In possession of two Gigabyte G1 980 Tis and two Gigabyte 980 Ti Reference cards - which to keep?

[cheru2016]

G'day mates,

as the title says, I am in possession of the four above mentioned cards.
I only intend on keeping two to run in SLI configuration, and I have been driving myself mad as to which two I should be keeping.

I've never run SLI before, but I have spent copious amounts of time researching the subject; particularly about the exact question that I'm posting here. Unfortunately however, there are SO many different opinions that it's making my head spin.

I'm using a Coolermaster cm690 iii with a Corsair H100i mounted on the top, and the stock rear and front fans that came with the case (4 fans in total). Unfortunately the side of the case is a windowed side and doesn't have a mounting spot for a side fan. I ran the G1s for a few days and of course, noticed app. 10 degrees difference, with the top card running hotter. I am now running the two reference cards and am noticing almost 20 degrees in difference.

I understand that open air cards will blow hot air into the case and reference will blow it out the back. My ASUS Maximus Hero Vii has about an inch between the top and bottom GPU cards so they're not directly stacked on top of one another, but there isn't an enormous amount of space. Cable management is very tidy, but the hard drives and other peripherals take up a lot of interior space which could negatively influence ventilation.

When run through 3Dmark Firestrike, the G1's came out with an overall score of 18,655 whilst the two references pulled 17,454. Whilst both are extremely powerful, that still translates to quite a difference. Even when the reference cards were overclocked to the same base clock speeds as the G1 (+152MHz) they only came out with 17,838 which is still 800 less than the G1 cards.

If it were based on preference alone, I would go G1 all day long, but I'm just concerned about ventilation and perhaps damaging or shortening the life of the top card due to overheating.

I really do need some direct advice as to what the better course of action would be. G1 or reference?

Thanks so much in advance, mates!

- Cheru

 

[cheru2016]

To be honest, mate, I've no idea about applying an OC to my CPU. Is it safe to do without shortening the lifespan? How would you recommend going about it?

 

[Reaper_7799]

It's pretty safe to do, up to a certain point. I think most will say if you stay under 1.3 Volts to your Vcore, that it wont really shorten the lifespan or anything. You have a really good board, the maximus 7 is great and you should be able to get a stable oc well under 1.3V.

Mine is at 4.6Gzh with 1.26 vcore and it is stable and cool under air, even during stress tests like aida or occt and extreme intel tuning benchmark but prime 95 will heat it up but it still passes. My 4.7 oc is a little higher at 1.33 vcore but I can't get it stable with any less voltage than that but I still use it too, however I'm kind of liking the 4.6 under 1.3V.

It's not hard to do, you have to take some time to stress test it and such, so depending how much time you want to devote to it. There a few ways but the easiest is to adjust your core values in your bios by multipliers, in asus it's under ai tweaker. I sync all my cores together so they will all be one frequency and then adjust the mulitplier to say 45x if you want 4.5 Ghz and then you need to manually adjust the Vcore voltage. If you start at 4.5, you could try 1.2V Vcore and see if it is stable. You can start lower if you want too.

If you don't care about fine tuning as much and just want results, you could just go a little higher to start, say 1.24V and then save your settings and reboot. You should have profiles in your bios, under tools I think, that you can save 8 or so different profiles that are easy to load with different overclocks.

Then run your stress tests... aida 64, occt is good, the intel extreme tuning utility has a stress test...prime 95 but some settings are not recommended for devils canyon chips. You will either get an error or you will blue screen or freeze up if it is not stable and then you just restart, go back into bios and increase your voltage. It's really just a matter of finding the least amount of voltage you can use with any given multiplier and then deciding what you want to use and are comfortable with. It just takes time with the stress testing.

 

[cheru2016]

Sounds doable but time consuming. I'll try and do some more research and perhaps try on the weekend

 

[cheru2016]

I got all of the fans installed

I OCd the first G1 which has an ASIC of 69 (hehe) and raised the clocks 382mhz without any issues as I read about others doing it, but didn't try beyond that as I have to sleep.

The second card has an asic of 82, but I didn't test the OC capability.

One thing I noticed however, is that the Firestrike demo (first cutscene) crashes when in SLI and both OCd. At base they have no issue, though. The other tests after the demo also work flawlessly.

I thought it may be psu but I've spoken to a few pros in the tech world and I've been assured that my CM Vanguard 750 +80 Gold is sufficient for what I'm running. Regardless, if it were PSu related the other tests shouldn't work either. The crash I get is the driver not responding or crashing.

Strange. Want to investigate more but 2am and have work in 4 hours!

