Nvidia Geforce GTX 970 Unboxing - Nvidia Reference Card W/ Titan Cooler

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce' started by jase240, Dec 3, 2014.

  1. jase240

    jase240 Guest

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    Last edited: Dec 3, 2014
  2. ---TK---

    ---TK--- Guest

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    Reference cooler aint nothing special. Probably matters less with maxwell since they run cool. Wasnt me who gave this thread a 1 star rating.
     
  3. jase240

    jase240 Guest

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    While it is true the reference cooler isn't that special, this is the only model of the GTX 970 with the Titan reference cooler(all other manufacturers are using plastic shrouds).
     
  4. BUFDUP

    BUFDUP Guest

    does this one use the vapor chamber as the titan cooler?

    Edit: if u want to sli then this card x 2 will be good since it dumps hot air out the case while all other 970's have aftermarket coolers that dump hot air in... i really dont understand why they didnt release a ref 970 in the first place
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 4, 2014

  5. jase240

    jase240 Guest

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    Unfortunately it does not include the vapor chamber anymore AFAIK and instead uses a heatpipe design like on the 980 that uses a trio of heatpipes to transfer heat from the GPU to the heatsink.

    I wasn't going to dare opening the cooler up to check, but hopefully someone else that buys one soon will so we can find out for sure.

    But yes I got this card to plan for a future SLI upgrade, I WAY waited longer than I thought I would for them to release it though.
     
  6. rflair

    rflair Don Coleus Staff Member

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    I always liked the look of reference coolers myself.
     
  7. jase240

    jase240 Guest

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    Just got a Firestrike score of 10320 with my GTX 970 overclocked by an offset of +225 Mhz on the core clock and +500 Mhz on the memory clock.
    Core Clock: 1275 | Boost Clock: 1402 | Maximum Boost Clock Observed: 1452
    Memory Clock: 8 Ghz

    http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4936848?

    Sadly the result is a lot lower than it should be because of my CPU, I only have my CPU clocked at 4.4 instead of it's previous 4.8 overclock. I am having to RMA my liquid cooler :(

    -EDIT: Updated results after re-overclocking with higher clocks.
     
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2014
  8. Arend.C

    Arend.C Guest

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    There is nothing wrong with an I7 @ 4.4 using a gtx970.
     
  9. jase240

    jase240 Guest

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    I just realized how badly I want to SLI these now, but sadly I only have a 650W Seasonic X Gold PSU. I am not sure if I can risk SLI on that.
     
  10. jase240

    jase240 Guest

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    Just upgraded my CPU to an i7 4770k@4.6GHz and ran the benchmark again!!

    Firestrike score 10937
    http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3501952

    I think Sandy Bridge is a bit aged now after noticing this jump.
     
    Last edited: Jan 5, 2015

  11. southamptonfc

    southamptonfc Ancient Guru

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    10300 to 10900.....

    If you did the comparison in a real game, you'd find a the difference to be a couple of FPS or less. There's plenty of benchmarks around that show that.

    Here's a 780ti with a 3930K

    http://www.3dmark.com/fs/1870155

    I guess that means the 4770K is a bit aged now.
     
    Last edited: Dec 20, 2014
  12. rm082e

    rm082e Master Guru

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    I picked up a reference 970 a few days ago and spent a couple of hours testing it this morning. I found it does get hot if you push it to the max, but if you just adjust the fan up a bit, it does fine with handling the heat. The default setting in MSI Afterburner seems to be geared for silence rather than optimal cooling. Pushing the fan up obviously made it louder, but the additional noise is not a problem for me since I game with closed-back headphones. Obviously YMMV.

    Here is the fan profile I setup in Afterburner (stole this from a review page - not mine).

    [​IMG]

    I pushed a game up to a stupid res/settings to max out the card and it climbed up to 78c before topping out on the default fan setting. Once I applied that custom config and repeated the test, it topped out at 64c. This was just a quick copy of the image above, so now I'm going to go back and try lowering the fan a bit to see if I can keep the temps down without all the noise.
     
  13. jase240

    jase240 Guest

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    That's really odd, my card tops at 61C max load with the overclock. The fan stays at 25-35% for me. By reference cooler, do you mean the plastic cooler or the aluminum cooler?
     
  14. rm082e

    rm082e Master Guru

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    The Titan style cooler.

    I finally got the time last night to sit down and properly overclock my card. In the process, I wound up ditching that fan profile pretty quick as it was overkill. It was certainly better than Auto, but still too much. I now have the fan set to 25% up to 64c, then it bumps to 40%, then at 70c it bumps to 60%. I found that kept my temps no greater than 66c while keeping the noise much lower.
     

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