The GTX 980 Ti was released eight months ago and since then we have seen numerous custom designs which range from the absolutely insane to the more mundane. Regardless of NVIDIA’s board partners’ efforts, the number of new products using the GM200 core has leveled off since the architecture is nearing the end of its lifespan. While not entirely close at hand, both Pascal and AMD’s competing Polaris architectures are about six months away (granted, a lifetime in PC market time) so for the most part everyone is just digging in with their current product stacks.
This situation has led to a bit of stagnation but also some interesting price fluctuations with custom, overclocked cards routinely going for less than NVIDIA’s $649USD reference MSRP. Naturally, with the falling loonie we here in Canada are staring down the barrel of $900+ price points for these cards but there’s not much to be done about that.
Mentioning price provides us with a perfect introduction to Gigabyte’s GTX 980 Ti Gaming. While this is an overclocked and heavily upgraded version of the GTX 980 Ti, it routinely sells for about $650USD or not a dime more than NVIDIA’s reference cards. Gigabyte has also effectively undercut several of their competitors like EVGA’s GTX 980 Ti Superclocked, ASUS’ GTX 980 TI STRIX OC and even MSI’s similarly-named GTX 980 TI Gaming 6G. They seem to have injected some much-needed value into what many believe to be a heavily over-priced segment.
Despite being one of the least expensive GTX 980 Ti’s around these days, the Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti Gaming puts forward some reasonably impressive specifications. Borrowing a page from ASUS’ book, it has two different clock speed gears which are accessed through Gigabyte’s OC Guru software: Gaming and OC. OC increases frequencies to 1190MHz and 1279MHz for the Base and Boost respectively, though the memory speeds aren’t touched. With those specs in hand, we expect it to run neck and neck with MSI’s competitor.
Even though Gigabyte recently introduced a new round of Extreme models right before the end of last year, we expect the Gaming series to carry the vast majority of their sales. This means it needs to deliver an optimal blend of overclocking, pricing and out-of-box performance.
At first glance Gigabyte’s lineup of GTX 980 Ti cards may be a bit confusing; there’s the reference version, the Windforce, the G1 Gaming in today’s review and finally the aforementioned Extreme. The Extreme represents their halo products and as such they receive highly binned cores, insane clock speeds, LED highlights and a Windforce cooler that’s rated to handle up to 700W of thermal output.
In terms of overall design and component choices the standard GTX 980 Ti Windforce and the G1 Gaming are close siblings. Their heatsink are essentially the same albeit the G1 receives some metallic highlights and their component choices are very much mirrored. There are however two elements which make the G1 Gaming stand out a bit: its core has been binned using Gigabyte’s GPU Gauntlet sorting process and it boasts higher clock speeds. It also happens to be one of the longer GTX 980 Ti’s on the market at 11 3/4".
The Windforce 3X cooler makes a comeback here with a trio of 80mm fans blowing down onto an extremely long heatsink. What Gigabyte didn’t do is build upwards to enhance thermal mass. Rather, they expanded horizontally so the fin array extends out beyond the PCB. Not only does this offer an area where airflow freely moves through the heatsink without the PCB blocking it but the design also allowed the GTX 980 Ti G1 Gaming to remain within dual slot height tolerances.
Running along the heatsink’s edge is a shroud extension with the word Windforce and two flanking STOP indicators. Gigabyte has added start-stop rotational technology which idles the fans when the card is utilized in low-load scenarios so the STOP areas will glow a dull blue to indicate normal operation. Essentially, they’re there to ease any panic about potential fan failure. Once the fans begin spinning at their normal speeds, the Windforce logo will begin to glow instead with any color chosen from within the OC Guru II software suite.
Unlike in previous generations were Gigabyte’s backplates were flimsy little things, the G1 Gaming receives a thick aluminum cover with a few strategically placed ventilation slots. This works perfectly to tie in the rest of the card’s design and provide an extremely clean look for any builds with a windowed case.
Power input is done via a pair of 8-pin connectors which have been seamlessly blended into the heatsink as Gigabyte has tried to eke out every last millimeter for optimal cooling results.
Coming to the backplate we have something oddly interesting: a layout that doesn’t reflect a reference card in any way. There’s a pair of DVI (the rightmost one is DVI-I) outputs along with three full sized DisplayPorts and a single HDMI. This is what Gigabyte calls their Flex Display interface since it gives users the ability to push a display signal to as many as five monitors without adapters or daisy-chaining.
In its primary configuration the GTX 980 Ti G1 Gaming can utilize the two DVI’s alongside the HDMI and DisplayPort below the rightmost DVI output for a quad monitor setup. Unfortunately, you will be limited by the output capacity of the lone DVI-I in this case.
