GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition’

1. Introduction2. GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent 'Infinity Black Edition'3. High Res Gallery4. Testing Methodology5. 3DMark Vantage6. 3DMark 117. 3DMark8. Unigine Heaven Benchmark9. Unigine Valley Benchmark10. Grid AutoSport (1080p and 1600p)11. Grid AutoSport (4k)12. Thief (1080p and 1600p)13. Thief (4k)14. Tomb Raider (1080p and 1600p)15. Tomb Raider (4k)16. Metro Last Light Redux (1080p and 1600p)17. Metro Last Light Redux (4k)18. Thermal Dynamics19. Acoustics Performance20. Power Consumption21. Overclocking22. Closing Thoughts23. View All Pages

Today we take a look at the new modified, custom card created in a partnership with Overclockers UK called the GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition'. Gibbo at Overclockers has created another custom card built with a nickel plated heatsink and the I/O plate is also nickel plated, black. The inductors on this GALAX card are housed in high grade containers and are glued to the PCB to help reduce extraneous noise. Gibbo was keen to point out that their custom cards are the only ones to feature Coil Whine Reduction Technology (CWR).

The GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' is certainly a looker. They have went down the ‘stealth bomber' route – ensuring there are no distracting stripes, or colourful extras added to the cooler and PCB. If you want to build a mean looking black system, then this is surely a card you will want to shortlist.

GPU	GeForce GTX 680 (Kepler)	GeForce GTX 980 (Maxwell)	Geforce GTX 970 (Maxwell)
Streaming Multiprocessors	8	16	13
CUDA Cores	1536	2048	1664
Base Clock	1006 mhz	1126 mhz	1050 mhz
GPU Boost Clock	1058 mhz	1216 mhz	1178 mhz
Total Video memory	2GB	4GB	4GB
Texel fill-rate	129 Gigatexels/Sec	144.1 Gigatexels/Sec	109.2 Gigatexels/Sec
Memory Clock	6000 mhz	7000 mhz	7000 mhz
Memory Bandwidth	192 GB/sec	224 GB/sec	224 GB/s
ROPs	32	64	64
Manufacturing Process	28nm	28nm	28nm
TDP	195 watts	165 watts	145 watts

The new GM204 GPU is very efficient. The Maxwell SM has been rebalanced so that the CUDA cores are fully utilised more often. Doing so saves power and enhances overall performance. The L2 cache size in the GM204 is 2MB, or four times larger than the GK104. The addition of extra cache means that fewer requests to the GPU memory are needed – again reducing power consumption and pushing more performance.

The Geforce GTX 970 is equipped with 7Gbps memory. Those of you with higher resolution monitors, or running in a multi screen configuration will also be pleased to hear that there is 4GB of GDDR5 memory on the card, not 3GB – this memory will push 224 GB/s sec. Nvidia have added a new compression engine to reduce the demand on DRAM bandwidth.

The GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition is overclocked heavily out of the box. The core clock is increased from 1,050mhz to a whopping 1,178mhz. Boost speed is set at 1,329mhz. The GDDR5 memory speeds are running at the reference clock speeds of 1,753mhz (7Gbps effective), although this will not be a bottleneck for the hardware.



Our review sample didn't arrive in a full retail box, so we can not comment on any extras included. I do like the appearance of the GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' – it reminded me a little of the excellent Asus GTX970 STRIX OC which we reviewed back in September, although the Asus card is slightly more colourful, featuring red stickers on the fans.

If James Hetfield in Metallica was building a PC we would imagine he would be using a GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition'.

Bonus points to the company for installing a full backplate, which is branded with the ‘GALAX' name. A GPU backplate can not only help reduce PCB temperatures, but they offer a little protection to the delicate circuitry underneath.

As we would expect, SLI is fully supported. I do hope Nvidia move to ‘bridgeless SLi' at a future date, negating the need for ugly bridge cables.

The card takes power from a single 8 pin and a 6 pin power connector. Most of the GTX970's we have tested so far require two 6 pin power connectors, so it will be interesting to see if the additional power draw capabilities help improve overclocking later. Regular readers may remember the Asus GTX970 Strix OC takes power from a single 8 pin power connector.

This particular card is equipped with a DVI-I and DVI-D port, a full sized DisplayPort and HDMI connector. This HDMI port will handle 4K resolutions at up to 60hz.


The cooler has a nickel coated base, running into four thick nickel plated heatpipes. OCUK have worked to reduce coil whine by housing the inductors in higher quality containers. They are adhered to the PCB with red glue – this is easily visible in the high resolution board pictures on the next page of the review.

