Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming WaterForce Review - Introduction

GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming WaterForce From Gigabyte ...
As powerful as the length of its name...

In this review we test the GeForce GTX 980 Ti with the longest name evah! The new GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming WaterForce GPU review from Gigabyte. This product impresses by design as it comes in an all custom design with liquid cooling in the form of a WaterForce All-In-One closed loop water cooling system. The result is a card that offers excellent game rendering performance at silent noise levels. Armed with a back-plate and nice looks, this Xtreme Gaming WaterForce comes factory overclocked pretty intense as well. Arm that with the sweetness that is the the GTX 980 Ti GPU with its 6 GB graphics memory and you will quickly realize, this product lives an excellent global gaming domination.

The GPU that resides under the hood is the big Maxwell, and oh man it's a freak of nature with that kind of game rendering powah! You'd expect a product with "980" in it to have a similar slightly tweaked GPU, but no Sir. Nvidia shifted a thing or two around, the 980 Ti is based on the BIG Maxwell GPU, the same GPU that is powering the Titan X. Obviously the product has been trimmed down a tiny bit, but trust us when we say there's plenty of performance to be found. This product comes with a luxurious six gigabytes of graphics memory and with these specs, the GTX 980 Ti should be fetching a lot of interest for the true gamers among us. The GPU empowering the GeForce 980 Ti is big, this one has a massive transistor count; it is a slightly revised GM200 A1 GPU that currently feeds the Titan X its horsepower. So yes, a slightly different iteration of the GM200. The card has five display outputs: three DisplayPorts, HDMI and DVI-I. Where the GTX 980 has 4 GB, this product has a nice 6 GB frame buffer, and close to a third more shader processors when compared to the GeForce 980, accumulating up-to 2816 of them playing the binary game in a GPU that has a whopping 8 Billion transistors (GeForce GTX 980 has 5 Billion). The card looks pretty identical to previous models with subtle changes here and there and with that familiar cooler shroud. Memory wise NVIDIA equipped its GeForce GTX 980 Ti with 7 Gbps memory. Combined with GPU Boost 2.0 you will see this product is advertised in the 1,076 MHz range on its dynamic clock for the reference products. The reference base clock for 980 Ti is 1 GHz. It's not that the card can't go any higher, but it is done to keep the product in line power consumption wise. With a 250W TDP, we are not complaining at all, no Sir. For the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, monitor outputs include DVI, HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort, this will vary a little with board partner products, based on their own design and cooling. With a card like the GeForce GTX 980 Ti you will be able to play the hottest games including the Witcher 3 and Grand Theft Auto V at that whopping Ultra HD 8.2 Mpixels at a 3840x2160 resolution with a single card, in fact we are going to check that out in this review.

The all custom Xtreme Gaming WaterForce GeForce GTX 980 Ti from Gigabyte comes with a default base clock set at 1,216 MHz, the Boost speed for this product is listed at 1,317 MHz. To keep things cool the GeForce GTX 980 Ti WaterForce comes equipped with a nice 120 mm liquid cooling solution that is all connected for you. It even feeds of the graphics card. That solution allows for a silent, cool and also 2-slot design. And yeah, it does cool well, extremely well if you consider that we have a hard time hearing this puppy spinning and purring like a little kitten.

Anyway, have a peek at the photo below. Next page please. 

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming - the new WaterForce edition comes with updated looks