As a secondary configuration, the three DisplayPorts alongside the HDMI connector can be used for a quartet of 1080P screens while the DVI-I could conceivably be used for an accessory display.
Something also needs to be said about Gigabyte’s revamped OC Guru II software. From an overclocking and monitoring perspective, nothing has been changed since the last time we saw it (certain inputs are as cryptic as ever) but there is now a complete set of LED controls. These adjust the color, brightness and behavior of the G1 Gaming’s side-mounted LEDs.
This situation has led to a bit of stagnation but also some interesting price fluctuations with custom, overclocked cards routinely going for less than NVIDIA’s $649USD reference MSRP. Naturally, with the falling loonie we here in Canada are staring down the barrel of $900+ price points for these cards but there’s not much to be done about that.
Mentioning price provides us with a perfect introduction to Gigabyte’s GTX 980 Ti Gaming. While this is an overclocked and heavily upgraded version of the GTX 980 Ti, it routinely sells for about $650USD or not a dime more than NVIDIA’s reference cards. Gigabyte has also effectively undercut several of their competitors like EVGA’s GTX 980 Ti Superclocked, ASUS’ GTX 980 TI STRIX OC and even MSI’s similarly-named GTX 980 TI Gaming 6G. They seem to have injected some much-needed value into what many believe to be a heavily over-priced segment.
Despite being one of the least expensive GTX 980 Ti’s around these days, the Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti Gaming puts forward some reasonably impressive specifications. Borrowing a page from ASUS’ book, it has two different clock speed gears which are accessed through Gigabyte’s OC Guru software: Gaming and OC. OC increases frequencies to 1190MHz and 1279MHz for the Base and Boost respectively, though the memory speeds aren’t touched. With those specs in hand, we expect it to run neck and neck with MSI’s competitor.
Even though Gigabyte recently introduced a new round of Extreme models right before the end of last year, we expect the Gaming series to carry the vast majority of their sales. This means it needs to deliver an optimal blend of overclocking, pricing and out-of-box performance.
At first glance Gigabyte’s lineup of GTX 980 Ti cards may be a bit confusing; there’s the reference version, the Windforce, the G1 Gaming in today’s review and finally the aforementioned Extreme. The Extreme represents their halo products and as such they receive highly binned cores, insane clock speeds, LED highlights and a Windforce cooler that’s rated to handle up to 700W of thermal output.
In terms of overall design and component choices the standard GTX 980 Ti Windforce and the G1 Gaming are close siblings. Their heatsink are essentially the same albeit the G1 receives some metallic highlights and their component choices are very much mirrored. There are however two elements which make the G1 Gaming stand out a bit: its core has been binned using Gigabyte’s GPU Gauntlet sorting process and it boasts higher clock speeds. It also happens to be one of the longer GTX 980 Ti’s on the market at 11 3/4".
Running along the heatsink’s edge is a shroud extension with the word Windforce and two flanking STOP indicators. Gigabyte has added start-stop rotational technology which idles the fans when the card is utilized in low-load scenarios so the STOP areas will glow a dull blue to indicate normal operation. Essentially, they’re there to ease any panic about potential fan failure. Once the fans begin spinning at their normal speeds, the Windforce logo will begin to glow instead with any color chosen from within the OC Guru II software suite.
Unlike in previous generations were Gigabyte’s backplates were flimsy little things, the G1 Gaming receives a thick aluminum cover with a few strategically placed ventilation slots. This works perfectly to tie in the rest of the card’s design and provide an extremely clean look for any builds with a windowed case.
Power input is done via a pair of 8-pin connectors which have been seamlessly blended into the heatsink as Gigabyte has tried to eke out every last millimeter for optimal cooling results.
Coming to the backplate we have something oddly interesting: a layout that doesn’t reflect a reference card in any way. There’s a pair of DVI (the rightmost one is DVI-I) outputs along with three full sized DisplayPorts and a single HDMI. This is what Gigabyte calls their Flex Display interface since it gives users the ability to push a display signal to as many as five monitors without adapters or daisy-chaining.
In its primary configuration the GTX 980 Ti G1 Gaming can utilize the two DVI’s alongside the HDMI and DisplayPort below the rightmost DVI output for a quad monitor setup. Unfortunately, you will be limited by the output capacity of the lone DVI-I in this case.
As a secondary configuration, the three DisplayPorts alongside the HDMI connector can be used for a quartet of 1080P screens while the DVI-I could conceivably be used for an accessory display.
Something also needs to be said about Gigabyte’s revamped OC Guru II software. From an overclocking and monitoring perspective, nothing has been changed since the last time we saw it (certain inputs are as cryptic as ever) but there is now a complete set of LED controls. These adjust the color, brightness and behavior of the G1 Gaming’s side-mounted LEDs.
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