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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.
Please, for the love of god, change the overclocking page. The boost clock in GPU-z is misleading, either take it from Afterburner sensors, or open the Sensors tab in GPU-z to show the real boost clock.
Really :-S
“the only card in the world with coil whine reduction tech” …
i bought a Club3D R9 280 card about 4 months ago that already has coil whine reduction technology !
When are the 8gb 970/980 cards releasing? With the current dev process games are requiring high vram due to the console shared RAM, and I only see this getting worse – so future proofing with 8gb seems like the smartest move at the moment.
That’s like a stupid movement at the moment. By the time any game will fully utilize 8GB of VRAM, the entire card will become worthless. IMO it will take another year or two at least, before we see a PC game requiring 8GB of VRAM. And by then GDDR5 will become obsolete. HBM is right around the corner.
I would have said exactly that 6 months ago. But then I played shadow of mordor on a 4gb card… And let’s face it, AMD aren’t competing at the moment, so going for one of their 6gb cards isn’t a great option either.
Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition’??? WTF!? the correct neme is GTX 970 EXOC Black Edition
Just ordered mine….Wasn’t called the infinity though.
Zardon: You dont mention in the test, if it uses nvidia reference mounting holes for the GPU cooler. So does it?
As I wanted to smack an RAIJINTEK Morpheus GPU cooler on it.
That’s the wrong card. Your looking at this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-006-GX&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1010
when you need to be looking at this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-010-GX
Did you order the wrong card?
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-006-GX&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1010
It’s this one:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-010-GX
It’s mentioned in regards to the 970 and the coil whine issues it’s been found to sometimes suffer from.
I ws being a doofus.
I meant I didn’t order the infinity.
I ordered the EXOC black edition.
The infinity was £50 more for only a slight increase in overclock….
ALthough found out today that the infinity is dropping it’s price this week….dammit. lol.
No guarantee there will be an 8GB version. I wouldn’t wait for something that might never appear.
4GB is gonna be fine for the next few years or so.
Only game I know that claimed to use more was Mordor…and that runs fine on 4GB vram with no apparent loss to quality.
Did you notice a difference? 4GB worked fine for me…ran like silk and looked good with the texture pack.
Mind you it looked great on 3GB as well…ddn’t notice any difference.
Yeah…its’ called super glue lol
aaaaaahhhh OMG OMG!!! I can’t believe, I don’t know there is a modded version of black edition, f*ck I have buy the card from Germany and if I was aware of this version I would have bought from you in England.
Shame as it’s not just a clock increase.
That’s a pity when you look at the additional changes made it’s worth a few quid more. Still I’m sure the regular black edition is a pretty good card.
“Although found out today that the infinity is dropping it’s price this week”
where did you get that info from and how much?
cheers
Yes. It plays OK on 3/4GB cards that I’ve seen, but you get big drops and stuttering. The annoying thing is that the textures don’t seem to actually make much of a difference to the aesthetics.
FYI: http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/nvidia-to-reveal-geforce-gtx-970980-with-8gb-of-memory-in-november-of-december/
It looks pretty much certain, and the reveal should be about now, I was just wondering whether I’d missed it really. I would like for 4GB to be fine for the next few years but looking at the current releases I’m not sure I believe it.
This is all assuming 1080p too – you absolutely need more than 4gb for 4k; even Watchdogs uses more on the lowest settings. Right now, SoM recommends 6GB VRAM and you need at least 4GB to be assured of no stuttering, and CoD: AW recommends 4GB, the Evil Within recommends 4GB, while you absolutely need 4GB for Unity all for 1080p. This is not a few years into the future, it is now. And we’re not talking about buying low end cards here: if you’re buying the best card on the market, or at least one of the most expensive (a 980), there’s no way you should be only just hitting the ‘recommended’ specs, or even below them, when you buy.
No… It also has some superglue on the coils and is black.
It was on the overclockers forums from the designer of the card…
We are taking about this one with a pre-order price of £299.99, due out Friday http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-010-GX&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1010 ?
That isn’t all that was done, Yes glue was used as a buffer between the inductors and pcb to reduce vibration but the components themselves were changed as well.
Yeah…I know.
As I said above it was an extra £50 from the card I ordered…
I did make a mistake in my comment, I thought the price was dropping on the Infinity…but the price on the card I ordered went up.
Wasn’t worth the extra money for me.
.
Especially if the rumours of an upcoming 8GB version are true.
I was joking…but it isn’t worth the price difference. My card (the EXOC black edition) is overclocked to 1500 mhz and still runs under 60 degrees…. hardly any coil whine either.
.
All black does look a bit better.
So glad I went with this relatively unknown brand.
Can you comment at all on the fact that they have one fan still running at idle as opposed to MSI/ASUS having theirs completely turned off? I thought this card looked flawless until I read that part – someone on the OcUK website actually commented that the fan won’t go below 30% which is apparently around 1100rpm
It isn’t misleading.
Then obviously, you got no clue what you’re talking about, in which case, you shouldn’t comment.
How is it misleading then? It’s the correct boost clock because it’s the same one on the manufacturer website. Are you trying to tell me you know better than the manufacturer?
As I wrote, you got no clue then. The boost clock that GPU-z is showing is not correct. I have the MSI variant of this card, and in that tab, it is showing 1403Mhz, but the actual boost clock is 1510Mhz, which is read trough the sensor tab and MSI Afterburner.
The boost clock showing up, is just a guestimate the program is doing, which is clearly wrong.