How good is the Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 compared to other brands?

very very cool, in heaven benchmark my gpu reached 52 degreese C and my friends msi hit 55-58, performance is within 1-2 percent of the other cards, and the gigabyte is said to allow greater overclocking, theres a comparison somewhere ill see if i can find it
http://www.overclock.net/t/1516121/gtx-970-comparison-strix-vs-msi-gaming-vs-gigabyte-g1

I had 4 G1 970 cards and currently have an EVGA FTW+. I bought the G1 970 because everyone said it was the best card. My first card was unstable at stock clocks. The second and third cards were physically bent. The fourth card was a revision and downgraded from the better Samsung memory to the worse Hynix memory. The best ASIC score(overclocking ability) of those cards was a 78% and none of them could go 1500mhz core and 8000mhz memory. Despite Gigabyte claiming that their "gpu gauntlet" gives you the best overclocking chips, my experience with them showed otherwise. My first and only EVGA FTW+ card came in with an ASIC score of 80% and clocks at 1440mhz core RIGHT OUT THE BOX. If I overclock it, I can get to over 1550mhz and 8000mhz. Cooling, both brands are cool but my EVGA turns off the fans when it is not under load or light load(to be silent if that matter to you). So I recommend the EVGA FTW+ 970.

i cant seem to find the specifications for the inside of the case even on their website, you could measure with measuring tape and see, heres the gigabyte g1 size
length 312mm
width 129mm
height 43mm

dang youve had some bad luck with gigabyte lol, sorry to hear

Lol yeah I was disappointed with giga and now with nvidia messing up the 4gb... lol.

The G1 970 has the best cooler of ANY gtx970 on the market, the 3 fans do quite good, and it has a backplate which not only looks MUCH better than bare PCB but also helps passively cool the card by directing air-flow properly etc..

Overclocking wise, the G1 is specifically binned with only the best gpu's that gigabyte gets, so it definitely has headroom; both of my gigabyte G1 gaming GTX970's (i'm doing 2 way sli with them) will overclock to 1,500-1,550mhz each.

Honestly the only 970 that i think is better at anything than the G1 gigabyte is the new EVGA FTW+ that's coming out, the SSC is decent too but i think the FTW+ is the only real competition to the G1. The FTW+ has a higher stock boost clock speed (1,367mhz vs 1,329 on the gigabyte G1) and might possibly overclock a bit better, but the cooling isn't quite as good. I have heard that the FTW+ will come with a backplate as well, so that's good though.

For the tie-breaker, i think it depends on two things,

A) do you plan to move up from the GTX970 to a 980 or 980 ti or whatever later? or do you plan to buy a 2nd 970 for SLI? or just keep the one card?

If you would like to have a GTX980 but can't afford one right now, the EVGA FTW+ is a great card, EVGA has fantastic customer service, they will even offer you a "step up program" where, in 6 months or so when you have more money, you trade your GTX970 to them and pay a little extra, and they will trade you for a brand new GTX980 or 980 ti depending on which one you want.

If you plan to just go with SLI then the G1 and the FTW+ are about equal i'd say, but there's one more thing


B) Do you plan to water cool your graphics card at all in the future? If so then definitely get the Gigabyte G1, it is the only GTX970 that has a nice and long PCB design, which means that the EK waterblock that goes on it for water cooling not only looks infinitely better asthetically (the short PCB on all the other asus, evga, msi etc.. 970's when put in a water cooling block make them look like little kids toy gpu's like a GTX 750 or something.) it also gets cooler temps due to having a better waterblock design for the VRM and some of the power phases etc.. and when water cooled the overclocking capabilities of the G1 skyrocket, making up for the ~40mhz lead the EVGA FTW+ card has at stock speeds.

So, if you like the idea of trading in for a GTX980 in the future get the EVGA FTW+ or SSC, if you plan to water cool your gpu now or in the future get the Gigabyte G1, and if you don't plan to do either of these things it depends on whether you would prefer better cooling and overclocking or better customer service and better stock performance.

You can probably tell which one i preferred by the fact that i have two G1 gigabytes, but honestly after hearing all this scandal about the 3.5gb vram thing on the 970's i kind of wish i went with EVGA since Gigabyte REFUSES to offer refunds on false advertising of the gtx970's memory, rop units, and L2 cache. Whereas with EVGA i could just shell out $200 or so and trade in my 970's for full 4gb gtx980's.

