gamers with a single GTX970 or two in SLi with adequate spacing will not need to touch this. Those running 3 way configurations or with two cards running directly side by side without an open slot between them can remove this part of the backplate. Why bother?
Nvidia claim this improves airflow over the PCB. They say that their engineering team spent time studying airflow between boards and came to the conclusion that this area is ‘critical for feeding air directly into the adjacent fan’. Nvidia say that by removing this part of the backplate you will be effectively improving airflow between the cards when they are directly beside each other.
The Geforce GTX970 is SLI capable and it takes power from 2×6 pin PCIe cables, as shown above. We are hoping future revisions of the Nvidia hardware will allow them to be run in SLI without bridge connectors, like the latest high end AMD hardware.
Nvidia have three DisplayPort connectors available on the I/O backplate, alongside an HDMI 2.0 capable connector. This HDMI port will handle 4K resolutions at up to 60hz. There is also a dual link DVI connector on the top row. Up to four of these output connectors can be used simultaneously. Three G-SYNC displays can be driven from a single GTX 970.
Cool air is driven in from one side of the card, then warm air expelled out the rear of the computer chassis.
The backplate can be removed completely to get access to the PCB underneath. Like the reference GTX980, the memory and other components are all cooled by the reference cooler which acts as a heatsink. If you want to look at the PCB in more detail, check out the high resolution pictures on the next page of the review.
An overview of the OcUK GeForce GTX 970 ‘NVIDIA 970 Cooler Edition' shown above. The GM204 GPU core is built on the 28nm process. It has 64 ROP's, 104 Texture units and 1664 CUDA cores. The 4GB of GDDR5 memory is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. The core runs at 1,051mhz with a Turbo Boost set at 1,178mhz. The memory is clocked at 1,753mhz (7Gbps effective).
On this page we present some high resolution images of the product taken with a Fuji XT1 camera. 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.
For the review today we are using Nvidia Forceware 344.60 and AMD Catalyst 14.11.2 beta drivers. All of the AMD and Nvidia hardware in our reviews today used these drivers, tested between the 18th and 24th November. We are using one of our brand new test rigs supplied by DINOPC and built to our specifications.
If you want to read more about this, 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:
Gigabyte GTX980 G1 Gaming (1228mhz core / 1,753mhz memory)
Inno3D GTX980 ‘iChill Herculez X4 Air Boss Ultra (1266 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
MSI GTX980 Gaming 4G (1216mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Asus GTX980 Strix (1178mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Asus GTX780 Ti Direct CU II OC (954mhz core / 1750 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX980 Reference (1126 mhz core / 1753mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X OC (1040 mhz core / 1300 mhz memory)
Palit GTX970 Jetstream OC (1152mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
MSI GTX970 Gaming 4G (1140 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Palit GTX780 6GB (902 mhz core / 1502mhz memory)
Asus GTX970 StriX OC (1114 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Asus R9 290 Direct CU II OC (1000 mhz core / 1260 mhz memory)
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
Metro Last Light Redux
Thief 2014
All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. 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.
As this card is reference clocked, it is outperformed by the custom solutions we have already reviewed. Still this is a healthy score.
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.
Good result for the OCUK Geforce GTX970, with a graphics score of 14,929.
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.”
Solid performance for the reference clocked GTX970, scoring just under 11,000 points.
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 set Quality to ‘High', Tessellation to ‘Normal' and resolution to 1600p.
At these settings the OcUK GeForce GTX 970 ‘NVIDIA 970 Cooler Edition' averages 49.2 frames per second.
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.
We toggle quality to HIGH, and resolution to 1600p.
Nvidia hardware scores particularly well in Unigine Valley, and the OCUK GTX970 averages just over 64 frames per second at these settings.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).
On this page we test at 1080p and 1600p using the ‘Ultra' image quality profile with 8x MSAA.
No problem powering this engine at 1080p or 1600p, even with the image quality settings maxed out.
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 at Ultra HD 4k with 8MSAA. The Ultra Profile is selected for maximum image quality.
Playable at Ultra HD 4k, averaging 50 frames per second. If you want to hold a steady 60 frames per second at these settings then you will need two GTX980's. Yes, 4K gaming is expensive – anyone who tells you different, is lying.Thief is set in a dark fantasy world inspired by Victorian, gothic, and steampunk aesthetics. Garrett, a master thief who has been away from his hometown for a long time, returns to it, a place known only as The City, and finds it ruled with an iron grip by a tyrant called The Baron. While The City is ravaged by a plague, the rich continue to live in isolation and good fortune while the poor are forming numerous mobs against the authorities, Garrett intends to use the volatile situation to his favor. (Wikipedia).
We test with the ‘very high' image quality preset at 1080p and 1600p.
The reference clocked GTX970 holds smooth frame rates at both 1080p and 1600p.Thief is set in a dark fantasy world inspired by Victorian, gothic, and steampunk aesthetics. Garrett, a master thief who has been away from his hometown for a long time, returns to it, a place known only as The City, and finds it ruled with an iron grip by a tyrant called The Baron. While The City is ravaged by a plague, the rich continue to live in isolation and good fortune while the poor are forming numerous mobs against the authorities, Garrett intends to use the volatile situation to his favor. (Wikipedia).
We test at the ‘very high' preset for maximum image quality. Resolution is set to 4k for this particular test.
Even the highest overclocked GTX980's struggle to maintain smooth frame rates at Ultra HD 4k. The GTX970 really hasn't a chance.
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 with the ‘ultimate' image quality profile at 1080p and 1600p.
The OCUK GTX970 can hold 60 frames per second or greater at 1080p, at all times. Ideal for those gamers who like super smooth frame rates. At 1600p, it becomes more demanding, but frame rates hold well above 30 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 Ultra HD 4k resolution with the ‘Ultra' image profile enabled. Single GPU solutions find the ‘Ultimate' image quality preset too difficult to power properly.
