Gigabyte GTX980 G1 Gaming Review

Allan 'Zardon' Campbell November 11, 2014 Featured Announcement, Graphics

The Gigabyte GTX980 G1 Gaming arrives in a dark box with the scary looking eye logo taking centerstage. It is a little disappointing to see such a generic box for this flagship product.

The bundle includes a driver disc, literature and a couple of power converters.

Understated and somewhat elegant – we like it. Visually it couldn't be more of a contrast to the Inno3D GTX980 iChill Herculez X4 Air Boss Ultra'. The simple black design ethic carries over to the back of the card, which features a black backplate. The three large fans are visible within the metal shroud of the cooler.

Build quality is high, and the substantial heatsink is clearly visible from all angles. The ‘WindForce' brand name can be seen from the top of the solution – this glows blue during operation.

The GTX980 G1 Gaming takes power from 2x 8 pin power connectors.

It is SLI capable, via two connectors, shown above.

The three fans take up the full length of the PCB. The fan blades are curbed with ridges. Gigabyte claim that the design increases air flow by 23% while reducing air turbulence.

The Gigabyte GTX980 G1 Gaming has two DVI connectors on the back (DVI-D and DVI-I), alongside three full sized DisplayPort connectors and a single HDMI connector. This HDMI port will handle 4K resolutions at up to 60hz. These are all full sized ports which is much better than having to rely on mini converter cables.

Gigabyte have opted for a design featuring straight copper heatpipes running along the length of their cooler, as shown above.

The GTX980 is built on the 28nm process. It has 2,048 Cuda Cores, 64 ROP’s and 128 Texture units. The 4GB of Samsung GDDR5 is running at 1,753mhz (7 Gbps effective) and is connected via a 256bit memory interface. The core clock speed has been increased by Gigabyte to 1,228mhz with a boost speed set at 1,329mhz.