 

[Reaper_7799]

Ahh sweet man. That asic of 82 is really good, I think anything close to or above 70 is considered pretty good and nice job on the plus 382, I'm jealous lol. Those G1 windforce editions get a lot of praise, so you should end up being happy with them. Your temps stayin good and everything? And ya the coolermaster V series is a really good power supply, so it's probably not that.

EDIT: Yeah, I would think it would crash too during benchmarking if it was psu related and even if it was an unstable overclock, it wouldn't or shouldn't make it through the benchmark itself. I'm not sure what's going on with that.

 

[cheru2016]

I finished installing the fans and went straight to bed, so haven't had a chance to check anything yet. Just going to work now (7:30am).

I couldn't remove the bottom cage because there was nowhere for my HDDs. I need to buy some 3.5 to 5.25 or whatever it is brackets to mount them in the ODD bay. The 120mm only fits directly behind the front intake fan because the G1s are too long, so there's a 140 and a 120 2cm apart both sucking air in - directly behind the G1s.

 

[cheru2016]

That FS crash on the demo video is suspicious, indeed.

Really not sure what's going on with that.

 

[Reaper_7799]

Cool, that should be good enough. They do make those adapters, so that will work just fine. Also, I just noticed in that pic...change your memory slots. Take the first one to the left out and install it in the 2nd red slot to the right, with a space inbetween. That way they run in dual mode or whatever and will be faster.

 

[cheru2016]

Cool, that should be good enough. They do make those adapters, so that will work just fine. Also, I just noticed in that pic...change your memory slots. Take the first one to the left out and install it in the 2nd red slot to the right, with a space inbetween. That way they run in dual mode or whatever and will be faster.

Oooh really?? Didn't know that! I'll do it tonight. Thanks mate

Yes - this weekend I'll have to source some brackets to move the drives up top.
That will make the 120mm fan kind of redundant, though as there will be complete unrestricted airflow from the two frontal intakes. I may mount the 120 on the bottom of the case as intake also.

My case has a pretyy efficient dust filter so providing it gets cleaned weekly, it could be a thing.

 

[Reaper_7799]

Cool, that should be good enough. They do make those adapters, so that will work just fine. Also, I just noticed in that pic...change your memory slots. Take the first one to the left out and install it in the 2nd red slot to the right, with a space inbetween. That way they run in dual mode or whatever and will be faster.

Oooh really?? Didn't know that! I'll do it tonight. Thanks mate

Yes - this weekend I'll have to source some brackets to move the drives up top.
That will make the 120mm fan kind of redundant, though as there will be complete unrestricted airflow from the two frontal intakes. I may mount the 120 on the bottom of the case as intake also.

My case has a pretyy efficient dust filter so providing it gets cleaned weekly, it could be a thing.

No problem man and yeah you could do that, I almost put one at the bottom but the reference I have has plenty of room at the front to the drive cage and the hybrid part, when I get it wont get in the way.

 

[cheru2016]

No problem man and yeah you could do that, I almost put one at the bottom but the reference I have has plenty of room at the front to the drive cage and the hybrid part, when I get it wont get in the way.

Yes there is definitely a difference in card length and depth between the reference and the G1.
With reference I could fit the fan, no worries. Not with the G1, though.

I'm a bit bummed about my asic score, though.
I'm trying not to get caught up in the technicalities, but a fair few people insist that a sub 70 score = a piece of crap card. I don't particularly buy that theory, though. My lowest asic is 69, but I got a stable OC of over +380 with no voltage increases or anything else. That doesn't sound like rubbish to me?

Perhaps asic doesn't always translate into performance or OC ability?
I'm not sure what I'll get with my 82 asic card, but for the lower 69, the results seem solid.
Would still prefer it to be above 70, though, tbh. Maybe I should just increase it to maximum voltage and blow it up so I can get a replacement lol.

 

[Reaper_7799]

Haha to blow it up. I wouldn't worry about it too much, especially if you are able to hit those numbers with it and no extra voltage. I think they just think under 70, alot maybe can't overclock high at all or something but obviously if you're hitting that, that's definitely solid. Hopefully your other card does that or more, you'll be set. So that puts you a bit above 1500 on boost ya?

 

[cheru2016]

I'm not at home but I think off the top of my head the base is 1152? so it would have been over 1500.
I'll check exactly how much when I get home this evening.

Would have been much happier with two 80%+ cards, though!
The shop banned me from returning my cards anymore, unfortunately.
I'll be charged a restocking fee of $150 for every time here on out.

 

[Reaper_7799]

Haha, damn that sucks but at least you were able to test things out first hand like that. Helps quite a bit. Yeah man that's a solid overclock, because your boost should bump that up even more. Mine boosts from 1250 to 1475 but I've seen different peoples boost and not the same so maybe it varies from card to card.