At the ‘Ultra' IQ setting, the frame rate averages at 33, dropping a few times to 28. Some people will be happy with this, others not so much. Dropping image quality further would enhance the frame rate.
On May 22, 2014, a Redux version of Metro Last Light was announced. It was released on August 26, 2014 in North America and August 29, 2014 in Europe for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements. A compilation package, titled Metro Redux, was released at the same time which includes Last Light and 2033. (Wikipedia). We test with following settings: Quality-Very High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-On.
This is a very demanding engine, however the GTX970 copes well, especially at 1080p. At 1600p the demands drop the frame rate further, but it is still playable, holding at, or above 30 frames per second at all times.
On May 22, 2014, a Redux version of Metro Last Light was announced. It was released on August 26, 2014 in North America and August 29, 2014 in Europe for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements. A compilation package, titled Metro Redux, was released at the same time which includes Last Light and 2033. (Wikipedia). We test with following settings: Quality-High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-off, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.
Only the highest clocked GTX980's can maintain smooth frame rates at these settings when tasked with Ultra HD 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.
The reference cooler holds gaming temperatures at around 70c, rising to 77c when loaded with the synthetic Furmark stress test. While the cooler can't match third party solutions from companies such as ASUS or INNO3D, it is perfectly acceptable.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 cooler is very quiet. It never has to work too hard thanks to the cool running Maxwell architecture. You can barely hear the card when it is running, which is welcomed.To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Tomb Raider at 4k resolution and the synthetic stress test Furmark – recording both results.
The OcUK GeForce GTX 970 ‘NVIDIA 970 Cooler Edition' is the most power efficient GTX970 we have tested, to date. It consumes 134 watts under gaming load.
To overclock today we are using the latest V4.0.0 of MSI's Afterburner based on the excellent Rivatuner.
There was plenty of headroom available on this core. We pushed the core from 1,051 mhz to 1,284mhz before instability would occur. The Boost Speed was running at 1,411mhz. This translates into a very impressive 22.1% overclock. We have to point out that not every card will overclock to the same level as engineering tolerances will vary from card to card.
Still, all said, it is clear there is plenty of overclocking potential available on the OcUK GeForce GTX 970 ‘NVIDIA 970 Cooler Edition'.
In the last couple of months I feel like I have reviewed almost every custom GTX970 and GTX980 available on the market. It is becoming difficult for me to take a fresh approach to every review at this stage. Regular readers will already know that most of the modified cards are great and some of them are brilliant.
So why on earth do we need a ‘reference cooled GTX970' several months later? Nvidia clearly didn't think it was important enough to release so is that all there is to say on the matter?
They say ‘variety is the spice of life' – and in the world of technology I would agree. It is true I have been very outspoken against AMD reference coolers in the past, but equally so I have complimented the Nvidia reference cards. This isn't fanboyism on my part, its just a simple fact of life – Nvidia can make very good reference coolers, AMD can't.
In fact the only capable high performance reference cooled card I can remember from AMD has been the triple fan HD7990. Well, we can add the R9 295X2 to this list I guess – but it is is liquid cooled so we aren't quite sure it counts.
Andrew ‘Gibbo' Gibson at Overclockers UK felt that a high grade reference style GTX970 would be worth creating, even if Nvidia didn't. We have to commend him and his team for their attention to detail, and for taking a risk. For all intents and purposes it is a perfect copy and it overclocks like a mofo. We increased the core by a staggering 22 percent before we encountered instability. We can't say they will all overclock as well as this one but Gibbo said he didn't hand pick it, so if you believe him, it looks promising.
If you are pondering the point of a ‘custom' reference GTX970 then this card really isn't for you. This is targeting a specific audience of enthusiast users – the hardcore Nvidia lovers who simply adore the appearance of these cards. They get pride of place – exposed in a windowed case, backlit and perhaps running in SLi with the green ‘Geforce GTX' lighting on full display. We see these reference style systems built all the time on our Facebook page.
Is the OcUK GeForce GTX 970 ‘NVIDIA 970 Cooler Edition' a KitGuru ‘Must Have' award winning card?
For the audience who always want Nvidia reference cards for aesthetic reasons then it makes a lot of sense, but in the grand scheme of things and considering the pricing, we feel it worthy of our ‘Worth Buying' award. The bulk of the main audience will be better served buying something like the MSI GTX970 Gaming Edition, which is not only clocked higher, but runs cooler and makes even less noise. It is also £30 cheaper at Overclockers UK.
To be fair the OCUK GTX970 card is using a GTX980 PCB and has received special attention to deal with potential coil related issues. OCUK won't be able to match the same production run as ASUS or MSI worldwide, so prices have to rise a little.
If you want one of this limited run of ‘Nvidia 970 Cooler Edition' cards and are concerned about coil related issues then this certainly deserves your attention. Gibbo has worked hard with the factory to reduce coil whine as far as possible. The inductors are in different containers, and the PCB is GTX980 grade for added peace of mind.
Its a specialist card, for a very specific audience. We like it, a lot.
You can ONLY buy direct from Overclockers UK for £319.99 inc vat.
Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.
Pros:
- Nvidia reference cooler has a dedicated, cult following.
- built to the highest standards.
- techniques in place to reduce coil whine.
- overclocks like a mofo.
- GTX980 PCB using all genuine parts.
- lowest power consumption of any GTX970 we have tested.
Cons:
- It is expensive.
- A little overclock ‘out of the box' wouldn't have hurt, right?
- leading third party cooling systems from Nvidia partners are quieter and run cooler.
Kitguru says: Nvidia reference cooling fans will rejoice. The rest of you will wonder what all the fuss is about.
