We take two of GIGABYTE’s premium GTX 980Ti graphics cards – the G1 Gaming (GV-N98TG1 GAMING-6GD) and Xtreme Gaming (GV-N98TXTREME-6GD) which both come with WindForce cooling and factory overclocks.
Product on Review:
GTX 980Ti G1 Gaming
GTX 980Ti Xtreme Gaming
Manufacturer & Sponsor: GIGABYTE
Street Price:
G1 Gaming: £569.99 GBP / $620 USD
Xtreme Gaming: £599.99 GBP / $689 USD
For NVIDIA the GeForce GTX 980Ti has been a great success and has allowed the graphics giant to take the single-GPU crown. Since the GTX 980Ti’s arrival in May 2015 there have been a catalogue of options to choose from with custom designs and factory overclocks but today we’re to look at what GIGABYTE has to offer in two of their premium solutions – the G1 Gaming and Xtreme Gaming.
Both the G1 Gaming and Xtreme Gaming arrive with GIGABYTE’s prolific WindForce cooling configuration and each have a conservative factory overclock to ensure even more performance is achieved through a variety of uses.
As we progress through today’s review of these two exciting graphics cards, we’ll be identifying their differences and highlighting how well they perform in terms of gaming, thermals, power usage and more!
About GIGABYTE
Founded in 1986, GIGABYTE is committed to providing top-notch solutions that “upgrade your life”. We are regarded as a pioneer in innovation with groundbreaking excitements such as Ultra Durable™ — a revolutionary technology that redefines the industry, WINDFORCE™ — exclusive heat dissipation design that builds for extreme performance, G1™ Gaming series—the perfect solutions for gamers and enthusiasts, P series — a powerful gaming laptop less than an inch thick, and BRIX series—a versatile mini-PC in the palm of your hand. GIGABYTE has continuously brought unique new ways of digital world and created marvelous products that empower you with meaningful and charming experiences.
Technical Specifications
Below we have the technical specifications for both cards taken directly from GIGABYTE:
G1 Gaming
Core Clock
Boost:1279 / Base: 1190 MHz in OC Mode
Boost:1241 / Base: 1152 MHz in Gaming Mode
Memory Clock
7010 MHz
Process Technology
28 nm
Memory Size
6 GB
Memory Bus
384 bit
Card Bus
PCI-E 3.0
Memory Type
GDDR5
DirectX
12
OpenGL
4.5
PCB Form
ATX
Resolutions
Digital max resolution 4096 X 2160
Analog max resolution 2048 x 1536
Multi-view: 4
I/O
Dual-link DVI-I / Dual-link DVI-D / HDMI / DisplayPort*3
Card size
H=39 L=296 W=120 mm
Suggested Power requirement
600W(with two 8-pin external power connectors)
Boost:1279 / Base: 1190 MHz in OC Mode
Boost:1241 / Base: 1152 MHz in Gaming Mode
Memory Clock
7010 MHz
Process Technology
28 nm
Memory Size
6 GB
Memory Bus
384 bit
Card Bus
PCI-E 3.0
Memory Type
GDDR5
DirectX
12
OpenGL
4.5
PCB Form
ATX
Resolutions
Digital max resolution 4096 X 2160
Analog max resolution 2048 x 1536
Multi-view: 4
I/O
Dual-link DVI-I / Dual-link DVI-D / HDMI / DisplayPort*3
Card size
H=39 L=296 W=120 mm
Suggested Power requirement
600W(with two 8-pin external power connectors)
XTREME GAMING
Core Clock
Core Clock: Base 1216MHz / Boost 1317MHz (Standard- Base:1000MHz Boost:1075MHz)
Memory Clock
7200 MHz
Process Technology
28 nm
Memory Size
6 GB
Memory Bus
384 bit
Memory Type
GDDR5
DirectX
12
OpenGL
4.5
PCB Form
ATX
Card Bus
PCI-E 3.0
Resolutions
Digital max resolution 4096 X 2160
Analog max resolution 2048 x 1536
Multi-view 4
I/O
Dual-link DVI-I*1/HDMI*1/Display Port*3
Card size
H=51 L=287 W=134 mm
Suggested Power requirement
600W (with two 8-pin external power connector)
Core Clock: Base 1216MHz / Boost 1317MHz (Standard- Base:1000MHz Boost:1075MHz)
Memory Clock
7200 MHz
Process Technology
28 nm
Memory Size
6 GB
Memory Bus
384 bit
Memory Type
GDDR5
DirectX
12
OpenGL
4.5
PCB Form
ATX
Card Bus
PCI-E 3.0
Resolutions
Digital max resolution 4096 X 2160
Analog max resolution 2048 x 1536
Multi-view 4
I/O
Dual-link DVI-I*1/HDMI*1/Display Port*3
Card size
H=51 L=287 W=134 mm
Suggested Power requirement
600W (with two 8-pin external power connector)
Detailed Look & Video Review
For this review we’ve produced a video review over on our YouTube channel which details all of the included features, differences between both cards and takes a close look at the PCBs/cooling solutions along with the addition of some gaming benchmarks. Please check out our video review or hit play on the video below:
Test Setup & Methodology
How we test graphics cards
Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphics card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and even out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and latest drivers so this does certainly need to be taken into consideration when viewing our testing results. Each game and benchmark is tested times with the lowest and highest scores omitted out of the 5 results and the average then taken from the three remaining to give us our final result for each resolution and setting used.