 

[cheru2016]

Haha, damn that sucks but at least you were able to test things out first hand like that. Helps quite a bit. Yeah man that's a solid overclock, because your boost should bump that up even more. Mine boosts from 1250 to 1475 but I've seen different peoples boost and not the same so maybe it varies from card to card.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure how to get the card to boost or to even use the OC tool included with it.
all the screenshots I've seen for OC Guru have an option for OC under the clock frequencies tab, but mine doesn't have anything of the sort. I can only adjust clocks manually.

There should be an option for OC and Game mode, I believe. Weird.

I updated to the latest version but still no go.

 

[bystander]

I'd go with the G1 if nothing more than having a much quieter system.

 

[Reaper_7799]

Haha, damn that sucks but at least you were able to test things out first hand like that. Helps quite a bit. Yeah man that's a solid overclock, because your boost should bump that up even more. Mine boosts from 1250 to 1475 but I've seen different peoples boost and not the same so maybe it varies from card to card.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure how to get the card to boost or to even use the OC tool included with it.
all the screenshots I've seen for OC Guru have an option for OC under the clock frequencies tab, but mine doesn't have anything of the sort. I can only adjust clocks manually.

There should be an option for OC and Game mode, I believe. Weird.

I updated to the latest version but still no go.

Ya you'll have to look into it for sure, cause it has different modes, I know that...oc and game mode and they should transition over to your overclock too, or maybe it just lets you manually overclock much higher but the boost is lower or something like that. Not too sure.

 

[cheru2016]

Haha, damn that sucks but at least you were able to test things out first hand like that. Helps quite a bit. Yeah man that's a solid overclock, because your boost should bump that up even more. Mine boosts from 1250 to 1475 but I've seen different peoples boost and not the same so maybe it varies from card to card.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure how to get the card to boost or to even use the OC tool included with it.
all the screenshots I've seen for OC Guru have an option for OC under the clock frequencies tab, but mine doesn't have anything of the sort. I can only adjust clocks manually.

There should be an option for OC and Game mode, I believe. Weird.

I updated to the latest version but still no go.

Ya you'll have to look into it for sure, cause it has different modes, I know that...oc and game mode and they should transition over to your overclock too, or maybe it just lets you manually overclock much higher but the boost is lower or something like that. Not too sure.

I'm still unable to find a version with this options in it :/

It just has the standard boost and base and nothing else except "sync" between cards.

 

[Reaper_7799]

Haha, damn that sucks but at least you were able to test things out first hand like that. Helps quite a bit. Yeah man that's a solid overclock, because your boost should bump that up even more. Mine boosts from 1250 to 1475 but I've seen different peoples boost and not the same so maybe it varies from card to card.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure how to get the card to boost or to even use the OC tool included with it.
all the screenshots I've seen for OC Guru have an option for OC under the clock frequencies tab, but mine doesn't have anything of the sort. I can only adjust clocks manually.

There should be an option for OC and Game mode, I believe. Weird.

I updated to the latest version but still no go.

Ya you'll have to look into it for sure, cause it has different modes, I know that...oc and game mode and they should transition over to your overclock too, or maybe it just lets you manually overclock much higher but the boost is lower or something like that. Not too sure.

I'm still unable to find a version with this options in it :/

It just has the standard boost and base and nothing else except "sync" between cards.

I've never used oc guru 2 so I'm not sure, even after doing a little research. Maybe those are just different profiles they have set up in oc guru 2, I was thinking maybe it had something in the bios that would be applied no matter what your Mhz was but maybe it's not like that and when you set up a manual overclock, everything else is not applied.

Maybe the bios in the G1 is different as well, in regards to the boost or turbo that is used by the reference cards and therefore it lets you overclock to a much higher level, without using the boost to do it.

 

[cheru2016]

I managed to find it man.
It was actually there all along. The interface is so buggy that the writing for OC and Game aren't even written there, and the boxes are invisible .. if you hover the cursor around the blank space, it turns into a finger, and you can check the invisible boxes.

Genius ..

 

[Reaper_7799]

I managed to find it man.
It was actually there all along. The interface is so buggy that the writing for OC and Game aren't even written there, and the boxes are invisible .. if you hover the cursor around the blank space, it turns into a finger, and you can check the invisible boxes.

Genius ..

Sweet man. Have some fun with those cards. Send me a message if you overclock your processor and have any questions.

 

[cheru2016]

I managed to find it man.
It was actually there all along. The interface is so buggy that the writing for OC and Game aren't even written there, and the boxes are invisible .. if you hover the cursor around the blank space, it turns into a finger, and you can check the invisible boxes.

