Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 Gaming 4 GB Review

Name: Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 Gaming 4 GB
Brand: GIGABYTE

W1zzard

on Jan 5th, 2015,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: GIGABYTE

(36 Comments) »

Introduction

The GeForce GTX 980 is NVIDIA's latest high-end single-GPU graphics card, made possible by the company's new Maxwell architecture. The GM204 graphics processor which powers the GTX 980 in this review comes with amazing power consumption improvements that are the foundation behind the GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980 taking the enthusiast market by storm.

The GeForce GTX 980 is carved out of the 28 nm GM204 silicon with all its shaders enabled, resulting in a shader count of 2,048. There are 128 available texture units and the ROP count is a massive 64, with a 256-bit bus connecting 4 GB of GDDDR5 memory.

Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 980 G1 Gaming is the company's current flagship card. It comes overclocked out of the box with the GPU running at 1228 MHz and the memory clocking in at 1750 MHz, NVIDIA's default speed.

One unique feature is the addition of a second DVI port, while retaining three possible DP outputs at the same time. The card uses a large triple-fan cooler to cope with its heat output.

Currently retailing at $629, the Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 Gaming is not cheap. Let's see if it's worth the price.

GTX 980 Market Segment Analysis
	GeForce GTX 680	GeForce GTX 780	Radeon R9 290	GeForce GTX 970	Radeon R9 290X	Radeon HD 7990	GeForce GTX Titan	GeForce GTX 780 Ti	GeForce GTX 980	Gigabyte GTX 980 G1
Shader Units	1536	2304	2560	1664	2816	2x 2048	2688	2880	2048	2048
ROPs	32	48	64	64	64	2x 32	48	48	64	64
Graphics Processor	GK104	GK110	Hawaii	GM204	Hawaii	2x Tahiti	GK110	GK110	GM204	GM204
Transistors	3500M	7100M	6200M	5200M	6200M	2x 4310M	7100M	7100M	5200M	5200M
Memory Size	2048 MB	3072 MB	4096 MB	4096 MB	4096 MB	2x 3072 MB	6144 MB	3072 MB	4096 MB	4096 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	384 bit	512 bit	256 bit	512 bit	2x 384 bit	384 bit	384 bit	256 bit	256 bit
Core Clock	1006 MHz+	863 MHz+	947 MHz	1051 MHz+	1000 MHz	1000 MHz	837 MHz+	876 MHz+	1126 MHz+	1228 MHz+
Memory Clock	1502 MHz	1502 MHz	1250 MHz	1750 MHz	1250 MHz	1500 MHz	1502 MHz	1750 MHz	1750 MHz	1750 MHz
Price	$340	$350	$270	$330	$320	$410	$1000	$490	$550	$630

Packaging

Package Contents

You will receive:

Graphics card
Driver CD + documentation
2x PCIe power cable

The Card

Gigabyte's cooler comes in a near-black color, which does look at bit plasticky, though such depends on the viewing angle. I find it important to mention that the card does not exceed a normal slot's height like many other custom GTX 980 cards. You will find a nice sturdy backplate with a somewhat three-dimensional pattern that looks great on the back. Dimensions of the card are 29.5 cm x 11.0 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include two DVI ports, one HDMI port, and three DisplayPorts, a unique output configuration Gigabyte calls "FlexDisplay". Using an automatic TMDS switch chip on the board, you may run 2x DVI, 1x DP and 1x HDMI or 3x DP, 1x DVI and 1x HDMI at the same time. This setup provides additional flexibility while allowing for a triple-monitor-surround gaming setup with a single card.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 2.0 compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support.

You may combine up to three GTX 980 cards in a multi-GPU SLI configuration. AMD recently switched to transferring CrossFire data via the PCI-Express bus in order to handle 4K frames. NVIDIA's SLI suffers from no such limitations, so there is no reason for NVIDIA to use PCIe.