KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
If you have £600 in hand and want to upgrade your graphics card then the Gigabyte GTX980Ti XTREME Gaming Windforce deserves serious consideration. If you have recently bought a new high refresh 1440p monitor or 4K screen, then the GTX980 Ti is still the most powerful solution available on the market.
Regular readers will know that I rate the Fury X and Fury cards quite highly, however the modified, custom, overclocked GTX980 Ti widely available now from Nvidia partners are in a performance league of their own.
Our tests today have highlighted that the Gigabyte GTX980Ti XTREME Gaming Windforce delivers class leading performance and can drive insane frame rates at the highest resolutions. Many gamers would be happy with these Ultra HD 4K frame rates in many of the newest titles, although some engines will ideally demand two in SLi for super smooth 50+ frame rates – at maxed out image quality settings.
We recently reviewed the ASUS ROG Matrix GTX980 Ti Platinum Edition (review HERE) and while their cooling system only adopts a dual fan configuration, the cooler itself incorporates thicker heatpipes. This means the ASUS card is actually able to perform better – exhibiting lower temperatures and less noise under sustained load. That said, it is £60 more expensive than the Gigabyte GTX980Ti XTREME Gaming solution, so you could argue that the benefits balance out.
Buy the Gigabyte GTX980Ti XTREME Gaming Windforce from Overclockers UK for £599.99 inc vat HERE.
Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.
Pros:
- class leading performance.
- 12+2 Phase Power.
- quality backplate.
- good running temperatures.
- even more headroom available via software.
- 2,000mhz+ (8Gbps effective) available from the GDDR5 memory.
- very high grade build quality.
- zero coil whine.
Cons:
- The Asus ROG Matrix GTX980 Ti Platinum is the best GTX980 ti we have tested, but it is also the most expensive.
Kitguru says: Another fantastic high end graphics solution from the Gigabyte team. An ideal partner for that new 120hz or 144hz 1440p panel. Smooth 4K frame rates are possible too, although you may want to buy two for a smooth flowing, consistent 60fps+
That is some bit of kit, all I need now is an extra bit of cash to get one…..about £598 extra should do it 😛
Bah humbug.
On page 2 you say ‘Direct CU II cooler’ not sure Asus would agree with that. And what is the difference between this one and the normal windforce cooler? Does this replace it?
I have fixed that, thanks for bringing it up. I think they designed this particular cooling system just for this specific card
On page 3.Overclocking, for these overclocking settings, what is the max GPU Boost Clock as reported by Afterburner as it doesn’t appear here in the photo, I guess it could reach the 1480/1490 Mhz with that extra voltage on the core
Is this better than the Gigabyte gtx 980 ti g1?
How do you change the lighting effects as there doesn’t appear to be any option to do this in the OC GURU
What rig are you guys using, I can’t find any mention of it in the review!
Its in the latest edition of OC Guru II
Hey, u did mistake here: “Cons:
The Asus ROG Matrix GTX980 Ti Platinum is the best GTX980 ti we have tested, but it is also the most expensive.” Not Asus, but Gigabyte! =))) Oh, these copypasters…
the ROG Matrix GTX980 Ti Platinum is from Asus. They are simply saying this is not the best GTX 980 Ti, so is the ROG Matrix. I don’t see any mistake in there >.<
I’ll call bullshit on that , it’s not any less secure than it was