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[6233638]

After a lot of rumors, speculation, and leaks recently, the GTX 970 and GTX 980 cards are now official.
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/maxwell-architecture-gtx-980-970


In short:
$330 for the 970, which lies somewhere between a 780 and 780 Ti in terms of performance - even beating the 780 Ti in some cases.
Quite an impressive feat considering that power consumption is 105W lower, and the card is $370 cheaper!
 
The 980 is $549 and is equal to or as much as 20-30% faster than a 780 Ti depending on the test.
 
 
There doesn't seem to be a lot which separates the two cards, and there only seems to be about a 10% performance gap between them - a gap which can be closed by overclocking.
Most of the third-party 970s seem capable of matching or beating the stock 980 performance - of course that 980 could also be overclocked, but unless you absolutely must have the best performance, I'm not seeing much reason to buy a 980.
 
 
So far, it looks like Gigabyte's latest WindForce cooler is doing the best job with these cards, since it was designed to dissipate 600W of heat. It's a huge card and rather ugly though.
While it's never been something I had really considered until now, I do wonder if that would hurt its resale value - but with the reference design being what it is, perhaps that is true of all the non-reference cards.
Edit: I've been reading too many reviews - thought that was a 970, not a 980.
 
It seems like MSI may have blown it with the TwinFrozr V update (high temperatures, not all components receiving direct cooling) so I think I will be going with ASUS' GTX 970 STRIX OC as it seems to offer similar performance to Gigabyte's card and is better looking in my opinion.
 
I'm disappointed that so many of the non-reference cards are dropping the 3x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI 2.0 configuration that the reference board uses for a pair of DVI connectors, 1x HDMI 2.0 and 1x DisplayPort. It doesn't really affect me right now, but it's still disappointing.
I also think that the reference card is the best looking, and I do prefer blower designs because they guarantee that all the heat is directed out of the case rather than reaching other components, but it also seems to be about 15-20C hotter than the non-reference designs - though most sites seem to test in open-air rather than inside a case, which might explain that difference.
 
 
There are a number of new exciting features as well, such as MFAA, Dynamic Super Resolution (downsampling), and VR-specific render modes.
The latter is most exciting to me, as it enables a new SLI mode which renders each eye on a separate GPU and does so simultaneously, rather than using alternate-frame-rendering (AFR) which adds latency. With these cards we go from SLI being a bad idea for VR, to being ideally suited for it.
If it were not for the fact that I'd have to make a lot of changes to make it work (new case, possibly a new motherboard & CPU) I'd be buying two 970's right away - at $660 it's not that much more than a single 980.

[Hendrik]

I'll get a 980 for this PC, even if its a bit of wasted money. I hope the factory OC cards with good coolers are available soon, otherwise the standard Titan cooler is pretty good as well (I never had problems with the reference 780, and the 980 has an improved version of that cooler), and the cards have plenty OC headroom (up to 1.5Ghz, faster than any GPU ever before). My case can easily fit the gigabyte card, too, as it looks the ASUS 980 STRIX might not be in the first badge of cards coming out.

If they release a 960 on this architecture, I might shove one into my HTPC (which has a 660 right now).

For me one of the very interesting aspects is that in integer and single-precision compute workloads, NVIDIA finally overtook AMD again with this card.

VR is still too far out to buy a 2x 970 setup instead right now, since I'm not a huge fan of SLI otherwise, and by the time VR becomes important enough, it either works on this GPU, or I add a second one at that time (or we're at the next generation already anyway).

[6233638]

I was all set to buy a 980, going for the high-end card this time around, but the new SLI modes for VR have me thinking that buying two 970s is the way to go - or at least an option now.
 
There's roughly a 10% performance gap between the two cards, and it only costs about 10% more to buy two 970s than a single 980 here.
 
Once we get true non-reference designs, rather than reference boards with a new cooler slapped on them, I expect the gap between the two will widen. It seems that the thermal/voltage limiting on the reference board is holding back the 980s performance, so something like a GTX 980 Lightning has a lot of potential.
 
While efficiency is great, I would have liked to see what a 250W card would do.
 
 
VR is a big deal for me - I ended up deciding that I couldn't wait for the consumer version and have an Oculus DK2 on its way to me.
There are already games ported to VR that I want to play through. (Half-Life 2, Quake 1 & 2, for example)
There are games with VR support shipping later this year - Alien Isolation, Project C.A.R.S.
With Nvidia now adding support for running 3D Vision titles in VR, that adds a lot of games. (even without head tracking support, it just becomes a very good pair of 3D glasses)
And I'm thinking that I want to work on a VR product.
 