Genius ..

Sweet man. Have some fun with those cards. Send me a message if you overclock your processor and have any questions.

Thanks man.
I OCd my CPU to 4.6 @ 1.25v last night.
Ran stable through AIDA64 for around two hours.

As for the card, I don't know what I was tripping on but my clock speeds are NOT +380.
I can get a maximum stable OC of +140. Anything above that and the whole thing shits itself.
In fact, if I change clock speeds to anything above base, the card throttles and performs extremely poorly.
I've been talking to a few people over on the GeForce forums and on Reddit, and some have said that it sounds like a faulty card I spoke to the store I bought it from to try and get a replacement and they will get back to me when they have decided if they can help.

 

[Reaper_7799]

Ahhh nice job on the processor, 4.6 seems to be the sweet spot for me. I can go higher and be stable but it takes quite a bit more juice to do it. I think I'm gonna stay at 4.6.

That sucks, but that's 140 above the overclock it comes with right, which is 1190 I think? That card is stock 1152 and then on oc mode it's 1190 and then with boost is 1291? The 140 is above what and what frequency does it run at on say like firestrike or gaming?

If it's throttling, you may have to change the fan curve, I don't know about gigabyte but evga sets theirs really low and everything gets super hot and will throttle if you don't change it up.

Which card is that on, the really good asic one or the other one?

 

[cheru2016]

Ahhh nice job on the processor, 4.6 seems to be the sweet spot for me. I can go higher and be stable but it takes quite a bit more juice to do it. I think I'm gonna stay at 4.6.

That sucks, but that's 140 above the overclock it comes with right, which is 1190 I think? That card is stock 1152 and then on oc mode it's 1190 and then with boost is 1291? The 140 is above what and what frequency does it run at on say like firestrike or gaming?

If it's throttling, you may have to change the fan curve, I don't know about gigabyte but evga sets theirs really low and everything gets super hot and will throttle if you don't change it up.

Which card is that on, the really good asic one or the other one?

That's on the 69 card. I haven't tested the 82 at all as it sounded good enough with it's rating.
I've been fussing a lot over the lower card, though.

that's 140 above the base clock speeds, so 1152 + 140 = 1292, which is about 250mhz less than what other people are easily pulling on stock voltages. The built in OC mode bumps to 1190.
I'm actually not sure how I can see what frequency it's running at in-game or in Firestrike. I can't get MSI's overlay to come up so I can only see by alt+tabbing :/

I set the fan to switch to 60% at 50 degrees and go up 10% for each 5 degree increment moving up.
It should max out at 100% once it gets between 70 and 75 degrees.

 

[Reaper_7799]

Ahhh nice job on the processor, 4.6 seems to be the sweet spot for me. I can go higher and be stable but it takes quite a bit more juice to do it. I think I'm gonna stay at 4.6.

That sucks, but that's 140 above the overclock it comes with right, which is 1190 I think? That card is stock 1152 and then on oc mode it's 1190 and then with boost is 1291? The 140 is above what and what frequency does it run at on say like firestrike or gaming?

If it's throttling, you may have to change the fan curve, I don't know about gigabyte but evga sets theirs really low and everything gets super hot and will throttle if you don't change it up.

Which card is that on, the really good asic one or the other one?

That's on the 69 card. I haven't tested the 82 at all as it sounded good enough with it's rating.
I've been fussing a lot over the lower card, though.

that's 140 above the base clock speeds, so 1152 + 140 = 1292, which is about 250mhz less than what other people are easily pulling on stock voltages. The built in OC mode bumps to 1190.
I'm actually not sure how I can see what frequency it's running at in-game or in Firestrike. I can't get MSI's overlay to come up so I can only see by alt+tabbing :/

I set the fan to switch to 60% at 50 degrees and go up 10% for each 5 degree increment moving up.
It should max out at 100% once it gets between 70 and 75 degrees.

Get MSI on screen display on because it should be boosting well above your base. My base right now is 1268 and in MSI on screen display, it shows when I play games boosting to 1475. Yours will probably boost to that or above now.

Here's how to get MSI to work.

Go into the little gear thing and go to the on screen display section. The first one says toggle on screen display and says none, just pick what hotkey you want to turn it off and on from there. Then go into the monitoring section...you'll see a long list of items you can pick that says graph and properties is on the right hand side. What you have to do is highlight each item you want, down below everything will change when you highlight a different item, so you have to do it for each one you want on screen. There is a checkbox that says show in on screen display, check that box and up top in the properties section it will now display in osd, which means it will show up on your screen. That should do it, just do it for each item you want.