MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Gaming OC Review
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maxio
I'm about to purchase 980Ti SLI and I need your help/oppinion.
MSI or G1?
This is very difficult decision to me.
What is your thought on this?
Spets
Great review Hilbert.
GM200 just leaves everything behind when overclocked 😀
I should have waited for MSI's aftermarket card to come out before jumping on the reference. There's always next time.
Hilbert Hagedoorn
Administrator
Oh man, honestly the two are equally great and each has its own brand specific advantages. Personally I however am not a fan of the gigabyte software which you need running in the background to achieve the OC mode. But most people don't care about that either. Then again, I have seen OC Guru II do some interesting stuff perf wise. It's all marginal and relative in gaming though.
Go with your gut feeling and brand preference, both are pretty awesome.
Asgardi
Hmm...
Go with MSI. I have heard lots of bad things about Gigabyte cards recently. I had bad luck with my MSI GTX 970 as it doesnt overclock _at all_, but I have found out to be alone with this. Gigabyte cards are known to have overclocking problems. As someone already explained, their software sucks. With MSI you also contribute in AfterBurner and its RivaTuner back-end, which is a good thing.
Doom112
Really fell sorry for AMD fury X
Seems like AMD will lose even more DGPU shares.
StarvinMarvinDK
Great review Hilbert!
Any chance of a 980Ti SLI review is in the pipeline or have I missed it on Guru3D ?
Would be nice to see what to expect 😀
Glottiz
comparing to G1 Gaming, MSI card is about 4-6% slower across all the tests. i wonder why that is. clock speed out of the box is almost identical (~1% difference). and also when both cards are OCed to almost identical speeds, MSI card is also slower. :3eyes:
Lowice
I would wait for the KFA2/Galax 980ti HOF
alanm
Nice review. Its cards like this that pose the biggest problem for Fury X. Unless AMD and their board partners can come up with similarly juiced up cards, they will be left behind.
Just wondering Hilbert, arent the thermal imaging tests accuracy affected due to the back plate?
Netherwind
I'd buy that. The MSI cards I got are really great!
Solfaur
Awesome card, I would go for 2 of these if I didn't already own 2 MSI 970s 4G, which will last me until Pascal and whatever the name of the new GPUs will be next year.
GPU wise, MSI has started doing great in the last years, along with Afterburner it's a perfect combo. Motherboards are decent too, but imo they shine most in their GPU department.
Hilbert Hagedoorn
Administrator
Not really, as long as there are gaps or holes in the backplate at the right location I can pin through them, 1mm is all I need for the measure point. It only gets tricky once a hotspot is blocked though. But from a manufacturing point of view, that would not make sense so that hardly happens.
But a full cover / backplate, that would be an issue. But you could still use thermal imaging to see how a card behaves thermals wise.
B0GiE-uk-
I've bought the MSI GTX 980Ti Gaming and I think its an amazing card. Have not overclocked it yet using Afterburner. But using MSI's OC mode on their gaming app its reaching 1380 on the core.
BF4 Maxed out settings at 2560 x 1440 getting 140 FPS!
Amazing card!
Can't comment on the Gigabyte but MSI's card is superb! :banana:
ivymike10mt
I had them both. I can say both are good in different way.
It more deepend from Your preference - silence vs overclocking
TF5 is much more silent, have independent cooling solution on all parts on PCB.
When WF3 (other philosophy) all possille components on PCB connected into one huge radiator.
TF5 have 2x10 cm fan adventage, when WF3 have huge radiator adventage.
There is one thing worthy mention about TF5. They have independent fan controll. So if You prefer "custom fan profile" mode. U will have discomfort with that -coz only one fan will work for curve. And only MSI fan controll work for fan speed - there no "curve".
I will chose MSI solution. Coz great quality, sillent, also still should overclock - if U need throtling already OC'ed cards..
Both MSI and Gigabyte have/had problems.
TF5 had some fan issues when start their GTX 980/970.
Gigabyte when launch 980/970 had some bios issues.
Overclocking also deepend how bios is set itself, and even drivers version is - ye shame nvidia.. still fight with TDR isuess (it can reduce OC).
Its not same Gigabyte like 10 years ago.. I mean alot better anyway.
eclap
Great review, MSI Gaming cards are awesome.
Hilbert, on page 11 in the first chart (Noise level IDLE in DBa) there's a typo, it says Radeon R9 370 ASUS STRIX (4GB) instead of MSI GTX 980Ti Gaming 6G OC.
Loophole35
Pretty sure this is my next card.
eclap
The Gigabyte G1 also looks amazing, VRM cooling seems to be better on the G1 iirc. It's a Gigabyte though. I can tell you these FrozrV coolers are brilliant.
Hilbert Hagedoorn
Administrator
Ahw the chart you meant, thanks for the note. Will fix later today.
Deathchild
As a Gigabyte user I don't agree with what you just said. They overclock fine, better than my ASUS anyways, it doesn't do anything.
You don't have to use their software, or do you? You can only use Afterburner no?
Loophole35
Yeah I noticed that but I will be putting this under water. EK is working on a full-coverage water block.