I have no interest in 3D movies, but I really like 3D gaming - and VR is basically the next level beyond that.
Active/Passive 3DTV sucks - the only good 3D I have experienced was with one of the Sony HMDs, but they were too uncomfortable for me. (designed for a small head)
 
 
That said, I do think that I will probably buy a single card for now, and consider adding a second one later if necessary.
As you say, by the time that VR is actually out (i.e. Oculus CV1) there's a very real possibility that we will be onto the next generation of cards.
 
With the current DK2 requiring 1920x1080@75fps, and CV1 supposedly being 2560x1440@90fps, no matter which card you buy, a single one won't cut it.
 
And VR aside, SLI scaling seems to be very good now - assuming the game supports it.
 
 
It looks like Gigabyte do have a 970 with the WindForce cooler, though it's unclear to me whether the 970 is using the same 600W cooler as the 980 (designed for the Titan Z) or the older 450W cooler. Either of which should be far more than the card needs, I suppose.
 
There's nothing wrong with the reference cooler, other than it running hot. But I do still wonder if it might run coolest in my system - and blower designs seem better for SLI? I wish sites did testing inside a PC case rather than an open-air test bench.
 
Honestly, I'm not sure that I like the semi-passive design of the STRIX. Perhaps in a HTPC the fanless design is useful but I prefer active cooling at low RPMs to be honest.
 
 
Another thing worth mentioning is that NVENC has been greatly improved, and can now do 4K60 H.265 video encoding. It's probably a lot quicker at H.264 video too, which makes it ideal for streaming video from Media Center to tablet devices...
 
The compute performance seems to be great, though I'm not sure that anything I use actually needs it. I support it's useful for NNEDI3 scaling in madVR, but I'm happy with things as they currently are on my 570.

[Hendrik]

I really wonder how 3D movies would work on a headset like the Oculus. I'm usually not a big fan, but would just be curious.
The reference models are available here now at the expected price, but only a few custom cooled variants so far, and a few reference OC versions, which is a combination I don't trust personally.

I just ordered my X99 system, hopefully will be able to get the matching 980 next week as well. Looking at the gigabyte, if it appears in the shops.

NVENC is still a bit of a riddle. They seem to make it faster and add higher bitrates and resolutions, instead of making it more efficient to get more out of your bitrate.
I suppose for local wifi streaming its no big problem to throw 20mbit at 1080p, but I wouldn't mind efficiency. (which would also help when streaming to Twitch etc)

I hope to offer both Intel and NVIDIA hw transcoding in MC eventually, but there is so much to do...

[mojave]

I've been waiting for these to be released for my Haswell-e build. Ultimately, the decision came down to whether it would fit in the case.

MSI GTX 970 GTX Gaming OC - Zero Frozr feature means that fans don't spin until the card hits 50C. The fans can also spin-up separately depending on component temps below the fans.
ASUS GTX 970 STRIX - Fans don't spin until the card hits 67C. Fan noise at load is still one of the quietest.
Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 Gaming - Only HDMI 2.0 board available (that I'm aware of), many output options ( 2xDVI, 3xDisplayPort, 1xHDMI), very low temps at idle and load, quiet

The maximum GPU height for my case is 5.25". The MSI and ASUS are both around 5.5". The Gigabyte is 5.08". I hope the power connectors will fit!

[Hendrik]

They stripped the HDMI port of the MSI and ASUS? Thats stupid.
I saw that they removed all those nice DP ports that are on the reference design on some of the customized variants, but didn't realize HDMI 2.0 was a victim of that.

[6233638]

They stripped the HDMI port of the MSI and ASUS? Thats stupid.
I saw that they removed all those nice DP ports that are on the reference design on some of the customized variants, but didn't realize HDMI 2.0 was a victim of that.

All 9xx GPUs have an HDMI 2.0 connector as far as I am aware.
ASUS 970 STRIX
MSI 970 Gaming
 
It's the DisplayPort connectors which seem to be getting replaced with DVI, not the HDMI 2.0 connector.
The Gigabyte cards seem to add the DVIs without removing the existing connectors - but you are still limited to using four of the outputs at once, and their design means that nothing is vented out the back.
 
 
While it is probably fine, keep in mind that the MSI TwinFrozr V does not cool all components on the board directly.
Only 6 of the 8 RAM chips are in contact with the heatsink for example, the other two relying on incidental airflow. I don't like that design at all - especially when the TwinFrozr IV was arguably the best third-party cooler for the 7xx cards.
 
