Product Showcase
Product Showcase: GeForce GTX 980 HOF
Let's start with our photo-shoot. Two pages worth of photos then and all of them from our own photo-shoot.
Yeah hellooow! That is something else isn't it ? Now that is a GeForce GTX 980 man! The model that GALAX offers specifically comes with a faster standard clock frequency. Then an all custom board that diverts from the reference design in pretty much every way. it has 8 GPU phases + 2 for memory, IR3595 Digital PWM controller. Looking good there brotha from anotah motha!
The card has a familiar size at roughly 30 cm in length with the cooler included, the PCB itself is a little shorter. This card has higher factory clocks, the GPU core base clock is ticking, tocking and tacking away at a 1304 MHz GPU core clock frequency with a very fast 1418 MHz Boost frequency. The memory is clocked at 7.0 GHz (effective data-rate) on its 256-bit wide memory bus of 4 GB GDDR5 memory.
It's a nice looking fellah alright, two fans span almost 8cm each and the middle one is at 90mm have cooling capacity alright. The card itself is quiet compared to others we tested. Fans will spin at idle, and under gaming load you can hear a little airflow. It's all good and not at all noisy though. On top you can see a HOF plate that lits up when activated.
The card has a maximum power design of 165 Watts, but due to the higher clocks and extensive tweaking please allow for 35 extra Watts, these boards have been designed with overclocking in mind. Its power phases are fed from two 8-pin power headers. In combo with component selection it should be plenty for a nice tweak (or two).
GALAX also applies a nice Anodized aluminum backplate. There are three main reasons for a backplate:
- It prevents the larger cards from bending due to weight (reinforces).
- It's aesthetically more pleasing.
- Protect components.
Backplates can trap heat and heat up the PCB & components, this is why you want a backplate with at least a little space in-between the PCB and plate or a backplate with gaps on the most prominent locations like GPU and VRM area. Most designs these days have that. In that case it can work a little like a heatsink, add sturdiness and make a nice looking product. So, properly done then with some ventilation they can be helpful. GALAX did it right, there is space inbetween the PCB and plate + you can see many vent holes.
The card will get a luxurious five display connectors, You'll spot three Display Port connectors, one HDMI 2.0 connector and one DVI connector. HDMI is 2.0 compatible meaning that compatible monitors and tellys can do UHD at 60 Hz, DP is 1.2 but has support for eDP 1.4.
The button to the left is called (and I kid you not!) 'Hyper Boost' technology and acts like a hardware turbocharger, increasing fan speed and maximum power delivered to the GPU with the push of a button.
GAWD ... Hyper Boost, so many Michael Knight / Kitt parallels in this review ...
