engineered in all relevant facets.
All the extra care and component
selection that goes into this graphics
card and the inherent overclocking
headroom present on all Maxwell
GPUs to date proves beneficial. Out
the box this card is supposed to only
boost to 1329MHz, but in reality hits
clock speeds of 1369MHz under load.
This is already much higher than the
reference core speed, but with the
pushing of a single slider, 1500MHz
will be yours. Of course there are
those who wish to set this clock
frequency always and as such will
bake it into their cards via BIOS
modification. Needless to say this
voids your warranty almost
immediately, however I would say
you’ve little to nothing to worry
about. Even with the increased clock
frequencies of both the core and the
memory, the GIGABYTE GTX 970
Gaming much like its lesser sibling
the 960 stays very cool. When the
fans do spin up, they are hardly
audible but then of course that
depends on the rest of your system.
As with the other GAMING cards in
the 900 series, the overclock on this
model is massive in comparison to
the NVIDIA specification at 151MHz
22 The OverClocker Issue 33 | 2015
higher. On such a GPU this overclock
actually makes a difference in
gaming performance that places
this model ahead of some of the
best Radeon R9 290X cards on the
market as you can see in the graphs.
At the original Radeon R9 290X
prices, there would have been no
competition for the GTX 970, but with
the current price drops on many of
the cards including the SAPPHIRE
VAPOR-X 290X. They certainly make
it difficult for the regular GTX 970 (if
there is such a thing), but this model
as I stated earlier manages to pull
ahead still and going a long way into
justifying it’s $360 USD price tag.
2GHz mark or at worst 1800MHz.
For the less adventurous 1500MHz
will do just fine and if paired with
memory operating at 2GHz, the
performance scales as you would
expect clipping at the heels of the
GTX 980 (G1 model) and certainly
surpassing the regular GTX 980 factory
speeds. For $360 it’s hard to beat that
kind of performance, despite the price
drops of the competing Radeon R9 290
and 290X graphics cards.
GV-N980G1 GAMING
ERP: $579.99
For the competitive overclocker,
this GPU like with many GTX 970
cards will need some modifications,
regarding the voltage regulators
and the controller. The specific
model I used for this was modified
with the GIGABYTE G-POWER board
and with the board in place and
some quick overclocking sessions,
I was able to record frequencies
above 1700MHz. As a result of time
constraints I was not able to push
further but I do suspect much like
the GTX 980, this GPU will reach the
Finally I come to the grandest of
them all. The GTX 980. There’s
not much to say about this GPU
that you probably have no read
or seen already. It is sublime in
performance, power and heat
output. It manages to outperform
the GTX 780Ti by some margin, yet
on paper it looks like the lesser of
the two mostly. If you consider that
it even outperforms the GTX TITAN
Black Edition, suddenly the price
doesn’t seem so high at all.
Short of the dual GPU solutions
there isn’t a faster card and with