Palit GeForce GTX 980 Ti Super JetStream

[HEXUS]

Can keen pricing make this the GTX 980 Ti to go for?

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[Stephince]

Good review of an interesting option but you again lament the lack of memory overclock without doing anything to show that it makes a difference. As has been asked before can you do some testing on just a memory overclock to see how it performs?

Alternatively when you review the the Asus Strix version (which contains a memory overclock by default) can you downclock the GPU to do comparisons?

[evs]

Which of the 980Ti's have had the least (or preferably no) coil whine from your testing?

[Moogly]

Good review of an interesting option but you again lament the lack of memory overclock without doing anything to show that it makes a difference. As has been asked before can you do some testing on just a memory overclock to see how it performs?

Alternatively when you review the the Asus Strix version (which contains a memory overclock by default) can you downclock the GPU to do comparisons?

I second this.

[Obie]

Nice review & nice card at a great price.

[Plasmastorm]

Which of the 980Ti's have had the least (or preferably no) coil whine from your testing?

Would be a lovely thing to start including in reviews.
Just built a new system today for a customer with a R9 390 from XFX. Never experienced coil whine till today and my god it was bad.
Now I know why dogs go running with a dog whistle.

On desktop that was fine but as the card drew more and more power it just got worse.

[Tarinder]

The problem with discussing coil whine in particular is that it is down to that particular sample. We've previously had two identical cards from the same manufacturer exhibit different levels of coil whine.

I'm guessing that it will becomes such an issue that manufacturers will begin cherry-picking samples based on the lowest amount of coil whine.

[LSG501]

The problem with discussing coil whine in particular is that it is down to that particular sample. We've previously had two identical cards from the same manufacturer exhibit different levels of coil whine.

not to mention different part combinations can cause/remove coil whine in some cases.

I'll admit I wouldn't want hardware with coil whine so comments regarding it in reviews wouldn't go a miss for me either.

[cptwhite_uk]

Why is coil whine an issue all of a sudden? I can't remember it occurring or being mentioned so prominently in previous generations of graphics cards. Is this a recent phenomena or something focussed on as the build quality of cards have improved over the last few years, so we're more critical of these kinds of issues?

Can't say I've experienced it in any graphics card I've owned in 15-16 years of self builds.

[Irien]

Having bought one of these in a promo recently, I find some of the benchmark settings quite interesting (I spent yesterday fiddling around with settings in several of the listed games), as one rarely sees these 100+fps results with settings turned up even at 1080p.

I wonder if it time to consider benchmarking cards with max settings - Tomb Raider, for example, doesn't give solid 60fps with its max 4xSSAA at 1080p with this card, yet the review suggests a 120+fps experience. I appreciate the 4xSSAA is pretty high, but when I see benchmarks on a site, I tend to assume that settings are on max for a halo product like 980ti. Certainly as a player, I'd expect to put everything on max on a card like this.

Same is true of Witcher3 - buying a product like this would make you want to play with Hairworks On (why would you turn stuff off on a 500ukp card?) which can cause drops to 40fps in the opening tutorial area if the camera pans close too Geralts hair. Getting smooth 1080p gameplay was still a bit tricky, esp given frame pacing issues (might be controller lag) on this title.

Similarly in games like Assassin's Creed (even Black Flag, which I happen to be playing at the moment) things like PhysX and AA need to be turned down to avoid sub-60fps/screen tear etc.

I know that you tend to turn off "proprietory" extensions, but perhaps it would be worth including on/off charts, as customers will want to play with these extensions turned on, esp if using a corresponding graphics card.

It's still a lovely card, esp when coupled with the "Super Resolution" downsampling features now present in the drivers. Just wish more games had scaleable UIs!

No coil whine, either, by the way, except when I ran 3Dmark2001 (don't ask) - some minor whine when doing 1000+ fps

For those interested, the "in game" boost on this card seems to be around 1312Mhz compared to Gigabyte's 1370ish, hence why the Gigabyte card tends to have the edge in performance. I believe the Inno is almost a like-for-like clock speed setup, but with a 200Mhz memory boost. Where the Inno pips the Palit make answer the "memory overclock" question that someone asked earlier. Of course, I guess there may be a minor margin of error in every benchmark run too.

Note that you may need to request a Batman e-code from your supplier - it is mentioned in the Conclusions in this article, but wasn't included in the box. Fortunately my Hexus-approved supplier was most helpful

[Metro]

I would not buy this GPU, it is a low end GTX 980ti