Hardware
With the latest Intel chipset release we decided to update our ageing X79 setup to the very latest X99 chipset. Not only that but we will be using the flagship Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to a realistic, achievable 4GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB (4x4GB) of GDDR4 at 2666MHz and a 500GB SSD there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.
High End Graphics Cards on test:
GIGABYTE GTX 980Ti XTREME GAMING (Forceware 361.75)
GIGABYTE GTX 980Ti G1 GAMING (Forceware 361.75)
GIGABYTE GTX 970 XTREME GAMING (Forceware 361.43)
ASUS MATRIX GTX 980Ti PLATINUM (Forceware 358.91)
ASUS STRIX GTX 980Ti DC3 OC (Forceware 353.30)
SAPPHIRE R9 Fury X (Catalyst 15.15)
XFX R9 390X Double Dissipation (Catalyst 15.15)
MSI R9 390X GAMING 8G (Catalyst 15.15)
NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti 6GB (Forceware 352.90)
ZOTAC GTX 970 AMP! EXTREME CORE(Forceware 344.75)
ZOTAC GTX 970 AMP! EXTREME(Forceware 344.75)
MSI GTX 970 GAMING 4G(Forceware 344.75)
GIGABYTE G1 GAMING SOC GTX 970(Forceware 344.75)
ASUS STRIX GTX 970 4GB GDDR5(Forceware 340.60)
NVIDIA GTX 980 4GB GDDR5(Forceware 340.52)
SAPPHIRE TRI-X R9-290X 4GB GDDR5(Catalyst 14.3)
Special thanks go to Intel, Corsair, MSI and AOC for providing the extreme spec components used for our test bench:
Motherboard: MSI X99S GAMING 9 AC
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR RM Series™ RM1000
Hard Drive – CORSAIR Force Series™ LX 512GB SATA 3 6Gb/s SSD
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H105 240mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2868 PQU
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR RM Series™ RM1000
Hard Drive – CORSAIR Force Series™ LX 512GB SATA 3 6Gb/s SSD
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H105 240mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2868 PQU
Benchmarks
If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we have chosen:
Battlefield 4
Watchdogs
Company of Heroes 2
Thief
GRID: 2
Metro: Last Light
Watchdogs
Company of Heroes 2
Thief
GRID: 2
Metro: Last Light
We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included three of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:
Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike
Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…
Power, Temperatures, Acoustics
To test for power consumption we take a measurement from the plug socket. It is important to note that the figures below represent total system power use and not just the GPU. The CPU was always in a fixed state (4GHz overclock) so did not affect the additional power load when the GPU was placed under 100% load using Furmark which was ran for 15 minutes at which point a load reading was taken. Idle readings were taken 5 minutes after system boot to ensure any background services and applications had loaded.
Temperature
To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we would normally run Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained however we found that this throttled the card and resulted in spurious results. So we set Heaven running continuously for 20 minutes and used this as a temperature result.
Acoustics
The noise from the cooling fans is especially low, even under full load – take a look and listen on our video.
Overclocking
To overclock both the G1 Gaming and Xtreme Gaming we used MSI Afterburner Tool since it gives extensive options for modifying the graphics cards.
Overclocking both cards was easy and we managed to boost the GPU and memory clock to admirable points — the G1 Gaming had a bit more flexibility (but the Xtreme Gaming has higher defaults anyway). Our results took the GPU clock on the G1 Gaming from 1151 to 1256MHz and the memory clock from 1753MHz to 1831MHz, whereas the Xtreme Gaming yielded 1316MHz for the GPU clock and 1851MHz. Both overclocks allowed us to acheive even higher scores in Unigine Heaven 4.0 below.
3DMark FireStrike
Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremark’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.
Unigine Heaven 4.0
Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.
Unigine Valley
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.
Battlefield 4
Battlefield 4 is a 2013 first-person shooter video game developed by Swedish video game developer EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and published by Electronic Arts. It is a sequel to 2011’s Battlefield 3 and is perhaps currently the most popular online First Person Shooter for PC gamers. It has an extremely powerful gaming engine that will stress components more than most FPS titles available.
Watchdogs
Watch Dogs is a 2014 open world action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. Set within a fictionalized version of Chicago, Illinois, the single-player story follows a hacker and his efforts to seek revenge after the accidental death of his niece. The open world design lets players freely roam Chicago, which includes the urban city, open countryside, and slums. The game is played from a third-person perspective and its world is navigated on-foot or by vehicle. As such this is a very demanding game, especially when graphical options are turned up.
Thief
Thief is a stealth video game developed by the Canadian video game developer Eidos Montreal, and published by Square Enix. It is a revival of the cult classic Thief series of stealth games, of which it is the fourth game. Thief is set in a dark fantasy world inspired by Victorian, gothic, and steampunk aesthetics. Using a modified version of the Unreal Engine 3 it makes for a challenging game to pitch against our range of components.
Company of Heroes 2
Company of Heroes 2 is a real-time strategy video game developed by Relic Entertainment. It is the sequel to the critically acclaimed 2006 game Company of Heroes.As with the original Company of Heroes, the game is set in World War II but with the focus on the Eastern Front, with players primarily controlling the side of the Soviet Red Army during various stages of the Eastern Front, from Operation Barbarossa to the Battle of Berlin. Company of Heroes 2 runs on Relic Entertainment’s proprietary Essence 3.0 game engine and is extremely demanding of both CPU and GPU.
Metro Last Light
Metro: Last Light is a single-player post-apocalyptic-themed first-person shooter video game with stealth and survival horror elements, developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Moscow, part of the universe of the novel Metro 2033 and its sequels, written by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. The second of our FPS titles, it runs on the 4A gaming engine which again, has the capability to stress even the best GPU components.
GRID 2
Grid 2 (stylised as GRID 2 and known as Race Driver Grid 2 in Japan) is a racing video game developed and published by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008’s Race Driver: Grid. The game includes numerous real world locations and cities such as Paris. It also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility. It uses the EGO 3.0 engine which while not overly challenging, is representative of games of this genre.
Overall Performance
Here we take a look at the overall performance of the graphics card. This figure is determined by finding the average FPS across all of the settings used in a particular benchmark(game) to give us an overall value.
Value For Money
We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.
Conclusion
If you’ve checked out our video review of the GTX 980Ti G1 Gaming & Xtreme Gaming you’ll realise there is very little to separate both of these graphics cards. Fundamentally, they use the same GPU and cooling system – which will present similar results in various platforms.
The renowned WindForce cooling solution with its triple fan configuration has rightfully earned its place as one of the more reliable graphics coolers on the market. The latest rendition builds on the success of previous generations and allows some of the lowest temperatures possible for the GTX 980Ti while doing so with incredibly low acoustics. GIGABYTE’s WindForce design has scooped up many an accolade for a reason, and the latest iteration confirms why they are so well-regarded.
From a visual standpoint, the Xtreme Gaming does bring with it the new RGB lighting with that distinct halo effect – something which will be quite subjective but we feel it’s quite an appealing feature to have included.
It’s only really after we’ve removed the coolers that we truly appreciate the extend of the differences. The G1 Gaming features ultra durable components throughout and touts an 8-phase power design while over in the Xtreme Gaming camp, Titan-X grade components are used and a 14-phase power design. The Xtreme Gaming also has a special aerospace grade PCB which has protection against leaks, humidity and other extreme conditions. Delving even further in, we have a factory overclock applied to both cards which yields a 20% increase with the G1 Gaming and 22% on the Xtreme Gaming.
When placing both cards into the gaming arena, we’re left in no doubt of their capabilities with either card (in most cases) topping our charts. Compared to the G1 Gaming, the Xtreme Gaming did have a slight edge over its counterpart but the difference in some games is negligible. The performance results showcase just how prominent GIGABYTE’s offerings are – those key attributes which form the basis for an excellent graphics card are clearly evident.
In terms of pricing the G1 Gaming is £569.99 GBP / $620 USD, while the Xtreme Gaming is £599.99 GBP / $689 USD (There was a recent price-drop in the UK since filming our video). So both cards are neither the most expensive in their class, nor are they the cheapest. Against the competition from ASUS, both GIGABYTE cards are significantly cheaper and yet offer better performance in games, cooling and noise.
Both the GTX 980Ti G1 Gaming and Xtreme Gaming are prolific graphics cards which should not be overlooked. They both look fantastic and offer outstanding performance regardless of the intended use.
VIDEO REVIEW – VORTEZ TV
Pros
+ Stylish design
+ Customisable LED lighting
+ Low-noise
+ Low-temperatures
+ Excellent performance
+ Overclocks even further
+ DirectX 12 ready
+ 3 years warranty
Cons
– Not much overclocking headroom!
+ Stylish design
+ Customisable LED lighting
+ Low-noise
+ Low-temperatures
+ Excellent performance
+ Overclocks even further
+ DirectX 12 ready
+ 3 years warranty
Cons
– Not much overclocking headroom!
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
