MSI GeForce GTX 980 Gaming 4 GB

[W1zzard]

MSI's latest flagship is the GTX 980 Gaming. It delivers a super quiet gaming experience thanks to a powerful thermal solution and a well-crafted fan profile. In idle and light gaming, the fans will even stop completely. MSI has also overclocked their card out of the box, which yields around 10% extra performance.

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[RHoudini]

Page 3. "Display connectivity options include one DVI port, one mini-HDMI port, and three mini-DisplayPorts."
Mini doesn't seem correct.

 

[W1zzard]

Page 3. "Display connectivity options include one DVI port, one mini-HDMI port, and three mini-DisplayPorts."
Mini doesn't seem correct.

fixed, thanks

 

[nickbaldwin86]

how come you don't put GTX 690 in the mix?

I was thinking of getting one because I have a ITX and can only run one card... but look at other reviews i think the 980 is within 1-5FPS and the 980 is a single GPU so no worrying about SLI issues.

Thanks.
Nick

 

[the54thvoid]

Must resist the urge.........

 

[WhiteLotus]

You say the card is 14.5cm tall... do you mean wide? I get the card is long, and I get that the card is a multi slot card. But I don't understand how it can be 14.5 cm tall (implying height)... you must mean wide... right?

 

[W1zzard]

You say the card is 14.5cm tall... do you mean wide? I get the card is long, and I get that the card is a multi slot card. But I don't understand how it can be 14.5 cm tall (implying height)... you must mean wide... right?

my "tall" is your "wide", your "tall" is my "thick". for the longest side i use "long"

how come you don't put GTX 690 in the mix?

gtx 690 is included in the summaries, i honestly simply forgot to include it in the individual graphs. hmm in the 980 ref review too .. ah you can look at 970 sli. sorry about that

 

[GhostRyder]

That is a fantastic card, man MSI even without doing a lightning variant really hit the ground running with the gaming variants. I mean I do not know how many would be like that but a 2050mhz clock on the memory is just fantastic!!!

You know, these cards are honestly tempting especially when factoring in overclockability on just air! I would really die to to see what a classified or lightning variant is going to be capable of (But at least for the lightning ill be waiting)!

 

[Darksword]

my "tall" is your "wide", your "tall" is my "thick". for the longest side i use "long"

Ditto. I say it the same way.

10.5 inches long
14.5cm tall
2 PCIE slots wide

 

[nickbaldwin86]

gtx 690 is included in the summaries, i honestly simply forgot to include it in the individual graphs. hmm in the 980 ref review too .. ah you can look at 970 sli. sorry about that

THANKS for steering me in the right direction!!! I think I will stick with the idea of getting the 980 or wait for the 990

 

[dj-electric]

MSI NAILED IT. What a beautiful GTX 980, well done!

 

[...PACMAN...]

I'd love to see a SLI review with these cards, interested what temps you would be looking at and how much it would affect fan noise. Nice review W1ZZ, MSI have been hitting it out of the park now for quite a while with their GFX cards.

 

[natr0n]

I'm guessing 9.9 cause contractually obligated to Asus.

 

[bubbleawsome]

Holy heck that overall performance. Except uberresolutions its a top card. Beats the 7990 even along with the 690. Beats the 295x2 on low resolutions. I want two in SLI so bad, I've got no income though. Maybe send me the review samples.

 

[Nordic]

This card has some amazing low noise. That is quite a bump in power usage I would say though although, still lower than my old 7970.

 

[LeonVolcove]

wait this card is 256-bit?

 

[Tonduluboy]

since Nvidia reduced the price of their GTX newer model, Wizzard has been giving them 9.9 rating... Seems that the price really affect the rating...
What will be the rating if this card selling at $700 with same features?

PS: in my country this card selling at least $667 before shipping cost...

 

[YautjaLord]

Wiz, i know i said in one of the 980 reviews that there's C:R (Carmageddon: Reincarnation) Early Access Pre-Alpha out there. Let me tell you: if dialed to High on everything AA excluded, this game runs & looks awesome even on single GTX 760; now i also dialed it all the way to UltraHigh - here's were this 980 will shine, cause 760 barely keeps up with the consistent frame rate, i.e. the game lags the f*ck out of 760. lol Dig the Yebis 2 3rd party tech Stainless Games licensed, it really is taxing for lighting engine alone i tell you, the 4GB of vRAM will definitely shine there. Virtual Textures Quality switch will also make it in one of future updates, UltraHigh is reserved for 3GB+ of vRAM at this point.

