MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning LE 6GB - Review

[Dan848]

Much information and reviews for the MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning 6GB is available, however, for the LE version of the card is almost nonexistent, and very difficult to find. So, I have performed a moderate overclock using no voltage increase for those that are thirsty for this less expensive version of the Lightning. This is part of a review of the LE that I just submitted to newegg and should be available for view in a few days at that site http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127910

My Lightning would not get past the BIOS POST, and I send a big thank you to Greybear over at Nvidia Forums for suggesting I flash my motherboard to the latest BIOS, and it worked. Although I had thought of doing this, I wanted a second opinion on my options to get the card to work.

MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning LE 6GB testing:

* Core 1026 [1114 boost], Memory 1753 [7010 effective] = no overclock

1st Overclock:
Core: 1176 MHz [Boost 1264 MHz, reached 1340 MHz during bench]
Memory: 1928 MHz [7712 effective]

2nd Overclock:
Core: 1203 MHz [Boost 1291 MHz, reached 1367 MHz during bench]
Memory: 1928 MHz [7712 effective]

[As a comparison, here are the stock numbers for the more expensive *Non-LE version of this card:
GPU Core 1203, Memory 1774 x4 = 7096 effective.]

Temperature:

Room Temp: 21C [70F] @ Idle, During 1st Benchmark 21.7C [71F], 2nd Benchmark 21.4C [70.5F]

1st overclock:
Idle: Core 28C [ 7 degrees above room temp !] Fan speed 13% and silent
Load: [running Unigine Heaven Benchmark]
Core 58C, Fan speed 66%, power 82 Max, 78 Avg

2nd overclock:
Idle: Core 28C [ 7 degrees above room temp !] Fan speed 13% and silent
Load: [running Unigine Heaven Benchmark]
Core 58C, Fan speed 66%, power 83 Max, 79 Avg

Heaven Benchmark overclock run at a mild OC, I did not want to increase volts:

Afterburner Settings:

1st OC
Core +150, Memory +350, NO volt increase
Core: 1176 MHz [Boost 1264 MHz, reached 1340 MHz during bench]
Memory: 1928 MHz [7712 effective]

2nd OC
Core +177, Memory +350, NO volt increase
Core: 1203 MHz [Boost 1291 MHz, reached 1367 MHz during bench]
Memory: 1928 MHz [7712 effective]

[As a comparison, here are the stock numbers for the more expensive *Non-LE version of this card: GPU Core 1203, Memory 1774 x4 = 7096 effective.]

Heaven settings: DX11, Quality Ultra, Tesselation Extreme, AA x8, Resolution 1920x1080 [my screen resolution]


System Specs, relative to test:

Case: Cooler master 922 HAF
CPU: Intel i5 3570K @ 4.0GHz for Heaven Benchmark
GPU: MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning LE
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
RAM: G.Skill CAS 9, 16GB

I did not try to find the highest stable OC without manually increasing voltage, I wanted to find a safe number that would permit this card to last many years.

Fan speed is set to manual using MSI Afterburner.

Tests were done on my system, it is not specially set up for maximum benchmarking numbers for any benchmark, in other words, it is not a clean install of Win 7. I have been using this setup for a long time and have programs running in the background - just like the average computer user.

Note: If someone thinks this is worth a "sticky" somewhere, please put it there. Many people are desperate to find a less expensive option to the MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning 6GB, it will not fit their budget.

 

[erixx]

 

[Dan848]

Thank you erixx for your photo of your Asus GTX 980 TI Strix GPU-Z info.

My Lightning LE, picture of MSI Afterburner after second run of Haven. NOTE, Afterburner shows RAM speed 2x GPU-Z, GPU-Z would show speed as 1928 [for viewers that did not know]: