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Nvidia GTX980 Ti Review

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
noise
The GTX980 Ti is using a reference Nvidia cooler, which while not quite at the same level as modified solutions from Nvidia partners, handles the task reasonably well. We wouldn’t say this was the quietest card we have ever tested, however fan noise is not that intrusive.

We ran several high frame rate tests to try and aggravate coil whine – it wasn’t intrusive (although we noticed a little).

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16 comments

  1. Disappointed kitguru….No 1080p ?

  2. Stephan Chase Morsanutto

    a 980 will already have no issue with 1080p…Anyone who buys a card this powerful has left 1080p behind

  3. Stephan Chase Morsanutto

    I wouldn’t say its overkill for 1440p….I personally have been waiting for a card that can get me great fps at this resolution. Sure a 980 will get me 60 fps in most games…but hell I have a 144hz refresh rate, and I love me some 100+ fps smoothness, even to the point that with my current 770, I crash my settings down just to make things smoother

  4. Why the 21 page format? It’s quite annoying to keep scrolling and clicking. Why not shorten it into a 7 page format, by saying putting the games on one page, the benchmarks on another, the temperature and power efficiency, etc.

    Good review though, wasn’t expecting one this soon, and unless AMD pull the stops out with Fury, then looks like I’m finally going to be upgrading for the first time in 4 years now! (had a chronic case of ‘wait-and-see’ syndrome).

  5. http://www.geforce.com/hardware/geforce-gtx-980-ti/buy-gpu advertised for 649.99 on Nvidia’s site

  6. Not really, what if I want to game on max settings for years to come and am still happy with the 1080p resolution?

    Not everyone is a resolution whore.

  7. I am going through the same “wait-and-see” syndrome. Pls halp.

    Should I wait for Intel Broadwell processors that are coming this fall along with whatever NVIDIA is going to roll out this year (if any)

    or should I build a system with a i7 4790K and 980Ti ?

  8. I see almost no sites are testing compute performance for the 980Ti … I assume NVIDIA have forbidden this …

  9. Enjoy holly days kitguru … kEEP READING

  10. Pascal’s not coming till next year…Nvidia’s using HBM2, and a new process for it, so it’s not possible for them to get it out before December.

    It all really depends on what you’ve got now, how long you’ve been waiting and how much you want to spend. If you’re rocking a 680/780 I’d say wait. I’m on a practically ancient 1.5GB 580 now, so this is my stop!

    Wait a couple weeks to see what AMD does. I’ve never bought from the Red team before, but everything we’re hearing about Fury is making it seem like it’s gonna wipe the floor with the 980Ti (ok, bit of an exaggeration). HBM1 could prove to be huge, and the card is incredibly small and has a hybrid cooling system, which is perfect for the SFF build I’m after.

    In terms of Broadwell…honestly, it doesn’t matter. Any i5/i7 will be more than enough, and yes, that extends all the way back to Nehalem.

  11. Are you planning on using it for a bit of mining? (see what I did there?)

  12. I play with an EIZO FORIS FG2421 monitor 240Hz in Turbo Mode and need 240 FPS constantly in 1920×1080.
    Só,a GTX 980TI is not enough for some titles such as : GTAV,Witcher3 and só on.
    I will wait for Pascal next year.

  13. Irishgamer Gamer

    hate this advert spam crap

  14. Now that is overkill, unless you’re some kind of MLG pro gamer who only plays shooter games in tournament’s. I’d take 4k at 40-60 fps over 240fps at 1080p any day of the week.

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  16. Great review Kitguru

    Maxwell Ti is Best GPU for a future proofing 4K gamine solution and its great performance per watt will enable its partners to offer highly overclocked version. Compute performance has no value to gamers whatsoever but the 980Ti 6GB of memory sure does for 4K gaming.