Recently, Gigabyte introduced a new series to their graphics-card lineup called "XtremeGaming." Today, we reviewed their fastest model, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti XtremeGaming with a large overclock out of the box on both the GPU and memory. This makes the card one of the fastest GTX 980 Tis you can buy today as it is only beat by the ASUS GTX 980 Ti Matrix and MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning, which are merely 1% faster. Compared to the GTX 980 Ti reference, we see a 23% performance uplift at 4K, and AMD's R9 Fury X is 19% behind. This single card also beats the popular GTX 970 SLI configuration by 18%.

Gigabyte's new triple-fan, triple-slot thermal solution provides excellent cooling that keeps temperatures low despite the large overclock out of the box, which increases heat output. The cooler also stops its fans in idle and light gaming for the perfect noise-free experience. Under gaming, the cooler is quiet, with only 33 dBA, which matches the noise levels of the Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti WaterForce XtremeGaming upon which this card is based. The benefit here is that the water-cooling solution will always emit noise, even in idle, and having to install the radiator adds complexity. The only quieter card is the MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning, which seems to be in a league of its own thanks to its powerful cooler. Gigabyte has also included a great-looking metal backplate with their card, which also provides a little bit of cooling to the VRMs on the back of the card.

Power consumption of NVIDIA Maxwell cards is great, and Gigabyte's XtremeGaming is no exception. While it does draw a bit more power than lesser-performing GTX 980 Ti cards, it more than makes up for it by delivering increased performance. As a result, it is the most power-efficient GTX 980 Ti we have tested to date, together with its WaterForce sibling.

The best argument for the Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti XtremeGaming is definitely its price. At just $690, it is much cheaper than such competing cards as MSI's Lightning, which is better at everything, but requires you to cough up $780, or the ASUS Matrix, which will also clock in at more than $750. The XtremeGaming is obviously cheaper than NVIDIA's $1000 Titan X, and beats it in every metric. When looking at performance-per-dollar, Gigabyte's card is an excellent deal when compared to the reference design GTX 980 Ti as its price increase of 11% is more than justified since it is 23% faster, and you get a better cooler to boot.