Palit GeForce GTX 970 Jetstream review (Page 27)

Palit GeForce GTX 970 Jetstream review

Graphics cards 1049 Page 27 of 27 Published 2014-09-25 09:48 by Hilbert Hagedoorn

Conclusion

Palit has a nice offering with the Jetstream series, now granted -- it does run a little warmer opposed to what we had hoped for. But it seems that Palit made a trade-off to deliver a more silent product opposed to offer something running at really low temperatures. It is a design choice, and in the end this makes the Jetstream amongst the more silent product out there. Fun to see is that this is a relatively small product as well, it has a GTX 970 that housed on a small PCB and it is totally silent. All wins, but sure, the temps will be in the 75 Degrees C range. Realistically though this is not a problem as long as the product is silent and stays below 80 Degrees C right ? What we love, and we do see this with many board partners, is that up-to roughly 60 Degrees C you won't hear the product as the fans don't even spin. Once you pass that threshold, they kick in but the product remains very silent. Palit improved on Nvidia's design, the end result being the Jetstream series. It comes factory overclocked at a boost frequency of 1304 MHz which is impressive really. Overall, gaming at a monitor resolution up-to 2560x1440 this product will be golden in terms of price versus performance versus a nice quiet product.

Maxwell GM 204 GPU experience overall

Both the GeForce GTX 970 and 980 leave a very solid impression. One offers good enough performance, the other exceptional performance within its range. It’s not heaps faster than the aforementioned 780 series though. So I do not expect Geforce 780 range product owners to upgrade anytime soon. However, if you are in say the GeForce GTX 680 range, then this might be a very nice time to jump on-board with a new card. It is interesting to see that 10 years ago performance per generation nearly doubled. With current release schedules we continuously see 20 to 30% performance increases across the board over the last-gen products. That is still respectable as you need to keep in mind that the GM204 is still on 28nm much like Kepler. Injecting more transistors onto a GPU creates yield issues, heat and high power consumption. The GK110 (GTX Titan / Black), whilst being a true beast of a GPU, is testimony to that. With that in mind Nvidia tried to create a product series that is affordable and plays the most high-end and latest games perfectly fine at an acceptable price level. When you look at it from that point of view the Maxwell release is a successful one. This is probably the maximum that Nvidia should and can do on 28nm in terms of improved performance and power consumption versus price.

Thermals

The reference design of the GTX 970 and 980 are similar cooling wise. The reference products are set at an offset threshold of 80 degrees C. Once the GPU gets warmer the card will clock down and lower its voltage. Palit on their end applied the Jetstream cooler. It's a decent cooler overall; you can expect the temperature to hover at 75 maybe 80 Degrees C with hefty on the GPU games. Remember, that is factory overclocked cooling performance for you. We would have liked to see slightly lower temps during gaming overall though. But then again, Palit offers these temps that are lower than reference and more silent overall.

Cooling versus noise levels

Cooling wise we can’t complain, it is drop-dead silent up-to 60 Degrees C. After that the fans kick in, but still remain silent. Expect sound pressure values in the 39 to maybe 40 dBA at best range at max under load and warm circumstances. That's measured 75 CM away from the PC, thus a normal distance inbetween you and your PC. At best you can slightly hear the card while using them heavily. For those that require sheer silence like yours truly, this is the way to go.

Performance

A nice advantage for the cards is that they now come standard with 4 GB of DDR5 graphics memory, this means gaming sweetness at even the highest resolutions. All games play perfectly at up-to WHQD at 2560x1440. The GeForce GTX 970 is a nice Full HD to WHQD card that certainly offers a nice chunk of performance in these resolutions. Overall you can play all the modern and latest games with nice AA levels and excellent image quality, the PC gaming way. So that's the 970, the GTX 980 I would recommend with Ultra HD, especially with MFAA (pending a driver release) you'll be able to play games quite well. The GeForce GTX 970 I'd call a very solid WQHD card, e.g. it is great for gaming up-to 2560x1440 and actually truly perfect for Full HD gaming.

Tweaking

Without extra voltage tweaking you can expect a 1350~1400 MHz range for the Turbo clock frequency. Depending on how much your board will take and allow, with voltage tweaking you’ll pass the 1400 MHz range, our max was almost 1440 MHz. Variables like your PC stability, power supply and so on are important to any overclock, keep that in mind. But yeah, we ended up at a stable 1430~1443 MHz (boost), which is okay of course. The memory is clocked standard at 7.0 GHz, you'll fairly easily achieve 7.5 GHz we even reached 8.0 GHz but backed down 200 MHz (effective) for complete stability. Overall you’ll see a nice gain in extra gaming performance.

Pricing

Prices have been shifting all over the place up-to even 12 hours before the launch. The GeForce GTX 970 and 980 seem to be priced fairly overall, and the GTX 760 will see a price drop as well. Effective for launch, the new lineup will be prices in these lines:

GTX 980: $549 / 452 EUR (ex VAT)
GTX 970: $329 / 270 EUR (ex VAT)
GTX 760: moves to $219

Please note, that this is an MSRP, final E-tail and retail prices at launch and after launch varies and can be lower, depending on the market conditions etc. There are no other changes to any other products. In addition, please note that the GTX 780 Ti, 780 and 770 have been discontinued with this launch.

Final Words

Palit offers a nice and very silent product with the Jetstream edition of this GeForce GTX 970. I like to look at this as the factory overclocked budget model. As stated we would have liked to see better temperatures overall when gaming, but Palit seems to have lowered fan RPM to keep the product very silent, which it is. Combine that with the fact that this product runs at pretty nice factory clocks with a boost frequency of 1304 MHz stock then you can't complain no Sir. As we all know by now, the GeForce GTX 970 series offers intensely good value at 329 USD (add a few tenners for the AIB cards). Board partners like Palit have advanced on the reference design and the end result is what you have been able to see today. The Jetstream card is customized, offers a decent cooler, and comes at higher default clocks. Next to all that the card still remains very silent and at overall acceptable temperature levels. The product comes with all the features you'd want, from connectivity for your monitor to the performance cooler, from low noise levels to a nice factory overclock and aesthetics. A nice plus is the lower power consumption, though that alone would obviously not justify an upgrade from the 780 series, but is testimony to less heat and this results in better clock frequencies and higher overclocking results.

The Maxwell architecture is very sound and proves it can deliver big-time whilst remaining in line power consumption, heat and noise wise and we can only imagine what it would have been like on 20nm. The Palit GeForce GTX 970 Jetstream edition is a decent choice for the ones that need a silent product whilst receiving a bucket-load of graphics rendering performance versus the money you need to pay. Overall the product is looking good from most viewpoints, the default temps during gaming however could have been better. They sit just below 80 degrees C on average. The GeForce GTX 970 overall is a little beast for Full HD and WQHD gaming combined with the best image quality settings. You can find the Palit in stores as we speak, and an additional benefit is that Palit is among the cheaper brands as well. We spotted the model as tested today for as low as 325 EURO (Incl VAT) here in the EU already. Definitely recommended for those on a sharp budget.

Conclusion

Conclusion

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