 
After deciding that I may just go with a reference design after all, I'm having difficulty finding reference 970s for sale. Reference 980s are plentiful, but all the 970s here seem to be using non-reference coolers.

[mojave]

I was wrong. The ASUS website shows HDMI 2.0 for the 970 STRIX. The other brands probably support HDMI 2.0, too. MSI however shows HDMI 1.4 on their website. I'm not saying the HDMI connector is gone, but that some of the connectors are HDMI 1.4.

I've been so busy working reading that I'm only half way through the chorizo burrito I bought a couple hours ago. 

[6233638]

Reviews are saying that the MSI card has an HDMI 2.0 connector. That has to be a mistake on the site.
 
The DisplayPort connectors on these cards are DP1.2 and eDP 1.4 capable, so perhaps whoever was filling out the details confused them?
 
Still, the MSI would not be my choice now - at least not with the TwinFrozr V. Perhaps the new Lightning cooler will be better in a month or two when they are surely going to be announced.
 
 
Especially in your rack-mounted case, I would have thought you'd want the reference cooler which sends air straight out of the back rather than something which dumps hot air onto the other components. There's a decent amount of air going in, but no exhaust fan?

[Hendrik]

Its kinda sad that noone tries to expand on the concept of the blower cooler, I like the idea of hot air pumping out of the case.
Since I was happy with the 780 blower, maybe I should just get a 980 reference and call it a day? Just thinking that I do may want SLI some day, and the blowers are ideal if your case is cramped with 2 GPUs sitting very close to each other.

[6233638]

Its kinda sad that noone tries to expand on the concept of the blower cooler, I like the idea of hot air pumping out of the case.
Since I was happy with the 780 blower, maybe I should just get a 980 reference and call it a day?

Honestly, I'm not sure how much better it could be. Nvidia's blower design seems to be significantly better than AMD's. I wonder if OEMs simply can't think of a way to do it better.
 
Since I can't seem to find anywhere selling reference 970s, I'm thinking that I may just get a reference 980 as well now - and it'll be EVGA for their warranty, even though it's been reduced from 10 years to 3.
 
I mean, I'd like the ability to overclock them better, but I do prefer a blower design.
I'm still not convinced that the main reason for the temperature differences measured between the reference cooler and non-reference designs are simply because most sites test in open-air.
 
That said, I would have thought your PC-D8000 would handle the GPU dumping air into the case without any trouble if you have the left side exhausting air at the back rather than as an intake for additional positive pressure.
 
 
And while I'd like the card now, I'm not in a desperate rush for one yet - I'll make my final decision when my Oculus Rift ships - which is supposed to be this month.

[Hendrik]

The PC-D8000 is my server case, I have a entirely separate system for my workstation.
The case is a Nanoxia Deep Silence 1, it has plenty room for long GPUs and high CPU coolers, but afterall its still just a midi tower.

I thought about the EVGA card, or even their SuperClocked variant, but a factory OC card with a reference cooler, well,  I suppose it has some room for OC anyway.

[mojave]

Still, the MSI would not be my choice now - at least not with the TwinFrozr V. Perhaps the new Lightning cooler will be better in a month or two when they are surely going to be announced.
 
Especially in your rack-mounted case, I would have thought you'd want the reference cooler which sends air straight out of the back rather than something which dumps hot air onto the other components. There's a decent amount of air going in, but no exhaust fan?

I must confess I ordered a MSI GTX 970 Gaming OC for my work computer. They are now out of stock at newegg. I wonder how many they sold?

My current HTPC went years with no exhaust fans. Just earlier this year I added some Noctua fans just to see how quiet the 60mm fans were. I think heat is overrated. It may shorten the life expectancy, buts its life is still longer than I use it. I've never had a computer fail at home due to temperature issues. My work computer's i7-920 is at 55-58C 24/7. I probably should turn C-States back on.  There have been a few passive video cards on some work computers that have failed, but they always were at 80C, too.

I should mention that there is a return air duct immediately below the rack where my HTPC is located. I'm sure this can help pull some hot air away from the back of the HTPC.

 

[6233638]

It's probably fine since the cards don't consume much power and generally run cool anyway - I just prefer to have the air going out of the case rather than raising the average temp inside it, and I would have thought that was a bigger concern when rack-mounted.
 
