Which 980 GTX Brand too choose??

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vipboy28

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Hi,

Im looking at the EVGA 980 GTX SC ACX 2.0 with the 1266 base MHZ and the 1367 Boosted MHZ...

Any reason why i would want to go with MSI or even Asus? I generally favor EVGA but im wondering if im just drinking the cool-aid.

Thanks guys
 
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unknownofprob
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unknownofprob

unknownofprob

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make your decision upon price, looks and performance.

EVGA, MSI and Asus are all great brands. Asus and EVGA are my person favourite but that doesn't stop me from recommending MSI products as they are better value, and cool excellently. XFX on the other hand have poor coolers on their cards and I don't recommend.
 
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NONE4YOUU

NONE4YOUU

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Gigabye has best cooling, hence best overclocking. MSI second best cooling and overclocking. Asus is nice an a quiet, but is bad at overclocking because it heats up a LOT. The EVGA ACX 2.0 I'd horrible on the 970 and 980, I've read around and it had broken many gpus. Facts i have spoken. Yoda voice...
 
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unknownofprob

unknownofprob

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No it just has a higher factory overclock, which does not indicate it has better cooling. Asus Strix DCUII models perform better then you may think, even though they are quieter.
 
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JackNaylorPE

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That was my 1st conclusion, however I drew my conclusions too fast.

The Gigabyte cools better in the Guru3D article cause the measurements were made at waaaaay different clocks.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_geforce_gtx_970_gaming_review,26.html
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-970-g1-gaming-review,1.html

With MSI at 1325 clock, it hits a GPU temp of 68 C with PCB measurement points from 62C to 82C and a dbA of 39
With Giga at 1178 clock, it hits a GPU temp of 60 C with PCB measurement points from 57C to 61C and a dbA of 39
With Asus at 1114 clock, it hits a GPU temp of 69 C with PCB measurement points from 62C to 82C and a dbA of 39

The 1st thing we can do is knock out the Asus .... at the lowest OC of the three, it's the hottest and obviously at higher overclocks it would well exceed the 39 dbA

The MSI runs a bit hotter simply because they overclocked the bejeezes outta this card before they put it in the box. At a 12.5% higher overclock, it's quite obvious that the Giga would have to be much louder than it is an the "outta the box" clock.

Reading the techpowerup reviews for previous cards, I noticed that MSI puts much more emphasis on sound then temps. The fact that everybody cam in under 40 dbA makes it appear that the industry has a "target" and set clocks to that they wouldn't exceed the 40 dbA mark.

Their profile seems to be to keep sound as low as possible and not really give a hoot about temps until they approach the 80s....I anxious to find out what the relative fan speeds were at the time of testing.....given the fact that they all had the same sound level.
 
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JackNaylorPE

JackNaylorPE

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Did you note that the EVGA model is defective ? One third of the GPU is not covered by the heat sink

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/evga-geforce-gtx-970-acx-has-misaligned-gpu-vs-heatpipes.html

index.php






Actually, see post above, the highest factory OC's card belongs to MSI.... The heat data is also included and this time Asus comes up quite short as shown above .... they were hotter than everybody else at the lowest overclock and were no quieter than the other two cards, again at the lower OC

 
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Eximo

Eximo

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Reference NTTVM cooler, not the ACX or ACX 2.0. I hate to buy a fancy air cooler and the have it sit in a box until people start needing replacement fans.

By the by if anyone needs older ASUS DCUII replacement fans I have 4 sitting.
 
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JackNaylorPE

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Oops didn't notice.... I usually buy non reference even when taking off the cooler to add water blocks so as to to get the beefier VRM and other PCB improvements. Tho, the EVGA SC uses the same PCB as reference model so no reason to buy the SC w/ better cooler just to get the same PCB / VRM.
 
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unknownofprob

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Gigabyte Fans spin much faster then the Asus fans at the same temperature, but if they were at the similar fan speed the Asus would be arguably close, though not in front. I have used both Gigabyte and Asus graphics cards and the auto setting used on gigabyte is much different to that of the Asus.
 
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JackNaylorPE

JackNaylorPE

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Yes, I have seen that before on the 7xx series cards .... but I can't speak to the 9xx series as I haven't installed any yet nor have I seen anyone as yet write about the speeds.

However, I don't really care how fast the fans are spinning .... I don't think anyone does..... what matters is how much noise they make and with MSI and Gigabyte having much bigger overclocks, their ability to maintain the same noise levels at higher clocks is telling. Asus continues their streak of having the slowest clocked cards among the Big 4. Since the 670 DCII Top ruled everything, every nVidia card they have made is substantially slower than the competition by a rather large amount. Yes, we can make them go faster but ya gotta wonder why their cards are always at the bottom in this aspect.
 
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vipboy28

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I do know/see the 970 cards are defective, but that doesnt mean the 980's are as well. Also EVGA has great customer service, so even if they didnt fix it, they would get you a card that does work. With that said, the question is do i want a headache in the future? No, no i dont... MSI or Gigabyte is looking pretty good.
 
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JackNaylorPE

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As far as the vaunted customer service .... I love their step up program but dealing with Tech Support is an exercise in frustration .... last .... and I do mean "last ever" experience was 18 months, 5 RMAs, and 20 support calls for a factory OC;d card that wouldn't run at the factory OC.... Each of the calls began with redoing all the steps performed oin the previous calls. They finally realized I wasn't going to leave them alone and they sent a reference single GPU card in lieu of the dual GPU card my son had purchased. At least it operated at advertised speeds.

 
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JackNaylorPE

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There should be no issue with the reference designs .... big surprise here, this is the first EVGA SC series card that I can remember that uses a non-refernce PCB design.

Odd also that Euros get a backplate and US peeps have to buy them.

The Voltage controller is disappointing

The Richtek 8802A is a cost-effective voltage controller without I2C, so there is no advanced monitoring. Its VID-based voltages can be monitored and controlled through NVIDIA's driver, though.
Click to expand...

Memory is Samsung

 
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StealthArsenal

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At this point I am still holding our for a reference SC 980. Maybe even wait till FTW or Classified as long as they can get the cooling under control. Might just have to go with the SC as I am cardless at this time. Out with the old, in with the new. However the new is no where to be found.
 
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