What do you think of the founders edition cards?

Bobdabomb

Commendable
Nov 23, 2016
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I want to know what YOU think about the founders edition cards like the 1070 and 1080. Why do people say that they're bad? What are some pros and cons of them? Please give some specific reasons. Thanks for any info.
 
Solution
My dad has a prebuilt PC with a GTX 1060 founders gaming at 1080p on fallout 4 and two of my mates game on prebuilt PC's with GTX 1080 founders. They have had no complaints about their hardware.

So yes get a founders if you want but the third party ones are stock overclocked and still cooler (MSI, Gigabyte, EVGA, ASUS & ZOTAC to name a few)

Pros: None, unless you like how they look
Cons: They have bad cooling, and they thermal throttle due to that. Their fans are loud. Costs $100 more than a normal one. Worse at overclocking than most other non-reference cards.
 
Well i know a few people with founders one being my Dad and they seem fine with theirs.

If your just going to stick it in and game your fine.

The card sucks air in then exhausts it out the back of the computer unlike aftermarket GPU coolers.

If your not overclocking its fine but if you are its going to throttle and be very loud.
 
The glow is just dim really.

And thermal throttling is when a piece of hardware is creating an extensive amount of heat from its workload and the cooler can not efficiently cool it and so the piece hardware will decide to downclock/slow itself till its lowers its heat enough to save it's self from frying but this will make the card weaker.

Mostly people will see their frames dip drastically when a CPU, GPU or MOBO (RAM very unlikely) reach their thermal limit and so a part slows down to cool off. Mostly means the person needs to reapply thermal paste or get a better cooler.

As long as your overclocking and your room isnt 25C+ ambient temp then your fine with a stock founders.
 


So you think that the gtx 1070 founders edition is ok then?
 
My dad has a prebuilt PC with a GTX 1060 founders gaming at 1080p on fallout 4 and two of my mates game on prebuilt PC's with GTX 1080 founders. They have had no complaints about their hardware.

So yes get a founders if you want but the third party ones are stock overclocked and still cooler (MSI, Gigabyte, EVGA, ASUS & ZOTAC to name a few)

 
Solution


OK. Thanks for the info :)
 
I don't think the Founders Edition cards are necessarily bad. The main problem I have with them is that they charge quite a bit more for them without providing any extra benefit. Not only that but just about all of the other cards cool better and are able to run at higher clock speeds because of those lower temperatures.

That being said, if you have your heart set on a Founders Edition card go ahead and buy it. It's not like they perform drastically different than the custom cards. In most cases the benchmarks are going to look similar to this one with the custom card getting 3 or 4 more FPS than the Founders Edition.

gtav_1920_1080.png
 
Thanks for that picture showing all of those frame rates with all of those different cards. That helps. I think I will get a founders edition because a) they look cooler and b) the blower just seems better than an open air because it's blowing the air out of the case.
 


All the Founders Edition cards are the same. They are Nvidia's reference design. If one is cheaper than the others buy that one. If not go for the one with the best warranty. I think I remember reading that PNY offered lifetime warranties so they might be worth considering. I have just never bought one of their cards because I don't buy reference (founders edition) models and I prefer the custom cards from other brands.
 


Like I said, it doesn't actually matter. The cardboard box it comes in will have a different brand written on it but the actual cards are the same Nvidia reference design. If PNY really does offer lifetime warranties on their GPUs I would buy the PNY one.

If not I would just get the cheapest one. On Amazon the Zotac and MSI Founders Edition cards are $424.99 so I would get one of those. The Asus card is $440 and EVGA is $446. I don't see any point in paying more money for the exact same design.
 
That Dell 27" 1440p G-Sync monitor would be a great fit for your 1070. I have the 24" version of that same monitor and I'm very happy with it. The 144Hz refresh rate and G-Sync are great.

To see the resolution of your current monitor just right click on your desktop and then click display settings.
 


Thanks. What is G-sync? I've heard of V-Sync I think it's called. What are all these sync things? Also what is 144 Hz? Actually what is Hz in general? So my monitor is 1920 x 1080; is that 1080p? What does the p mean? Also what are all of the resolutions of monitors? Thanks.
 
G-Sync is Nvidia's technology to reduce screen tearing, V-Sync is the same, but not Nvidia's and FreeSync(AMD's) is also to reduce screen tearing.
Hz is the number of frames your monitor can display in a second.
The "p" in 1080p stands for progressive scan, which means the frame is being rendered from top to bottom. And yes 1920 x 1080 is 1080p.
I'm not gonna list all the resolutions of the monitors, because there are many. You can google that, just as you could have googled this, really no simpler task.