Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 G1 Gaming Video Card
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,344 words · ~6 min read
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we don't always get near immediate availability of non-reference designs
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from NVIDIA's Partners when they launch a new GPU but in the case of the GeForce
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GTX 980 G1 gaming it's a bit of a
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mouthful from Gigabyte it's a good thing we
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did Corsair gaming RGB keyboards feature
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Precision cherrymx RGB key switches for 16.8 million color per key backlighting
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for virtually unlimited customization click now to learn more now usually with
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a non-reference graphics card where the board manufacturer designs their own PCB
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and cooler for the GPU they buy from NVIDIA we run through the normal stuff
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improved vrm designs for more stable efficient power delivery and a longer
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lifespan better cooler designs for lower car temperatures and a longer lifespan
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and visual improvements that most folks will either prefer or not prefer
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compared to a reference board but in the case of the gtx980 G1 gaming from
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Gigabyte seriously I got to stop saying that they have actually made some
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serious improvements here that would make me consider this card over an
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NVIDIA designed one we'll start with the stuff that I only sort of liked the
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windforce cooler with its three redesigned 80mm fans looks pretty good I
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think Gigabyte could improve this in a couple ways um while the random chunk of
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metal that increased card height for no reason is thankfully gone from the older
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windforce cards leaving behind a sleek housing and the back plate is gorgeous
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with angular vent cutouts and a surprisingly tasteful g1i on it that
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windforce logo at the top needs to be RGB since blue isn't even going to match
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Gigabyte's own G1 series motherboards and the aluminum fins for the cooler
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need to be dark nickel plated Gigabyte does that and they'll have the best
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looking cooler on the market to go along with their quoted 600 watts of total
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heat dissipation a number that I truly believe based on what Luke observed
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about the power consumption of this card once we cranked it and the temps of the
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GPU not to mention that it did all of this while remaining pretty darn quiet
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now we can move on to the stuff that kicks ass the io on this board is
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perfect Flawless Victory Gigabyte triple
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DisplayPort 1.2 ports for surround gaming with g-sync or at resolutions
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higher than 1440 60p off a single card
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and HDMI 2.0 and dual dual link DVI
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ports for f with non-DisplayPort monitors to run surround as well you can
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even hook up a VGA monitor with a couple scent adapter thanks to the fact that
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one of the DVI ports is dvii and Carries
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an analog signal this is the new IO gold
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standard guys speaking of gold standards Gigabyte is calling out their processor
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binning procedure in their marketing materials now that's a weird move their
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name for it is GPU Gauntlet sorting and
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they're claiming that their s so or super overclock class cards will
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guarantee higher overclocking capabilities seriously this is right off
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their site I guess how much truth there is to this remains to be seen But if
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their shipping clock speeds or anything to go by this one is rated at 1329 MHz
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boost maybe there's something to it now
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of course there's the usual gtx980 technology so along with GeForce
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experience uh Shadow play game recording game stream network gaming on Shield
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devices and automatic game optimization and Driver updates NVIDIA has added
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third generation Delta color compression to make better use of memory bandwidth
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Dynamic super resolution a way of running less demanding gains at higher
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res than down sampling them to the resolution of your monitor for better
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visuals mfaa a new less demanding
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anti-aliasing mode and auto asynchronous warp a VR feature that should improve
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the experience for users of the Oculus Rift or similar head tracking
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head-mounted displays who are prone to motion sickness you can get more
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in-depth explanations of these Technologies in reference gtx980 video
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linked here but now it's time to put
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this card to the test as usual we'll be overclocking not only the gtx980 G1
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gaming but also all the cards it's going up against so we shall see how it fares
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all right guys first up we have overclocking to see the settings for all
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of my cards check out the overclocking dock in the description of this video
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this card specifically was configured an afterburner with a core voltage offset
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of 70 a power liit of 122% a core clock offset of 160 and a
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temperature Target of 91 which resulted in its actual core clock averaging
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around 1531 to 1561 in terms of
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benchmarking results I was happy to see that the extra overclocking Headroom
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Allowed by this card gave it enough of an advantage to achieve a clear win in
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all of my gaming benchmarks in both 1080P and 4K and upon further expection
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I noted that it did this while maintaining a heavy load running
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temperature of only 70° C the power draw
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on the other hand was a little bit surprising instead of being drastically
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lower than our reference 780 Ti like our reference 980 was this windforce cooled
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extra power pins GTX 980 actually Drew more overall system power which may
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suggest that Gigabyte is binning leakier chips for enthusiast grade cards
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resulting in a higher potential performance at the cost of power
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efficiency anyways just some food for thought and back to you L thanks Luke so
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there you have it is the Gigabyte gtx980
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G1 gaming an enthusiast's Delight do you
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prefer gigabytes design that favors folks with high airflow cases and beefy
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power supplies or would you rather have NVIDIA reference blower cooler that
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exhausts air outside of the case and lower power consumption at the cost of
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some GPU overclockability let us know in the comments speaking of the comments on
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this video I know they're going to be chalk full of appreciation for today
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offer thank you guys for watching this video on gigabytes G1 gaming GeForce GTX
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980 super overclocked GTX graphics card
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