EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB SC GAMING ACX 2.0, 26% Cooler and 36% Quieter Cooling Graphics Card 04G-P4-2983-KR
- Virtual Reality Ready
- DirectX12 Ready
- Gamestream to NVIDIA SHIELD
- EVGA “ACX 2.0” Cooling Technology
- EVGA’s 24/7 Technical Support; Base Clock: 1266 MHz / Boost Clock: 1367 MHz
- Memory Clock: 7010 MHz Effective; CUDA Cores: 2048; Memory Detail: 4096MB GDDR5
- Memory Bit Width 256 Bit / Memory Speed: 0.28ns / Memory Bandwidth: 224.3 GB/s
- Recommended PSU: 500W or greater power supply
The new EVGA GeForce GTX 980 is powered by the next-generation NVIDIA Maxwell architecture, giving you incredible performance, unmatched power efficiency, and cutting-edge features. Maxwell is the most advanced GPU architecture ever made, designed to be the engine of next-generation gaming. Inspired by light, it was designed to solve some of the most complex lighting and graphics challenges in visual computing. For the first time, gaming GPUs can dynamically render indirect light using the new VXGI (Voxel Global Illumination technology. Scenes are significantly more lifelike as light interacts more realistically in the game environment. Incredible Speed and Power Efficiency The GTX 980 is the world’s fastest GPU and the GTX 970 offers the most advanced performance in its class. Each delivers 2x the performance of previous-generation cards, bringing new gaming experiences to virtual reality, HD, and ultra-resolution 4K displays. Dynamic Super Resolution Technology Enable the detail of 4
List Price: $ 569.99
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156 of 166 people found the following review helpful
 An appropriate upgrade over the previous generation, By
LRic (Florida) – See all my reviews
This review is from: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB SC GAMING ACX 2.0, 26% Cooler and 36% Quieter Cooling Graphics Card 04G-P4-2983-KR (Personal Computers)
Pre-face: I received my card from NewEgg.com, 2 weeks ago, I used a coupon So I did get the card for 0 plus no taxes and the card has given me no problems whatsoever. I purchased this card to give my release day EVGA STOCK GTX 780 a rest in my wife’s PC, who’s more of a casual gamer. The GTX 970/980 cards use less energy than the 7th GEN ones and the lower power consumption should save me a couple of bucks over the next couple of years. A noticeable improvement this gen is that these cards come with HDMI 2.0 and 3 Display-Ports all capable of 4K resolution. Meaning for me that I can finally have all 3 of my 1440P monitors connected on one card. This was possible before but only through adapters or very select cards. I’m currently using 2 Dell U2713HM, 1440P Monitors at 75 Hz and 1 QNIX DVI-D monitor at 120 Hertz. The QNIX is my main monitor for twitch shooters and FPS games as well as my preferred Sim Racing monitor, while the other two monitors I obtained via work and are amazing for color reproduction and Surround screen gaming. Noise/ACX 2: These cards are quiet running at 43-55 db at 40-100% fan use at 12″ inches away from the monitoring sensor (or your face). Mine has no noticeable Coil-Whine that plagued past gen cards. I looked at the fans and thought about the fact that they where backwards which made wonder if I’d have to readjust my Push-Pull configuration, but then I research ACX 2 and I’m an idiot, the fans are fine they actually rotate the opposite way to create negative pressure around the cooler, basically what this means is that it does the same as if they where traditional ACX, it just cools a different way. I don’t have and ACX card to compared to but forums seem to be saying the ACX 2 are slightly quieter, again take that with some salt but give it some thought. Temperatures: My card stays cooler than my old EVGA Stock GTX 780 at above 80% and it stays even more cooler at lower consumption. The card has yet to reach 70 C on my Push-Pull configuration with 2 fans directly shooting air at it from above. The actual noise levels of the card at max usage are actually below that of the 2 Corsair 120mm fans at 80% (62 db) hitting the card, so no complaints there. Temperatures when bench-marking usually hit 63-65C, while idle they would hover 29-33 C. My ambient room temperature is 22 C (72F). Performance: Using my preferred bench-marking tool, Unigine Valley this card achieves an average of 70 FPS and a score of 2930 on the Extreme HD preset at 1080P, this is roughly an increase of 18% from my Stock EVGA 780. Not a large gap up but definitely worth an upgrade if gaming is your thing. Over-clocking: I always run my cards OC with no side effects but be aware over clocking can vary depending on the card you receive and can even damage your card if done irresponsibly. My own card can be OC an additional 134 MHz to the core and 550 MHz to the memory without increasing the voltage or worrying about any