But then, my hard drives have always run warmer than I'd like in my current case (35C if I clean the filters weekly, 40C otherwise) so I'm concerned that anything but a blower would raise the temps even higher.
 
I do need to get a new case really (currently an FT02 which was supposed to be a good case for air cooling) but I keep delaying it, hoping that something better comes along first.

[mojave]

Wow, I already received a UPS tracking number for the Gigabyte GTX 970.

[Hendrik]

Some shops are really fast, had I ordered around noon today (its 7 pm now), I might've had it in my hands tomorrow. Being in a small country where shipping usually never takes longer than one night pays off.

[mojave]

A couple of the gaming 970's like the MSI and Gigabyte have 6+8 pin connectors for extra power over the reference 6+6 pin. This may be something to consider for those wanting to overclock a 970 to be faster than a stock 980.

[6233638]

FYI, EVGA are extending their warranty to 5 years in Europe if you purchase between 19th Sep and 31st Dec:
http://eu.evga.com/articles/00877/EVGA-GeForce-GTX-980-970-FREE-5-Years-Warranty/
 
This can be extended to 10 years for a small fee - though that seems unnecessary.
I can see the card still being in use 5 years from now - I've had my GTX570 for about 4 years now, but don't see it being much use 10 years from now.
 
They do not seem to have the ACX2.0 970's available in Europe yet though, only the lower-end ACX1.0 cards.
It seems that there aren't going to be reference coolers on any 970 at launch, though they may appear later.

The 980's offered by EVGA are both reference designs (as are all 980s right now) with a SuperClocked card costing €10 more than the stock.
 
Apparently EVGA do not bin their cards for Superclocked variants though, so there should be no reason you would not be able to achieve the same clocks on a standard card.
 
Combine that with the step-up program, and they seem to be the cards to get - though I don't anticipate the 980 Ti or 990 arriving this year.
 

A couple of the gaming 970's like the MSI and Gigabyte have 6+8 pin connectors for extra power over the reference 6+6 pin. This may be something to consider for those wanting to overclock a 970 to be faster than a stock 980.

I'm not sure there's really any difference to the power delivery on these cards, other than the change of connector. It doesn't seem to be showing a meaningful difference in the benchmarks I've seen anyway.
 
It seems like the 980 is held back more by the current power design than the 970, and it might be worthwhile waiting for non-reference cards there, particularly the MSI Lightning card - but those cards come at a premium: $120(€100) over the reference design for the 780 Lightning for example.

[Hendrik]

People have OC'ed the reference design quite well, especially after raising its pre-set thermal limit from 80 to 90C (which it can easily do) and adjusting fan curves, since the reference seems to be tweaked for quiet operations out of the box instead of max performance.
I'll be getting a EVGA SuperClocked, since as you noted the price difference is minimal, and it already comes with some of those limits adjusted, so it saves me some hassle.

Should hopefully get here all next week, including my new X99 setup. Already have the CPU and some other random parts, but had to order from different shops to get everything I wanted, so.. partial shipments <.<

[6233638]

Yes, it does overclock well - people are getting about 20% more performance out of the 980s, at an increase of about 20% power consumption - raising it from 165W TDP to about 200W.
 
At least at the stock speeds, the 980 does seem a bit constrained though.
There are 23% more CUDA Cores and Texture Units compared to a 970, but benchmarking stock-against-stock only shows a 10% gain in performance.
 
The stock TDP of the 980 is only 10% higher though, so perhaps that is exactly what should be expected.
 
Then again, when you overclock a 970 it seems to gain about 10% - closing the gap between a 970 and stock 980, at a loss of efficiency.
 
The 980 seems to overclock about 20% beyond that without any real loss in efficiency - which is a lot more in-line with what the CUDA Cores and Texture Units suggest the performance should be, so perhaps that is how the two should be compared.
 
 
What I was wondering was whether a non-reference design like the Lightning - which typically has the most over-engineered power delivery - would let you push that up from about 200W closer to the 250W that we've seen for high-end GPUs recently.
 
There has been talk of Nvidia limiting what OEMs can do recently though - this is why there were only 3GB 780Ti's and apparently why there was no Lightning 780Ti - only a Lightning 780 - so perhaps we won't see much beyond the 200W limit from non-reference cards.

[Hendrik]

Apparently a non OC 980 easily hits its thermal limits, since its really strict about ramping up the fan. In many benchmarks the 980 can't sustain its highest turbo because of this. NVIDIA really wants it quiet and efficient out of the box.

