The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Review: Featuring EVGA
by Ryan Smith on September 26, 2014 10:00 AM ESTOverclocking
With GTX 980 we saw first-hand how GM204 had very significant overclocking headroom. Even without the ability to meaningful overvolt on NVIDIA cards, we were able to push our base GPU clock speed up from 1126MHz to 1377MHz, or in terms of the maximum boost bin, from 1265MHz to 1515MHz. Consequently with GTX 970 shipping at lower clock speeds, we have very lofty expectations here.
But running counter to that will be TDP. As we have already seen, GTX 970 is TDP limited right out of the gate, so even if our card has more clock speed headroom, its 110% TDP limit doesn’t leave much more in the way of power headroom. Furthermore as this is already a factory overclocked card, there’s no guarantee that EVGA has left us much overclocking headroom to play with in the first place.
| EVGA GeForce GTX 970 FTW Overclocking | ||||
| FTW | Overclocked | |||
| Core Clock | 1216MHz | 1241MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1367MHz | 1392MHz | ||
| Max Boost Clock | 1418MHz | 1455MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 7GHz | 7.8GHz | ||
| Max Voltage | 1.218v | 1.243v | ||
And in fact our results show they haven’t. We aren’t able to get even another 50MHz out of our GPU before errors start setting in; 25MHz is all we will get, which pushes our base GPU clock speed from 1216MHz to 1241MHz, and our maximum boost clock from 1418MHz to 1455MHz. Overall this is a weaker overclock than GTX 980, though not immensely so.
Meanwhile memory overclocking was just as fruitful as it was on GTX 980, with our card being able to handle up to 7.8GHz on its GDDR5 memory. As we saw with GTX 980 we’re nearly as memory bandwidth bottlenecked as we are GPU bottlenecked, but we will take what performance we can get.
As you’d expect from such a mild overclock, the performance increase is very limited. Our overclocked GTX 970 FTW does close on GTX 980 even more, but even with this full overclock it won’t overcome the 3 SMM deficit.
Overall in all likelihood the GTX 970 FTW benefits more from the 10% increase in TDP than it does the clock speed increase. GTX 970 – and GM204 in general – clearly desires to be fed with more voltage and more power overall than what any NVIDIA approved card is going to see.
Power consumption and noise tick up, but only slightly. The limited 10% TDP increase means that the amount of power the card can draw and dissipate as heat only increases slightly. You aren’t getting much more performance, but you also aren’t getting much more noise.
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JarredWalton - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
There are plenty of older (but still decent) PSUs that only have 6-pin PEG connectors, and 6-pin to 8-pin adapters are never a good idea IMO.cobalt42 - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
I believe at least one released card does use a single 8-pin connector.jmke - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Asus strix 970 DC2OC uses a single 8-pin connectorHrel - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Remember you guys saying Nvidia is working from the low end up, no longer top down. Well, they should start releasing cards that way. I don't care about your overpriced space heaters, I care about the cards between $100 and $200. Release those first!cobalt42 - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
They did -- the 750 and 750Ti are the first generation Maxwell cards, released earlier this year. They didn't break new ground in price/performance, but they did in price/watt.anandreader106 - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
You mean performance/watt.Houdani - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
I think it's finally time to upgrade my vintage 460 to one of these 970's. I don't plan on upgrading my ancient i7 930 (Nahelem, Bloomfield) just yet.I think I can eek more life out of my rig by bumping the GPU and keeping the rest of the innards the same for another year or two. I'm just surprised that I was able to get 4 good years out of that little 460 (mated with a 1080P monitor).
CaptainSassy - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Exactly the same rig and monitir but i will continue sitting on it :D 329$ is still pricy, i'll wait for true 200$ championwetwareinterface - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
there won't be a $200 champion. the bang for buck cards are in the $300 and above price tier right now and for the foreseeable future. it was the r9 290 and now it's the 970. the next one i predict will be the 290's replacement it will have the texture compression of the 285 and be their second down part.just4U - Sunday, September 28, 2014 - link
The $200 champion appears to really be the 280 atm for those sitting on older cards.. I'd like to say the 285 but it's higher up in the price bracket. The 960 should be interesting though when it comes out but I doubt it will be a $200 card.. Looking at the 970.. Im guessing it will sit at the $250 price point.