GTX 980 Club - Overclocking - Benchmarks!

Still the cold air, as noted below, helps to make it take that voltage, that's what I was wondering about
But then again I learned something, might as well wait for the classy models if I eventually hop onto anything new in the gpu past pascal / the next titan / whatever!

Nice thanks for the clarification Mydog, now I have an idea how you get to those nice results!

 

NP

Getting two 980 KPE on Friday that'll be OC'ed to hell and back on air-, water- and possibly LN2 cooling :banana:

 

Dont bother with the classified versions of the 980. There quite poor overclockers compared to previous cards that carry the classified badge.

 

I assume you're now talking about how they overclock on stock voltage on air cooling?

 

Weeeee!

If you meant me, I've already got my Strix cards heading for h2o, and I don't think I'll sell them and upgrade to anything soon. Only the Matrix versions kind of caught my attention, with 14 phase design probably helping a little.

 

I dont really aim that at anyone, just posting facts......due to the reduced Phases on the PCB they dont OC very well which is why i sent mine back (EVGA SC) the day after release day.

I thought the Classys would have been better but you only have to head over to Overclock.net to see how poor they are for the money that you pay. Infact all 980s with there ****ty reduced Phases are not great overclockers.....no I2C commands then no massive OC.
Yeah and the Strix are the best out of the bunch according to what people are reporting.

There is a Kingpin version of the 980 coming out too i think.

 

It's basically true, and I suspect nvidia behind it of course. They cripple the performance, so they have a reason to make you buy the next cards too.
I'm curious to see what those cards could do with more phases, and the little hardmod I saw here on the boards was quite interesting... although I neither have the equipment or craftsmanship to do something like that, it clearly shows that it wouldn't have needed much change to have a faster, better performing card.

I'm going to stick to my cards anyway, tbh it would be too much trouble for me to sell them just to pick up other 980s for about 100MHz more on the core... dx12 will give a nice performance gain anyway

But it only makes me want to see how they will handle that power situation with Pascal, I'm worried they'll cut it down too... on the other hand, they might do very good to not cripple the GM200 that way, it would add a certain value to the card that might make it sell a little better.

 

Which 980 to choose depends on your wallet and needs, as I have this HW as a hobby and I got a fairly deep wallet I've tested a quite a few of the different 980's.
So far I've tested:

MSI 980 Gaming - it's an ok ref GPU
Zotact 980 extreme AMP edition - very strange card, I guess SLI is possible but not tri or quad as the card takes up more than two PCIe-lanes and the SW isn't very intuitive to use.
2x Gigabyt 980 G1 - quite good I would say, cooler is as quiet as the EVGA ACX but still a ref and mine didn't OC great
EVGA 980 Classified - OC's ok on Stock voltage and bios but has three bioses and very good custom ones that makes this GPU fly with the right cooling

Getting two EVGA 980 KPE on Monday and considering the ASUS Strix and Matrix after that unless the GM200 shows up

 

Just got my Evga 980 SC with Ref cooler on it. Already ordered my Water Block from EK just waiting on that and I will be Ocing at that time. Can't wait. Upgraded from my GTX 660 TI

 

You'll love the increase in performance then, not too different from my situation, coming from something that barely lets you enjoy modern games with eyecandy

Nice summary, wish I'd have that deep wallet and time to toy with such hardware.
Still I believe it doesn't really matter much, I'll have the 'wow' experience anyway coming from a single 580. But I didn't think there would be such a performance difference from overclocking, to me it pretty much looked like the sky would be about 1550 MHz on the 980 cores with most of the cards under air, I thought it was something like a voltage barrier.

 

Yea the GTX 980 is a lot faster then my 660. I am just wondering if I should maybe another one. I do game on a TV that can do 4k but I can also do 1080p at 120hz. So not sure If I am going to go SLI for 4k yet. Things still look great at 1080p as well and the 980 gtx is fast enough for 1080p

 

The voltage limitation set by Nvidia on both the 780's and 980's limits overclocking but if you get a non ref card that has a bypass like the Strix, Matrix or Classified you can push further with a bios that has less limitation. The problem you'll face then is cooling ofc.

 

Even when overvolted they dont oc well at all. In some cases people have reported worse peformance than stock when cards are over overvolted and higher clocks raised.

 

Never heard about that, link to source?
Are you talking about 24/7 clocks or benchmark clocks?

 

Yeah, I got the Strix cards because I was toying with the thought of hardmodding them, but ultimately I have to say I think I'll chicken out. The last time I've soldered anything is about 18 years past when I was in middle school, and I don't want to brick cards for €1000...

Sounds very odd. Has to do with thermals I guess...

 

GPU porn alert:

 

*fap time*

 

Now this is funny, look at the serial number :bigsmile:

 

Nice ones, dim the light and put on some music for your two friends... happy overclocking there :banana:
And I thought I was 'lucky' to get two Strix cards with a difference of only 4 in s/n

 

Count me into the Club, got my 980 Phantom yesterday, absolutely satisfied faster than my 780 Phantom, quiter and less power consuming, what more can i ask for?