Once you make the fan more aggressive and increase the TDP limit to 125%, you can get more out of it even at reference clocks.

[6233638]

It's a shame they're using heatpipes instead of the vapor chamber design that previous cards used.
I guess this could be a reason to wait for non-reference cards, but I don't expect them to be much different from the designs that we have seen on the 970, and I'd still prefer a blower.
 
Still, it can't be any louder than my 570 which is the older blower design.

[connersw]

I haven't been keeping up with the doom9 forums.  6233638, could you give me the Reader's Digest version of how madVR (specifically NNEDI3) is playing with Nvidia these days? 

I was holding off on a 750ti since I thought the 9XX series was supposed to be 20nm.  Maxwell architecture seems to be the real deal.  Must suck to have to deal with TSMC and contract manufacturing. 

[Hendrik]

The Maxwell generation has closed the gap to AMD regarding compute performance, and while I didn't see any actual madVR NNEDI comparisons yet,  it should probably translate to that too.
The 750 Ti also benefits from this of course, but its not the fastest card on the block obviously, its a low-mid-range card afterall. There should be a GTX 960 soon, which is about the price/performance point I like for my (high-end) HTPC (had a GTX 660 now), and with HDMI 2.0 its also future proof.

Other than NNEDI3 (which it can do in some limited fashion), a 750 Ti can run anything and everything madVR could ever throw at it, one downside is of course that the 750 Ti does not have HDMI 2.0.

[mojave]

Here is a review of the GTX 970 in SLI. They used the same system for an R9 285, GTX 970, GTX 980, and GTX 970 SLI.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 SLI

Relative performance chart at 1920x1080:



Getting 2x performance at high resolution in Crisis 3 with SLI isn't too bad:

[mojave]

Regarding madVR performance, I saw this at Doom9:

I've just set up my new MSI GTX 970 and had a quick look it how it fairs with madVR.

Good news is that the MSI card stays in passive mode and the fans don't even spin up when using reasonably heavy madVR settings which is great coming off my R9 290 which got quite audible. My typical madVR settings are nnedi3 64 luma doubling, Jinc3 chroma, Jinc3 upscaling and spline36 down scaling, plus I use a bit of LumaSharpen in MPC-BE.

[6233638]

As usual, SLI scaling seems to depend on the game, driver, and luck.
I'm hearing talk of "microstutter" still being a problem. (not sure where the "micro" part comes in... stutter is stutter)
 
But that should hopefully be different in VR where each GPU is rendering a separate eye.
 
Another thing of note, is that these GPUs are capable of driving MST displays off a single display output.
So it's not just four 4K displays each card can handle four 4K MST displays - with the reference design at least. I guess for a 970, only Gigabyte's card can do that.
 
It looks like the EVGA cards with their ACX cooler are to be avoided:

 
While it offers direct contact with two 8mm heatpipes, the third is not in contact with the GPU at all.
Of course it will still help, but that will reduce its effectiveness.
 
After seeing this, I hunted around for images of some of the other 970s.
ASUS with a 10mm pipe (and I guess 2x8mm?) all in contact with the GPU:

 
Gigabyte G1:

 
Definitely the 450W cooler on this compared to the 980's 600W cooler - but still a very nice design.
 
MSI's TwinFrozr V:

 
Pipes are not in direct contact with the GPU, and that last memory chip doesn't seem to receive any cooling whatsoever.
 
 
Inside the 980: http://www.anandtech.com/Gallery/Album/3949#3
The whole surface of the card is covered in an aluminum plate, and the heatsink uses three heatpipes in contact with the GPU itself.
I'm not sure if they are direct contact or not, as I haven't found photos of this.
 
EDIT: Nice big copper plate on the bottom of the heatsink: http://abload.de/img/gtx980-cooler1cfja0.jpg

[Daydream]

Just watercool it and call it a day .

[6233638]

Just watercool it and call it a day .

I have been thinking about this a lot recently.
 
If I had a server with all my storage in it, and a fast low-latency connection (gigabit ethernet doesn't cut it) I think I would build a separate watercooled gaming PC.
 
I love the look of systems using pipes rather than plastic hoses these days.
But when all my media is stored on drives inside the same PC, I just don't want the risk of watercooling.

[Hendrik]

I never liked the idea of building my own water cooling system, as I probably wouldn't trust myself assembling it 100% and be afraid of leakage all the time.

[6233638]

I never liked the idea of building my own water cooling system, as I probably wouldn't trust myself assembling it 100% and be afraid of leakage all the time.