I can guarantee you that isn't the typical quality of gigabyte cards, i've owned nearlly a dozen gigabyte gpu's over the years and not had alot of trouble with them except for an old 8800gt i had but that's a long story. I own two of the 970 G1 gamings and they both OC to over 1,550mhz, the key is to not ridiculously overclock the memory. Asking for 1,500+ core clock with an 8000+ mem clock is absurd frankly, and i'm surprised the evga did it at all. Just to let you know though, ASIC score is essentially meaningless in the grand scheme, as well as memory clock to some degree, you'll find that if you had left the memory clock at ~7,200 or so (it differs a fair amount with each individual card of course) that you would have a much easier time reaching over 1,500 on the core clock, on one of my G1's that i just put an Ek waterblock on i was able to hig 1,597mhz core with 7,080 mem clock and it gets much higher fps than if i were to clock it at 7,700 mem clock and 1,519 core clock (max stable with the high memory clock, the memory clock effects the core clock OC ability and since memory clock doesn't increase fps nearly as much it's best not to fiddle with it as much as the core clock)

You'll also find that a gpu that has a "poor" asic quality for air cooling performs slighty better with water cooling, and vice-versa. Although as i mentioned asic quality is a moot point and barely effects anything honestly; despite what some people have spread in rumors and the like.

The ASIC score used to not mean alot, but with the 970s, they do, evidently from owners across the web. Yeah I like the G1 970 too, it would be my third choice after the FTW+ and SSC but I definitely didn't like that they switched to Hynix(which used to be better but not for the 970) memory. And 99% of people don't watercool gpus, like ever, so I pretty much dismiss low Asic as a pro. Espcially when 3 of the 4 g1 cards I had were below 69% asic. And yes I know the mem clock isn't nearly as important as core clock, but it's nice to have. Glad you like yours tho, I really tried to like mine since that everybody else was going nuts over them.

Well i don't knwo where you heard that but there's a quite large consensus that asic still doesn't matter much, and all the tests i've done seem to show that too; but hey, i could be wrong, nobody is right all the time lol.

And yeah the swap to hynix sounds horrible, that's another reason for me to wish i hadn't picked up a 2nd G1 970, the first being that i'm having trouble with high resolution due to the damn 3.5gb vram issue and gigabyte, nvidia, and newegg all refuse to refund me on either of the cards. And gigabyte sent emails to people saying they would do a step up program like EVGA has for those unsatisfied with their 970, but now when we send them our info to start the process they sent back a rude email saying the 970 is the greatest gpu in the world and isn't defective and has 4gb of fantastic super fast ram etc.. etc.. and that they're not a warehouse and don't offer "trades" and stuff. So essentially they just pulled ANOTHER false advertising stunt taking back their promise to allow a trade in for 980's. Words cannot express how furious i am....i liked my 970's i really did, until i put them in the new water cooled 4k gaming rig i'm making and found that they stutter and have bad minimum fps dips at that resolution making the $1,000 on the gpu/waterblocks and the expensive high res monitor i got useless with no way to get my money back or trade up or anything.

Other than that the cards are great though, if i was still doing 1080p they'd be the perfect card since no game uses more than 2.5-3.0ish vram at that resolution.

I was hoping asic didn't mean anything lol but for my situation it has. And that sounds terrible man. So much money and its not performing how it's supposed to be. You could try to sell it?

Yeah, i know it sucks. That's my last resort option if nvidia or gigabyte etc.. won't do anything. I did contact a lawyer though, and he was pretty interested in the issue saying it was a good case and he's getting ready to start up a class action. Apparently there's also another law firm that's doing the same thing as well. The one i talked to was Wiggins and Child in Birmingham Alabama, USA. He contacted their partner firm in california since the false advertising protection laws are better there and it's also where Nvidia's headquarters is at. Hopefully the threat of another law suit since they just got done settling the whole bumpgate scandal, will make Nvidia or GIgabyte or whatever, cave in and offer us upgrades to 980's or refunds or something. I'm just not sure what to do about my waterblocks though, i have two EK gigabyte 970 waterblocks and i can't use them on any other card if i trade these in or sell them to get 980's so i'll have to beg frozencpu.com to accept refunds on these, and i think they charge a 20% restocking fee on them so it might just be better to sell those too.

I might have to sell my entire backup pc with the I5 3570K and everything.

Man they got your whole situation messed up. But I doubt they would let anyone step up to 980s. I think they might just give everyone a $50 refund or visa prepaid card lol. But either way most people don't have much of a choice for 1080p gaming cause the 970 with 3.5gb is still king in that area.

lol, just my luck. frozencpu went out of business before i could call and try to send my waterblocks back -__-