GTX 970 Owners Thread

You made the right choice, they are excellent

 

Are those your personal pics?

 

According to Guru3d review, the exact measurement of the GTX 970 G1 is 297mm. My Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 WindForce 3x OC 4gb is specified at 292mm, but is probably slightly shorter. I wouldn't mind upgrading to the GTX 970 G1, but I don't think it will fit my Zalman Z11 plus case.

 

Spot the problem:


Less demanding games where clocks drop down to save power are problematic. GPU voltage drops too much while core clock doesn't drop enough and driver TDR happens.

 

wtf ... you mean I wont be able to play solitaire gutted

 

Yeah well the gtx 770 with windforce coller was quite long too. Zalman Z11 plus is quite similar to mine Tt Armor VO200M1W2N Revo and I could fine both gtx 770 and gtx 970 with those windforce coolers inside my case without a problem...I wouldn't even have to take out the hdd tray...

 

Reply from gigabyte regarding high minimum fan speed:

Dear Customer,

Unfortunately there are no updates regarding this as it is the design on the card.
We will pass you suggestion and feedback over to our team.​

We'll see how it goes for me...may end up taking off the stock fans and strap on a couple 120/140mm fans and try and use the fan plug on the card.
Or, maybe mount the fans from a retired Accelero Xtreme 7970, which I'm pretty sure are quieter at 34%.

 

This sounds quite serious, Iam happy I cancelled my preorder of the gigabyte gtx 970 cards...

 

It honestly is not that bad.. I'd be choked if I didn't get these G1 and I ended up with a whiny Palit, Zotac or Evga.

Unless you wish to base all your assumptions on the experience of one user of course.

 

Well yeah, I was surprised too, I read lots of reviews on that particular card and none of those even mentioned that. I always go for an MSI, gigabyte or asus brand anyway, one time I went for gainward and didn't have any problems with that either.

 

Yes, I don't mean to make it seem like the G1 is *loud* at idle...

It is the quietest *stock* card I've had, but the loudest I've had since I started modding for silence.
I have no doubt that I would not even have to mod this card for silence if I could just turn the fans down to 1000rpm or so at idle temps...which is only 25C(5C above ambient), that's 2-3C less than my CPU at idle.
There's plenty of room to allow lower fan speeds with this cooler.

This card is the loudest thing in my *very* quiet system...all that really means is that I can hear it at all, and I don't want to.

 

Yknow what, truly, you and I are the same.

I removed every fan in my case because I wanted true silence and yet have as powerful a rig as possible, so I totally know where you're coming from.

Currently my case consists of the 6 fans total on the two G1 cards, and only 2 120mm fans exhausting out the top of my case that are strapped to an h100 cooler. That's it. I don't even have any air being pulled into the case!

Id rather my cards run hotter overall than put in another fan as I know that it will make it that much louder. So in that, yes, I agree, the Windforce cards do create a bit extra noise since the fans are spaller than those on the MSI for example.

Also, the RPMs they run at stock is simply too high.. so there is that as well.

 

If I made my system silent I'd hear the coil whine more often on my so-so card. It is noticeable during gaming (most games) when I can't turn my speakers up much. I'm probably putting this EVGA 970 into my daughter's xmas build with my old 4670K.

I may just return this card to EVGA soon for replacement (or refund) (if they'd even take this loud thing back), and meanwhile I'll get another version of the 970 for myself. It is a fantastic card (aside from my annoying noise issue).

 

Custom Gtx 970 roundup - Hardwareluxx.de

Don't know how many of you guys check out this site, but they do some great comparison reviews of VGA cards, mainly custom ones aswell.

There is a 5 way review between

MSI 4G Gaming
Palit Jetstream
Asus Strix
eVGA SC ACX 2.0
eVGA FTW ACX 2.0

(Notable absence the Gigabyte G1)

Bascially performance aside (which is all relative to their out of box clock speeds, hence eVGA FTW takes the lead) here are the general findings.

Quiestest idle = Tie, all similar

Quiestest load= Asus Strix
Loudest load = Palit Jetstream

Lowest Temp idle = Palit Jetstream
Highest Temp idle = MSI 4G

Lowest Temp load = MSI 4G
Highest Temp load = Palit Jetstream

Power use idle = Tie , bar MSI being 2 watts higher than others

Lowest Power use load = MSI 4G
Highest Power use load = Palit Jetstream

Overclocking ranking..
1. Palit Jetstream
2. eVGA FTW
3. Asus Strix
4. eVGA SC
5. MSI 4G

Check it out here

 

Also the fans could spin way slower in load too, although that's easy to fix... In any case though, this is much quieter than the ASUS GTX 780 DX2 I had before. I send question regarding the fan speed to Gigabyte support.

Hmm... Do anyone else have problems with some power saving boost steps? I can't use my max clocks because it makes those lower power states unstable. I guess I need custom bios to solve that problem...

 

EDIT: oops, thought you were talking about the G4 from MSI >_<

 

Here is some feedback regarding my gigabyte G1. The card size was only about 1 inch longer than my 7870. Its a tad bit wider but nothing bad. Temp are pretty good, with idle temp at 30c and full load 65-67c. Noise...I can't hear it, but I have 2-200mm, 4-120mm, 2-140mm fans in my case.

If games like no other!

The only issue I'm having is it sometimes requires more than one boot to get a screen going. I thought it was the power connector, but that's not the case. Read where someone had this issue on first start up, but could never reproduce it. I send gigabyte a ticket.

 

When I give my 970 up to my daughter for xmas in a new build, I'm hoping to use a power supply I bought just over a year ago in it. It's a 550w Seasonic Gold rated with 45a on a single rail. Should be enough for a 970, no?

 

Well if the efficiency of SeaSonic has anything to go by, then yes.

 

Hi Oblivious,
Give this a read http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941-12.html