Yes, there is that too. I think I'm less afraid of leakage with pipes rather than hose.
It does seem like a lot of people that do watercooling and custom cases for it are less concerned about using the PC and building the PC is their hobby rather than gaming or anything else.

[6233638]

Looks like MSI won't be doing a 980 Lightning - they're waiting for a bigger chip. (980 Ti/990 I suppose)
 
http://www.techpowerup.com/205593/msi-holding-off-on-gtx-980-lightning-in-anticipation-of-bigger-chip.html

[Hendrik]

I got the EVGA GTX 980 SuperClocked today (not ACX 2.0, but reference cooler), and did some testing.

In stock settings, this model will never reach its advertised turbo mode for very long, as it hits its TDP limit (power draw). I used MSI Afterburner to unlock the TDP to 125%, and after that it stayed at around 108-110% power draw for all my benchmarks.
I wonder if EVGA shouldn't have done this in the BIOS by default, but who knows.

Anyhow, the thermals are as expected. I used FurMark for stress/torture testing, and up until 80°C the card remained quite silent, and only then it started ramping up the fan to about 60%, and even after 10 minutes of FurMark it didn't go above 85°C, without clocking down the card at all.
At this point, the card is audible, but not any different to my previous GTX 780 though.

FurMark torture testing is of course much more load than the GPU might usually see otherwise, so it'll be interesting to see how it behaves under gaming load, and if any of my games even manage to push it to the area where it ramps up the fan.

[6233638]

Sounds great!
 
After waiting for stores to get them in stock here, it seems that the 980 is being sold at 80% higher prices than the 970.
As much as I would like to have one, I just cannot justify that difference in price for what generally seems to be a 20% increase in performance.
 
I was also able to cancel my Oculus Rift DK2 order as it had not shipped yet - even though they said you would not be able to cancel after placing an order.
With them demoing a newer prototype recently, I suspect that there is either going to be a DK3, or that it will be worth waiting for the final consumer version.
By the time that is out, I can either add a second 970 or we'll be looking at a new generation of cards.
 
 
After looking over everything again, especially now that we have a good idea of how well each card's heatsink has been designed, I ended up buying the 970 STRIX.
Gigabyte's card is better, but does not exhaust any air out the back, and the fans are always running.
 
While I am still a little concerned about the passive mode considering how the power delivery on previous STRIX cards was running too hot when operating without fans, there will be some airflow moving over the card in my case, and the power demands of the 970 are obviously much lower than an overclocked 780.
 
I'm coming around to the idea that the STRIX will be fanless up to 65℃ - especially since they are also going to be using this design for their custom 980. (with additional heatpipes)
I expect that with SD content, it will be completely fanless when using madVR - even when using NNEDI3 image doubling.
I'll be doing tests on 720p60 material when the card arrives as well, but I'm less concerned about using NNEDI3 image doubling with HD content anyway, and will choose whatever settings keep it quiet.

[mojave]

I received my Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 Gaming yesterday and installed it. I was a little worried about fit, but it fit great and left room for the Corsair H75 radiator with its two fans. I ran it through 3DMark Fire Strike and scored ~9800. I haven't overclocked it yet and the CPU was at stock clocks, too, for the benchmark.

The 6 120mm Noctua fans are completely silent, but the GTX 970 G1 is still audible. The lowest fan speed available in MSI Afterburner is 34%, which is probably limited by the GPU bios. I could hear the fans from about 8 ft away in a completely silent room. However, most ambient noise masks the sound. My son (turns 14 next month) didn't think it was audible from more than a couple feet away. I wonder if I can use the Noctua low noise cable with the GPU? It should reduce voltage and slow down the fans.

I originally ordered an MSI GTX 970, be then became concerned about card height and ordered the Gigabyte. The MSI arrives tomorrow. It looks like it might fit in the case after all so I may try it, too. I really wanted a STRIX, but couldn't find one available. Since I'm taking this HTPC to RMAF, I wanted a couple weeks with everything ready.

Here is the HTPC with the Gigabyte installed and all cables attached except the cables for the Blu-ray drive:

[6233638]

Thanks for the impressions - it makes me confident that I made the right decision choosing the STRIX over the G1, despite the G1 having much better connectivity.
It's a shame that for something with the best heatsink design (or so it appears) that they are not using a semi-passive mode of operation like the MSI/ASUS cards.
Looking at some photographs of the card, I'm not sure that you would be able to use the Noctua LNA to reduce the fan speed, or that it would be advisable if you could.
 
