980ti - EVGA Classified or Gigabyte Extreme Gaming (or something else?)

Got my cards in SLI now and see that Gigabyte cards take 3 slots so there's only one way they fit, and no more PCI-E for me in this system. No problem though, because at 4k with AA on and 60fps I am floored. The latest Tomb Raider game looks like a rendered movie. In the underground tombs the ice and rock look so amazing and real I'm just in awe. I have never seen graphics like this in my life. These cards are just insane! lol. My last card is a Radeon 6970 and I just was not prepared for how far these chips have come.

I am still getting game crashes after a couple of hours, requiring a reboot to continue, but I will track that down eventually.

AMAZING! Nvidia has blown my mind.

Observations, these things COOK though. Card 1 obviously runs much hotter than card 2 so I have my better ASIC in that slot (75.9%). Still runs 10 degrees hotter. In game it keeps at about 83C, so I guess that's normal? That's what is listed in the driver, and I think is the fan threshold.

Hah my one 980ti is amazing me, I couldn't imagine SLI...

BTW, I haven't experimented with the LN2 bios yet. Aside from the additional 6 pin power reserve, what are the advantages to running it that way?

wingman99 said:

I like EVGA it has dual Bios and good support.

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+1 Support means everything when spending that kind of cash on a card. I've been buying Evga products for 12 years and have never had 1 single issue with their customer support, I'll pay a premium for that!

Gigabyte sucks, you cant talk to a real person and the don't know what you are talking about.

wingman99 said:

Gigabyte sucks, you cant talk to a real person and the don't know what you are talking about.

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I would have gone EVGA but I dislike that they are binning their chips and all 72% and higher ASIC chips get binned for their Kingpin cards now. If I need support I'm gonna come here first anyway . You're right though. If you ever need a warranty exchange a good company makes all the difference. I do like the Gigabyte cards a lot though. Solid feeling design, robust PWM and smooth, quiet fans. Also, I love the look.

Hopefully these will be trouble free until my next upgrade, which will probably be a lot sooner than my last one was (with VR on the horizon). As I said, these in SLI, 4K are blowing my mind!

Category 5 said:

I would have gone EVGA but I dislike that they are binning their chips and all 72% and higher ASIC chips get binned for their Kingpin cards now. If I need support I'm gonna come here first anyway . You're right though. If you ever need a warranty exchange a good company makes all the difference. I do like the Gigabyte cards a lot though. Solid feeling design, robust PWM and smooth, quiet fans. Also, I love the look.

Hopefully these will be trouble free until my next upgrade, which will probably be a lot sooner than my last one was (with VR on the horizon). As I said, these in SLI, 4K are blowing my mind!

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Since almost all 980Ti's are overclocking within about +/- 25MHz of each other the K|NGP|N binning is hurting EVGA so badly... not.

Glad you like your Gigabyte cards. I'm just vary upset with my new Gigabyte motherboard sound and technical support. The Kingpin cards do look good.

ATMINSIDE said:

Since almost all 980Ti's are overclocking within about +/- 25MHz of each other the K|NGP|N binning is hurting EVGA so badly...

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This... It really isn't a big difference between ANY card. 1475-1525 is about he average for them all. More than that, you win the silicon lottery... less you and you lost.... but most will make it there, binning or not.

My KPE 980Ti 79.9% ASIC clocks the same as any other card. It stops around 1500 on air

No issues with my gigabyte 980 ti waterforce card so far. At the moment I can run core @1569 and mem at 4182. That's with the ln2 bios enabled at 1.23 v.
This setting works with both benching and gaming at the moment.

That's awesome! I have two of the air cooled xtremes now in SLI and they are killer at 4k. I have them at 1455 core and 8000 ram, but the top one gets pretty warm. It is in the 70s, close to 80 with the fans at 100%. There just isn't enough space in between the cards to get cool air in. I am going to try a fan on the side case bringing in fresh air directly over the GPUs, but currently the performance is great.

I am getting some occasional crashes in tomb raider, but not sure it's related to the GPU clocks. There are a lot of reports of similar issues with that game. That said, I am keeping 60fps, 99% of the time with every setting maxed, at 4K (no AA since I don't need it at 4K).

Love these cards!

I have a MSi golden edition 980Ti with MSi afterburner and have it set to 109% power, +125 core, +500 memory. I can't get it past 1458 mhz. If I even clock @ +130 on the afterburner it jumps to 1475mhz and crashes. Neither of the 3 MSi golden edition cards I have will do that either.