Nice review. I've wanted a Matrix card since the first time I saw one because of the aesthetics but I'm not sure about the silver/orange. I really liked the red/black color scheme and thought it would be the same for the 980 Ti but nope. Anyway, the card still looks great just because of the massive cooler and design but it was released so late. About half a year ago when I decided to get a 980 Ti to replace my MSI 780 Ti SLI setup (lol) I was thinking maybe I could finally get my hands on a Matrix card but unfortunately they were not around yet. After reading reviews and watching unboxing videos on many of the 980 Ti variants I decided to go for either the Asus Strix or EVGA Classified. I figured that even if the Matrix does pop up sometime soon that it would be priced at upwards of $800 and the Classy was only $50 more than reference and Strix only $10 more. The Strix however was sold out instantly and did not pop back up for quite some time so I ended up ordering the Classy. The Classy is a nice card though. It's a very large card but only takes up two slots unlike the Matrix and I may want to SLI some day. It has a gorgeous backplate and nice large cooler and the logo and lighting on the top is very, well it's classy. It's just a very clean looking card I think. What I dislike about the card though is that if I leave the automatic fan profile on the card runs pretty hot. I've seen it at 83 degrees and even started throttling. I don't think this is supposed to happen though and could be something on my end like not enough airflow. With the default fan profile the temp can reach 83 and even start throttling down. speed. Letting the fans run at 70% or even 80% or more only decreases the temps by a few degrees. If the card was at 80 degrees at 60% fan speed then increasing the speed to 80% would only lower the temp to about 75 degrees. I have a Fractal R4 case and when I just had the one 780 Ti in there it would top out at around 70 degrees but adding a second one for SLI made the top card shoot up to 83 degrees and start to throttle. At first I had no clue why it was happening but then I added a fan on the side panel blowing air on to the cards and the temps dropped to under 80, very good right. At this point I did not even think that I may need more air pushed out rather than in. Anyway, when I replaced the two 780 Ti cards with the Classy 980 Ti I saw that the one card alone was running at 80 degrees with the default fan profile. I had taken out the side panel fan and covered up the opening back up when I put in the 980 Ti but after seeing the temp that high I decided to put the fan back on and the temp dropped a little bit but not much. Later I saw the temps reaching 83 degrees and throttling even with the side panel fan blowing cool air directly onto the card. At this point I had 2 140MM intake fans, one in front and one on the side panel and I had one exhaust 140MM fan in the back. Finally, I decied to try and add a fan to the top of the case blowing air out and it worked wonderfully. The temps dropped to around 70-72 with default fan profile and so I even added a second exhaust fan to the top. So now I have a total of 2 intake fans and 3 exhaust fans. This set up was great (except the noise of course) but now I seem to be having heat issues yet again! I was playing the Batman game and saw the card reach 83 degrees and throttle down. It does not happen often but it happens. I can set a manual fan profile but then, and this is the second thing I dislike about the card, the fans become very noisy. At 80% fan speed this thing sounds like a turbine. My MSI 780 Ti Gaming card was whisper quiet but then this card is twice as powerful.
Increasing the cards fan speed or even the case fans speed isn't something I'd like to do because of the noise. I was thinking that maybe I still have too much hot air inside the case? Maybe I need to turn the side panel fan around and have it blow hot air from card out of the case as well? I also have an i5 4670K CPU (stock) and Noctua NH-D14 cooler. Yea I bought those two with intent to overclock but I have no clue what I'm doing and can't seem to get a stable OC following the directions of a video guide and besides I don't think it would really add much fps. I'm also on a 1440p Monitor RoG Swift. So I don't think the temps of the card have much to do with the CPU and the hot air the big cooler is putting into the case because the CPU doesn't get very hot, not at stock anyway. It tops out at around 60 degrees.
Sorry for the wall of text, honestly I'm not even sure how I ended up with all this lol but I figure people on here must know a lot more about this than I and any helpful tips are appreciated.
I would love to have seen a review on here of my card the 980 Ti Classified too but doesn't look like it will happen. I took a look at some of the benchmarks on the Matrix and compared them to some of the benches on the evga 980 Ti sc review you did. I looked at the 1440p benches of Battlefield 4 and Witcher 3. The Matrix beats the EVGA card by about 14fps in BF4 but in the Witcher 3 the EVGA card beats the Matrix by about 12fps. I guess I should just chalk it up to different setups and drivers/game patches.
One last thing, about the Batman game. I am playing this game currently and while I do see 144fps at times throughout the game I also get terrible frame drops into the low 40s and even 30s at times. From what you said about the game there I take it you had no issues?
(pg. 18)