Honestly, what I'd really like to see from a GPU manufacturer is something which lets you mount a pair of standard system fans to the heatsink. I'd love to use a pair of 92mm Noctua fans than whatever the manufacturer puts on the card - especially if their fans with active noise-cancellation ever get released.
 
I think one of the most exciting things about Nvidia's upcoming Pascal GPUs is that they are going to be moving away from PCIe to "NV-Link" which is said to be a socketed design rather than a slot:
 

 
Moving to a socketed design seems like it would allow for CPU-style coolers to be used rather than the low-profile coolers that GPUs get stuck with. I'd love it if my PC just used two NH-D15s for cooling the CPU and GPU rather than the coolers we have now.
 
 
When looking for images of the G1's fan connector, I noticed that Guru3D now have a review up for the 970 STRIX.
It looks like the VRM section still gets quite hot on the card: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/asus_geforce_gtx_970_strix_review,9.html
That said, with the cards drawing significantly less power than the previous generation I'm not nearly as concerned about it now.
 
I do also wonder if the "issue" here is that the VRMs are simply more exposed in ASUS' design than others.
A lot of other cards have a solid backplate or heatsink designs which seem to block the thermal camera from getting direct measurements of them, so it's a measurement of the "VRM area" rather than the VRMs themselves.

[Hendrik]

NV-Link will quite certainly not be used in consumer PCs, NVIDIA targets the enterprise GPGPU market, where PCI-Express is actually a strong bottleneck.

[6233638]

NV-Link will quite certainly not be used in consumer PCs, NVIDIA targets the enterprise GPGPU market, where PCI-Express is actually a strong bottleneck.

I was under the impression that PCIe was a considerable bottleneck with 3D memory (stacked DRAM) as well, which Pascal will be using.
EDIT: Looks like you may be right. Well that's disappointing. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7900/nvidia-updates-gpu-roadmap-unveils-pascal-architecture-for-2016

[mojave]

I flashed the bios of my 550Ti so that the fan speed could be lowered to 20% from the default of 40%. I will probably be able to do the same to the Gigabyte. Gigabyte has DualBIOS on their video cards so that if you mess up the main bios, the backup will automatically be loaded. They also have a VGA bios backup utility for further confidence when flashing a modified bios.

I wonder if the Gigabyte OC Guru II allows for a different fan profile than MSI Afterburner? I'll have to try it out tonight.

[Hendrik]

I was under the impression that PCIe was a considerable bottleneck with 3D memory (stacked DRAM) as well, which Pascal will be using.
EDIT: Looks like you may be right. Well that's disappointing. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7900/nvidia-updates-gpu-roadmap-unveils-pascal-architecture-for-2016

The implications for the consumer market alone for a propriertary design like this are unthinkable, really.
Not to mention that mainboards are not big enough for say 2 of those things with massive coolers on top

[6233638]

The implications for the consumer market alone for a propriertary design like this are unthinkable, really.
Not to mention that mainboards are not big enough for say 2 of those things with massive coolers on top

Yeah, I did think that it would pose some problems for things like other expansion cards in the system.
 
And reading into it a bit more, rather than going off memory, NV-Link seems to be more about inter-GPU communication rather than anything else.
 
Oh well, the dream of using "silent" CPU coolers is dead.
Not that it should matter much with how quiet the new Maxwell parts are now, I suppose.

[Hendrik]

If you're confident enough to replace the cooler, there are some massive after-market coolers that make the card 3 slot wide and offer bigger fans, which are always an option as well.

[mojave]

I found this on an EVGA forums regarding loud fans on the 750 Ti. Looks like my Noctua low noise cable idea should work. I'll check it out tonight.

Found a quick-and-dirty solution to this problem.
 
I have some Noctua case fans, and they came with a "low noise adapter" that effectively just puts a resistor between the fan and its power source (dropping the voltage and forcing the fan to run slower). I put a Noctua low noise adapter between the GPU fan and the header on the graphics card.
 
Idle is now quiet, temps are good, and the card doesn't get anywhere near hot-enough for the reduction in max-RPM to cause a problem.

[6233638]

Well my 970 Strix finally arrived. It's very strange to be playing games at 1080p60 without the fan even running.
 
Bumping things up to 4K - which was still locked to 60fps in the games I tried, the fans do come on but never seemed to go above 800 RPM.
 
 
However I was surprised to find that it can't seem to handle NNEDI3 chroma & image doubling with 720p content.
Render times are about 25ms so it's constantly dropping frames, even with only 16 neurons selected.
 

