I mostly got this version because I love Nvidia's Reference Design for their cards and it was out of the box OC, and can still be pushed even more. It is a $500 dollar GPU. When it comes to PCs money literally buys performance. Especially in terms of CPU and GPU. So it performs amazingly in everything I have played.
My PC Hardware:
CPU: i7-4790k.
GPU: This one?.
RAM: Kingston HyperX 2x4GB.
SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 120GB for Operating System (Win 10 64bit) and Apps.
HDD: 1TB Western Digital Green for games (and videos I record).
Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare; This game runs amazingly at max settings excluding super sampling. There does not seem to be a noticeable difference with super sampling on. I see about 90FPS all the time during gameplay no matter what is going on in Campaign. In multiplayer the framerate is well over 100FPS with now stutter or slowdown.
Skyrim; The game destroys skyrim. Okay that is expected. BUT it also runs rock solid 60FPS with ENB mod and Many many other graphical and physics mods active. The only Mods that hurt the framerate are those ridiculous grass mods. That drops the FPS around 40 sometimes which is a bit disorienting when in combat. Other than that it will handle any mod you throw at it with ease as far as I have seen.
Tomb Raider (2013); Runs 60 FPS MAX with 2xSSAA (4xSSAA is just weirdly demanding. There is still plenty of VRAM left, system RAM, and I have a i7-4790k so i seriously do not understand what the problem is with 4xSSAA). The only time the game drops frames is during cutscenes when the camera gets close to Lara's Hair when TressFX is on. Other than that I have played through the entire game and noticed no other performance problems. You can check out a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP5C6aYIkik You will notice the only time it drops frames is when the camera gets close to her hair.
Firestrike Demo: Scored 14,214 for Graphics Score. 11,895 for Overall Score. (Better than 87% of results it says)
Now I do not know the power draw and all of those super specific kind of things but it only has 2 6pin power connectors which should tell you it is very power efficient for how powerful it is.
The default fan profile is really quite and keeps the card from killing itself (along with throttling back).
My card boost up to 1380MHz after GPU Boost 2.0 does its thing. I have tried lightly overclocking the card's GPU which worked fine but caused coil whine. I fixed the coil whine by setting the card back to default values then simply stressing it out with games and benchmarks for a little while. That method has worked for me but I would caution against OC the card further. I have since left my card at stock. (I will probably overclock it again anyway, I am weird like that lol).
I tried bumping the RAM speed up a little. All i can see for this is do not do it lol. I do not know why but my card threw a fit and the graphics driver crashed. A LOT of reviewers of the base model 980 and all the 3rd party derivatives bumped the RAM speed up to a woping 7010MHz (10 from the base 7000MHz) and left it there. This card as you probably saw in the specs list Some said it was because of the way that power is allocated on this series (900) cards that OC the ram would take power away from the core so they just put all the OC effort into the Core. I think it is for a different reason but again I cannot be for sure.
The moral of the story is this card can handle pretty much anything @1080p you can throw at it. And it looks nice....really nice. It is pretty. It is quite at base fan profile like all the other cards with this cooler. If you have the money for this and not the 980ti/Fury X i would recommend it.
| Max Screen Resolution | 4096 x 2160 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 7010 MHz |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Nvidia GeForce |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | GeForce GTX 980 |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 4 GB |
