Product Showcase

Product Showcase: GeForce GTX 980

Let's start with our photo-shoot. Two pages worth of photos then and all of them from our own photo-shoot.

Here is the MSI GeForce GTX 980 Gaming edition. Bear in mind that we test the OC model specifically, which comes with a faster standard clock frequency. MSI has built a custom board that differs from the reference design. You will spot a custom PCB with two 8 pin power header for a little more overclocking headroom. A nice looking card.

The card is 28cm in length with the cooler included. This is the OC edition of the Gaming series, meaning it has higher factory clocks, quite impressive as well. The GPU core base clock is ticking over at a 1216 MHz core GPU clock frequency with a 1317 MHz Boost frequency. This card has more shader processors than a 970 (2048) . The memory has been kept reference at 7.0 GHz (effective data-rate) on its 256-bit wide memory bus of 4 GB GDDR5 memory.

Overall MSI is keeping their Gaming theme in all black and red with the dragon army logo. Especially with the new design cooler it is a very nice looking product. On the next photo you'll notice however that it will lack a back-plate, something that is more common and popular these days.

The card will have a maximum power design of 165 Watts, but due to the higher clocks and extensive tweaking please allow for 15, maybe 20 extra Watts, these boards have been designed with overclocking in mind. It has eight power phases for the GPU being fed two 8-pin power headers, and then 2 for memory. In combo with component selection it should be plenty for a nice tweak (or two). 
 

The card will get a luxurious five display connectors, many prefer the many DP connectors. You'll spot three full size Display Port connector, one full size HDMI 2.0 connector and two DVI connectors. 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.