EDIT: A lot of games seem to be in the 50-55fps range when maxed out. Maybe a 980 would have been a better choice for that extra ~20% performance.

[bulldogger]

Hendrik,  But no H.265 decoding in the GTX 980 it appears? Video with H.265 still has to be decoded by CPU? How significant is that if you have an i7 4790k for future 4k video? Of course the usual caveats about 4k, not available, etc, but if it were?

Disregard. I found your answers  here http://www.avsforum.com/forum/26-home-theater-computers/1687466-nvidia-maxwell-second-generation-hdmi-2-0-support.html

[6233638]

Hendrik,  But no H.265 decoding in the GTX 980 it appears? Video with H.265 still has to be decoded by CPU? How significant is that if you have an i7 4790k for future 4k video? Of course the usual caveats about 4k, not available, etc, but if it were?

There is supposed to be support for 4K decoding, but it currently crashes Media Center when enabling it in LAV Video.
ShadowPlay recordings (4K, 130mbps) are crashing Media Center for me even without hardware acceleration enabled.
 
I believe there is partial H.265 decoding support where it's done partly on the CPU and partly on the GPU.
 
I haven't done any more testing with video playback yet, other than noticing that my previous settings result in very little GPU usage at all, and the card stays in passive mode at all times, which is nice.
The only change I really wanted to see was using NNEDI3 image doubling with 720p60 content, but my initial testing suggested that even a 970 isn't fast enough for it.
 
What I did notice today is that my CPU was not turboing at all, and was staying locked at 3.3GHz rather than going up to 4.5GHz.
After clearing the CMOS a couple of times, things went back to normal and I'm getting much smoother performance in games.
It's still dropping to about 55 if I have everything maxed out, but reducing the anti-aliasing a little seems to fix that.
 
I really should have replaced this POS motherboard a long time ago. (ASUS Sabertooth P67)
I don't know if it's an ASUS problem, or simply that all P67 boards were terrible—I think it may actually be the latter—but I've had so many problems with it.

[bulldogger]

The only change I really wanted to see was using NNEDI3 image doubling with 720p60 content, but my initial testing suggested that even a 970 isn't fast enough for it.
 

What is the source of the 720p60 content? Do you have a clip I can test or someone with the GTX 980. I have learned that it can get more complicated than just resolution. I can NNEDI3 image double 720p with my Asus R9 290x Directcu II. I'm overclocking to 1150mhz , just because it seems stable and cool at that rate. Stock is I believe 1050mhz like the 970. Starting to build my water cooling rig for the GPU and then I'll go a bit higher to 1200 or 1250  and get some lower temps. Keeping my eye on the GTX 980. Review I read though said hardward decoding for h265  and Nvidia was not on this generation but coming to next generation. I don't know. Novice in this area.

[bulldogger]

I really should have replaced this POS motherboard a long time ago. (ASUS Sabertooth P67)
I don't know if it's an ASUS problem, or simply that all P67 boards were terrible—I think it may actually be the latter—but I've had so many problems with it.

I realize your this is not an AMD gpu but am wondering if your motherboard isn't also part of your issue. See what Renethx posted here http://www.avsforum.com/forum/26-home-theater-computers/1477339-so-you-ve-built-your-htpc-now-what-next-how-get-ultimate-picture-sound-quality-your-htpc-madvr-svp-xbmc-mediabrowser-jriver-22.html  Your mob has pcie 2.0 . I'm using an ASUS Hero VII with pcie 3.0.

Also with madVR , Renethx says AMD is twice as good with madVR because of the way AMD handles OpenCL http://www.avsforum.com/forum/26-home-theater-computers/1597249-first-htpc-build-component-questions.html#post25625017 

I don't know and again am a novice at this. Don't have any loyalty to either brand and have owned both.

[6233638]

Yes, I suppose PCIe 2.0 could be limiting the performance of NNEDI3.
I was hoping someone else with a 970/980 would post render times to compare.
 
To be clear, I am trying to use it for chroma scaling, luma & chroma doubling. It can handle luma doubling on its own but that is bugged in the current version of madVR.
 
Compute performance should be on-par, if not faster than AMD with Maxwell. That's why I was expecting to be able to use NNEDI3 with 720p60 content. It was about half the speed with Kepler.

[bulldogger]

To be clear, I am trying to use it for chroma scaling, luma & chroma doubling.

Yes. I can do all with my htpc and 720p60 material. I'm using 32 neurons.