P.S. TechSpot also have Alien: Isolation benched on variety of GPUs - from GTX 400/HD 7000 series, all the way to GTX 900/R9 200 series; seeing Wolfenstein: The New Order is not in Steam for my country, i thinking of going for Alien: Isolation - wanna see how it plays on GTX 700/900 series before purchasing it.

 

[Nomis22]

Hello and first of all, thank you very much for the review.

I must say I'm a bit disappointed by this card after all, even though it reaches all the goals I hoped it would...

Let me explain: what I care about for my future setup prospection are Relative performance in 2560*1600 and Fan noise. On these matters, the MSI 980 Gaming is about 2% faster than the MSI 780 Ti Gaming and offers the same under load noise level, 30 dBa.

I know the 780 Ti is quickly disappearing from the market and its price point only went down because of the 980s release, but still, right now: on the two criteria I gave, both cards are performing very much the same, and the 780 Ti can be found at 480 € whereas is 980 is at 600 € (pardon my french )!

So really, the only difference I can see is the temperature under load: MSI 780 Ti is at 78° vs. 66° for the MSI 980. I would be curious to know the performance you'd get pushing the 980 to 78° without touching max fan speed (to stick at the same noise level) Is that even possible, you think?

 

[The Quim Reaper]

Pretty shocking that a card costing this much money doesn't come with a backplate.

Given that many of these cards will go in pretty high end cases with nice windows, including my own, I wouldn't want a GPU without a backplate TBH.

 

[W1zzard]

C:R (Carmageddon: Reincarnation) Early Access Pre-Alpha

No plans to include unreleased software.

I have new games for the next rebench: Dead Rising 3, Alien Isolation, Shadow of Mordor, Ryse.

And probably more will be released soon, thinking Civilization, Far Cry 4, unlikely: Evil Within

 

[birdie]

Ryse: Son of Rome and Far Cry 4 must absolutely be benchmarked - they are the pinnacle of PC graphics nowadays (Witcher 3 and Assassin's Creed Unity haven't yet been released).

Alien Isolation is worthless - no open spaces to speak of. Benchmarking dark corridors sounds way to stupid.

 

[Casecutter]

Pretty shocking that a card costing this much money doesn't come with a backplate.

More troubling just a 2 year warranty (3 year on parts that's just dumb) for a Premium offering.

It's time for AIB's (both AMD/Nvidia) to get back to offering some longer warranties on cards of this class. When a cards MSRP's over $300 when released, a 3 year (P&L) should be minimum. We need to see AIB cards like this getting a "CON" for just 2 year.

The mantra should be... "more than $300 must deliver 3 year!"

 

[YautjaLord]

No plans to include unreleased software.

I have new games for the next rebench: Dead Rising 3, Alien Isolation, Shadow of Mordor, Ryse.

And probably more will be released soon, thinking Civilization, Far Cry 4, unlikely: Evil Within

It (C:R) will be released in 2015, hopefully Q1. No problem, i'll test it for now as it is (Pre-Alpha) Wiz. Far Cry 4 - would love to see it benched on 2 GTX 760s in SLI. Evil Within uses id's heavily modified idTech5 or idTech6 if i'm correct. DOOM4 (called just DOOM) uses idTech6 according to some article i read a while back.

Spoiler

Buying C:R as it is in it's Early Access Pre-Alpha form nets you not only that but also Carmageddon Max Pack (vanilla C1 & it's expansion/add-on Splat Pack) & Carmageddon 2, according to Stainless Games co-founder Neil "Nobby" Barnden plus DRM-free LAN only version of C:R. Just saying Wiz.

 

[Lionheart]

Looks like the best GTX 980

Just wanted to ask Wiz if you could either add BF4 to the Overclocking results page seeing as a lot more ppl play it compared to BF3 and it's more demanding as well