GTX 970 stock or GTX 970 EVGA edition?

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WaqarDaMan

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I'm buying my pc from XoticPC, and i'll be considering the new GTX 970 (every one knows why)

So the thing is, I've heard nvidia didn't launch any reference designs for the 970, but XoticPC has 2 options, first one is Geforce GTX 970, and the other is Geforce GTX 970 EVGA Super clocked with ACX cooling. the EVGA edition is 40$ more. which would be better? i don't know about the stock one, weather it will better or not. considering that nvidia didn't make any stock ones! (that's what i heard, might be wrong).
 
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Rammy
nikoli is mainly right - blower style coolers work better when they are stacked up in SLI or they are in a case with poor graphics card venting/cooling. It's not applicable to all smaller cases though, many small cases actually have better graphics cooling than conventional towers due to the single graphics card sitting along the edge of the case.

The RVZ01 not only has good venting around the graphics card but it also has provision for fans to increase airflow to the card. You are pretty flexible here in which style of card you pick for this reason.

The tricky thing here is that you aren't comparing them like-for-like, the EVGA ACX card is $40 more, and you don't explicitly know which model you are getting which makes comparison...
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dovah-chan

dovah-chan

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Doesn't quality over quantity always win in almost any situation? And I would choose the reference 970 because I personally prefer the titan cooler over the semi custom cards.

I would not call the titan cooler cheap either; especially when it costs roughly $50 per unit and they are all very well built and perform exceptional.

But from what I know there are very few/no reference 970's available for resell directly to the end user. (aka us normal people and not a company)

Back when the 7xx series came out, there were two reference 770's produced by EVGA and PNY respectively so I would assume EVGA is also the company providing the 'stock' 970 in this situation.
 
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dovah-chan

dovah-chan

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It's the same card just with different coolers so they have the same TDP and durability (hence the same warranty length).

That sort of debate reminds me of the more cores argument where AMD would just keep tacking on more modules in order to improve multithreaded performance. They should of just worked on their modules individually which would have resulted in getting more work done per clock cycle.

More isn't always better. But I do see what you mean. Yet, I'm not quite sure how it relates to selecting which cooler to include on the OP's 970 since both coolers are of high quality and are readily available. Not to mention they are both probably produced by the same company (EVGA).
 
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Rammy

Rammy

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Basically agree with dovah-chan here, but I thought I'd just interject this point -
Does anywhere on the XoticPC site explicitly state that they are providing a GTX970 with a Titan cooler? It might just be a stock image they are using. The reason you couldn't really get hold of GTX770 (and now likely GTX970) with Titan coolers is that they are kinda too expensive to be effective, which is why different companies released more cost-effective "black box" reference style coolers for the GTX770 (and now the GTX970). Given the difference in pricing between the two models on the XoticPC site, I'd suspect that they are using the cheapest model they can find to get the price point down, and this like likely to be one of these cheaper coolers (EVGA do one, so do Palit and Galax).

It's very hard to make a good comparison without knowing exactly what you are getting.
 
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nikoli707

nikoli707

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the "titan" cooler is still not as effective at cooling the chip, mosfets, vrms, etc. than most aftermarket coolers, especially ones by evga, msi, gigabyte, or asus. if you plan on overclocking the graphics card, the aftermarket cards are better since some are custom pcbs, beefed up power delivery systems, etc. and have a higher thermal overclocking limit. otherwise, the reference style blower coolers do spit most of the heat generated out the back of the computer case. if you have other parts in your case that cannot tolerate heat or you have an overclocked cpu that will not agree with extra heat, a "titan" cooler or similar may be a good choice. dual cards can also agree with each other better. also if your in a micro or mini itx rig with not much room for extra cooling, the blower cooler is very good. otherwise, if your in a mid tower or larger with a normal setup, the aftermarket fans from the popular companies are the way to go.
 
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WaqarDaMan

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Yeah i'm in a mini rig actually, (silverstone rvzo1), so the EVGA version would be better? also, the evga version is Stock overclocked, will that mean any difference?
 
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Rammy

Rammy

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nikoli is mainly right - blower style coolers work better when they are stacked up in SLI or they are in a case with poor graphics card venting/cooling. It's not applicable to all smaller cases though, many small cases actually have better graphics cooling than conventional towers due to the single graphics card sitting along the edge of the case.

The RVZ01 not only has good venting around the graphics card but it also has provision for fans to increase airflow to the card. You are pretty flexible here in which style of card you pick for this reason.

The tricky thing here is that you aren't comparing them like-for-like, the EVGA ACX card is $40 more, and you don't explicitly know which model you are getting which makes comparison tough. If hypothetically they were selling "Titan" cooler models for $40 less than the ACX version, then I'd probably just go with the cheaper card as it's still a very good cooler (albeit not as good as the ACX in most scenarios). If I'm correct and they are just using a stock image of the GTX970, but actually just using the cheaper plastic box coolers, then the $40 extra for the ACX isn't such a bad deal.
You'd really need to contact XoticPC for that kind of information, most retailers/builders will have a disclaimer saying that images are for illustration and models may vary.
 
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