An overview of the GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' shown above. The GM204 GPU core is built on the 28nm process. It has 64 ROP’s, 104 Texture units and 1664 CUDA cores. The 4GB of GDDR5 memory is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. The core runs at 1,1178mhz with a Turbo Boost set at 1,329mhz. The memory is clocked at 1,753mhz (7Gbps effective).On this page we present some high resolution images of the product taken with a Fuji XT1 camera. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.




For the review today we are using Nvidia Forceware 344.60 and AMD Catalyst 14.11.2 beta drivers. All of the AMD and Nvidia hardware in our reviews today used these drivers, tested between the 18th and 24th November. We are using one of our test rigs supplied by DINOPC and built to our specifications.

If you want to read more about this, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page. We are using an Asus PB287Q 4k and Apple 30 inch Cinema HD monitor for this review today.

Comparison cards:
Gigabyte GTX980 G1 Gaming (1228mhz core / 1,753mhz memory)
Inno3D GTX980 ‘iChill Herculez X4 Air Boss Ultra (1266 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
MSI GTX980 Gaming 4G (1216mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Asus GTX980 Strix (1178mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Asus GTX780 Ti Direct CU II OC (954mhz core / 1750 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX980 Reference (1126 mhz core / 1753mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X OC (1040 mhz core / 1300 mhz memory)
Palit GTX970 Jetstream OC (1152mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
MSI GTX970 Gaming 4G (1140 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Palit GTX780 6GB (902 mhz core / 1502mhz memory)
Asus GTX970 StriX OC (1114 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Asus R9 290 Direct CU II OC (1000 mhz core / 1260 mhz memory)
OCUK GTX970 ‘Nvidia 970 Cooler Edition' (1051 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Grid AutoSport
Tomb Raider
Metro Last Light Redux
Thief 2014

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.
Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.


The GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' rates very highly, top of the GTX970 chart with a final score of 47,855 points.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads. If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.


Another strong result in this older Direct X 11 benchmark from Futuremark.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”


As we would expect, the GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' scores just ahead of the slightly lower clocked Palit GTX970 JetStream OC.
Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We set Quality to ‘High', Tessellation to ‘Normal' and resolution to 1600p.


Great results, averaging 53 frames per second at 1600p.
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

We toggle quality to HIGH, and resolution to 1600p.


Nvidia hardware scores particularly well in Unigine Valley, and the GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' outperforms all other GTX970's that we have tested, to date.Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia).

On this page we test at 1080p and 1600p using the ‘Ultra' image quality profile with 8x MSAA.


Smooth frame rate performance at both 1080p and 1600p, holding above 60 frames at all times.
Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia).

We test at Ultra HD 4k with 8MSAA. The Ultra Profile is selected for maximum image quality.

The engine proves a lot more demanding at this ultra high resolution, although the frame rates are still good. You would really need two cards to get 60+ constant frame rates however.Thief is set in a dark fantasy world inspired by Victorian, gothic, and steampunk aesthetics. Garrett, a master thief who has been away from his hometown for a long time, returns to it, a place known only as The City, and finds it ruled with an iron grip by a tyrant called The Baron. While The City is ravaged by a plague, the rich continue to live in isolation and good fortune while the poor are forming numerous mobs against the authorities, Garrett intends to use the volatile situation to his favor. (Wikipedia).

We test with the ‘very high' image quality preset at 1080p and 1600p.


A demanding engine once we push past 1080p, but the GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' performs well, holding frame rates close to 40 at all times, at 1600p.Thief is set in a dark fantasy world inspired by Victorian, gothic, and steampunk aesthetics. Garrett, a master thief who has been away from his hometown for a long time, returns to it, a place known only as The City, and finds it ruled with an iron grip by a tyrant called The Baron. While The City is ravaged by a plague, the rich continue to live in isolation and good fortune while the poor are forming numerous mobs against the authorities, Garrett intends to use the volatile situation to his favor. (Wikipedia).

We test at the ‘very high' preset for maximum image quality. Resolution is set to 4k for this particular test.

This resolution proves too much for any GTX970, and even some GTX980's. A drop in image quality would be needed to help try and maintain smooth frame rates at 4K.
Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia).

We test with the ‘ultimate' image quality profile at 1080p and 1600p.


A great engine to use in a variety of situations. We can see the GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' is a great partner at 1080p if you want to use the highest image quality settings. 1600p proves a little more arduous, although the frame rate results are still strong.Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia).

