Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti Waterforce Xtreme Gaming 6 GB Review

Name: Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti Waterforce Xtreme Gaming 6 GB
Brand: GIGABYTE

W1zzard

on Nov 26th, 2015,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: GIGABYTE

(36 Comments) »

Introduction

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980 Ti was released this June. Built on the same GM200 GPU as the GeForce Titan X, it has fewer shaders (2816 vs 3072). While the GTX 980 Ti's GPU is still produced on a 28 nanometer process at TSMC in Taiwan, it comes with the fantastic power efficiency optimizations of the NVIDIA Maxwell architecture, which promises lower power draw, higher performance, and reduced fan noise all at the same time.

Our review of the reference design GTX 980 Ti revealed that it is barely slower than the Titan X, which means custom designs could surpass Titan X performance at a much lower price point.

Today, we are reviewing Gigabyte's new GT 980 Ti Extreme WaterForce, which, as the name suggests, comes with a preinstalled, prefilled, maintenance-free watercooling solution. The card comes with a high overclock out of the box as its GPU runs a base clock of 1216 MHz and the memory is clocked at 1800 MHz.

With a retail price of $720, it is more affordable than competing products, like the MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning.

GeForce GTX 980 Ti Market Segment Analysis
	GeForce GTX 970	Radeon R9 290X	Radeon R9 390X	GeForce GTX 780 Ti	GeForce GTX 980	Radeon R9 Fury	Radeon R9 Fury X	GeForce GTX 980 Ti	Gigabyte GTX 980 Xtreme WaterForce	GeForce GTX Titan X	Radeon R9 295X2
Shader Units	1664	2816	2816	2880	2048	3584	4096	2816	2816	3072	2x 2816
ROPs	56	64	64	48	64	64	64	96	96	96	2x 64
Graphics Processor	GM204	Hawaii	Hawaii	GK110	GM204	Fiji	Fiji	GM200	GM200	GM200	2x Hawaii
Transistors	5200M	6200M	6200M	7100M	5200M	8900M	8900M	8000M	8000M	8000M	2x 6200M
Memory Size	4 GB	4 GB	8 GB	3 GB	4 GB	4 GB	4 GB	6 GB	6 GB	12 GB	2x 4 GB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	512 bit	512 bit	384 bit	256 bit	4096 bit	4096 bit	384 bit	384 bit	384 bit	2x 512 bit
Core Clock	1051 MHz+	1000 MHz	1050 MHz	876 MHz+	1126 MHz+	1000 MHz	1050 MHz	1000 MHz+	1216 MHz+	1000 MHz+	1018 MHz
Memory Clock	1750 MHz	1250 MHz	1500 MHz	1750 MHz	1750 MHz	500 MHz	500 MHz	1750 MHz	1801 MHz	1750 MHz	1250 MHz
Price	$290	$300	$400	$390	$470	$520	$630	$620	$720	$1000	$620

Packaging

You will receive:

Graphics card + driver CD
Documentation
PCIe power cable
Gigabyte case badge
Gigabyte wrist band (the kind tennis players use)

The Card

Gigabyte's card is almost empty when you look through the window on the front. Inside, you will find the waterblock, which also cools the memory chips and voltage regulation circuitry, but no fan! On the back, Gigabyte has placed a nice high quality metal backplate. Dimensions of the card are 27 cm x 12 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system, but you'll also have to fit the watercooling radiator somewhere.

Display connectivity options include a DVI and HDMI port, each, and three DisplayPorts.

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