We test at Ultra HD 4k resolution with the ‘Ultra' image profile enabled. Single GPU solutions find the ‘Ultimate' image quality preset too difficult to power properly.

At the ‘Ultra' IQ setting, the frame rate holds an average of 35, dropping to 30 in the more intensive sections of the environment. The engine is running smoothly at all times however, which is good.
On May 22, 2014, a Redux version of Metro Last Light was announced. It was released on August 26, 2014 in North America and August 29, 2014 in Europe for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements. A compilation package, titled Metro Redux, was released at the same time which includes Last Light and 2033. (Wikipedia). We test with following settings: Quality-Very High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-On.


Great performance from the GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' at both resolutions.
On May 22, 2014, a Redux version of Metro Last Light was announced. It was released on August 26, 2014 in North America and August 29, 2014 in Europe for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements. A compilation package, titled Metro Redux, was released at the same time which includes Last Light and 2033. (Wikipedia). We test with following settings: Quality-High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-off, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

Only the highest clocked GTX980's can maintain smooth frame rates at these settings when tasked with Ultra HD 4K.
The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.


Well this is quite the result. The cooler on the GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' card outperforms the cooler fitted to both the Asus GTX970 Strix OC and the MSI GTX970 Gaming 4G. The only cooler which delivers better results is the monstrous ‘iChill Air Boss Ultra' fitted to the Inno3D GTX980.We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' is a very quiet card and rates up there with the best MSI and ASUS solutions. This is very impressive when factoring in the temperature results shown on the previous page of the review.To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Tomb Raider at 4k resolution and the synthetic stress test Furmark – recording both results.

We already know Nvidia's Maxwell architecture is very efficient. The GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' is no different, consuming only 140 watts under load.
To overclock today we are using the latest V4.0.0 of MSI's Afterburner based on the excellent Rivatuner.


The GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' is supplied in a highly overclocked state however there is still plenty of headroom available on the core. We managed to push the boost turbo speed from 1,329mhz to 1,476mhz which is rather impressive.

I have analysed many GTX 970 and GTX 980 cards since Nvidia launched in September. Today's review has been rather interesting for me however because it is a good indication of how seriously Overclockers UK are taking the graphics market – this partnership with GALAX has worked out great. We analysed their custom reference GTX970 solution earlier this week (built on a GTX980 PCB), and it is clear they aren't trying to cut corners just to maximise profits.

The GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' may be quite a mouthful to say, but it is a seriously impressive graphics card. It is clocked higher than any other GTX970 sample we have reviewed so far and performs just as well as we would expect.

If you like the brutal appearance of the Inno3D GTX980 ‘iChill Herculez Air Boss Ultra GPU (reviewed in October) then we aren't so sure the GALAX GTX970 OC Silent will tick the same boxes for you. It is very understated and the all black design ethic means it won't instantly attract the eye in a system build. I do like the fact that there are no flashing LED lights, neon glow names or bright fans incorporated into the build. It is subtle and attractive in its own way, much like the Asus GTX970 STRIX OC.

The GALAX card is supplied in a very high state of overclock although there is plenty of additional headroom on offer if you want to push every ounce of performance from the hardware. We managed to increase the core Boost speed to 1,476mhz before artifacting would occur. While overclocking will vary from card to card, our result is a strong indicator of potential gains possible.

The custom cooling solution delivers exceptional results and it outperforms competing solutions from companies such as MSI and ASUS by 4-5 degrees Celsius. Noise emissions closely match custom ASUS and MSI solutions so it hasn't been just a case of simply increasing fan speeds to reduce load temperatures. Credit is due to Andrew ‘Gibbo' Gibson for working hard to reduce potential coil whine. The inductors are housed in high grade containers and are glued to the PCB. If you have read the whole review you will have seen the special red glue they have used on our high res gallery page.

The GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition' really does deserve to be right at the top of a final shortlist, it is the most capable all round GTX970 we have reviewed.

You can ONLY buy direct from Overclockers UK for £299.99 inc vat. Buy from CaseKing in Europe for 379.90 euros, here.

Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.

Pros:

• Its a great looking card – very ‘understated'.
• built to the highest standards.
• cooler outperforms custom cards from market leaders MSI and ASUS.
• techniques in place to reduce coil whine.
• Supplied in a high state of overclock.
• excellent power consumption.

Cons:

• Faces stiff competition from big name brands such as MSI and ASUS.

Kitguru says: Mean and lean, and built to the highest standards. A fantastic graphics card for £300.

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