serious OC side effects. This puts my card at a healthy 1665 MHz core clock. Now with that said and with the OC my card has improved my FPS on 1440P by an average of 10 FPS from my Stock GTX 780 on Skyrim 240+ MODS so I’m now at a stable 60 FPS which is nice. In BF4 it has improved my FPS by an average of 12 FPS and in Metro: Last Light it bumped me up by 18 FPS. What I did notice most about the card is that the higher the resolution you play on the better it performs relatively. What I mean is a 1080P game doesn’t see a big step up from a GTX 780 but a 1440P game and a 4k game really does! We’re speaking approximately 30FPS at 4K with just ultra and 4xMSAA. My results for my OC on Unigine valley benchmark at the same settings is 73.7 FPS and a score of 3223. Which is an appropriate increase for the slight OC on the card, over the factory default OC. Conclusion: Overall I would recommend the GTX 980 only for higher resolutions or if it’s a major upgrade from your old card. I’m happy as can be and am glad I got one before it was price jacked by re-sellers. I did fix this review up quite a bit since the original formatting was messy and even updated some values for you guys and I hope it helps those looking to make a decision on these cards. Good luck to you and feel free to ask me any questions I’ll try to answer as best as I can. CON: The only cons I would list are the fact that these cards currently have 3 Display-Ports. 1 HDMI 2.0 and 1 DVI-D port. If I had my ways I would have one or two of those Display-ports made into additional DVI-D’s or HDMI 2.0’s. Which would be much more useful for multi-display set ups, especially in the coming 4K days. The other con is the price since for about 0 less you can buy a GTX 970 which is 75% the beast this card is with almost identical features, however this is a non-problem if money isn’t an issue or if you intend to reward yourself with this card. No Back plate are included with these…
129 of 140 people found the following review helpful
My journey to the GTX980,
Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB SC GAMING ACX 2.0, 26% Cooler and 36% Quieter Cooling Graphics Card 04G-P4-2983-KR (Personal Computers)
I’m a conservative gamer. I even prefer to play with a controller. Hey, I grew up a console kid, no judgments from the PC Master Race. That being said, I was slow to join the darkside, but I have a lot of tech knowledge, so to not build my own gaming rig didn’t make sense.
So I finally decided instead of getting a PS4 (I actually did end up getting a PS4 for xmas, but I never use it), I would build a gaming rig. I started with an R9-280, but it couldn’t quite keep up with me, so I tried the R9-290. It was a good card, but it liked to run hot, and I felt like the performance was not as strong as it should be. I considered the R9-290x, but it wasn’t enough of a boost to justify the change. I also considered the R9-295x. The problem with the R9-295x is it’s basically a crossfired card. The problem with crossfire (I tried it with 2 r9-290s), is it gives terrible micro stuttering (and BSOD too!). I can’t abide micro stuttering or tearing at all. It’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. After looking far and wide for the strongest single GPU card, all the benchmarks led me here, to the GTX980. The only problem is the price is a little high. Okay, it’s a lot high, so I was expecting a lot of performance per buck. I did some initial benchmarking with the card against the R9290, and I was surprised at how well… the r9-290 kept up. I actually wanted the GTX980 to destroy the R9-290. After all, the R9-290 is at a price point of around 0 to 0 bucks. So the GTX980 being twice as much at 0, I expected twice as much power. Not so. That is not to say the GTX980 is not an amazing card. It is. And it is certainly better than the R9-290, but it is not incredibly, unbelievably better. It’s about… 20% better. But where this card really shines is in a few different places. First, power usage and heat output. This card is probably 33% cooler than an AMD card, and that’s a big plus. It means I don’t have to worry about it overheating and can just get my game on. Second, I have also found it handles memory better, especially with games with high textures, like modding some games to death with 4k textures. It doesn’t complain about it like a little girl. (i.e. crashing or black textures) Third, and most importantly, it runs much smoother than the R9290. This is a measurement that you don’t see on benchmarks, but this card just gives consistent performance. And what I’m referring to here is dropping frames. You can run through a crowded street, and maybe your FPS will drop, but it does so consistently. 60…55…50…45…50…55…60. With the R9290, it’s like 60…10…40…50…30…10…60. It jumps all over the map! It’s annoying. But the GTX980 is just smooth. All and all, this is a 5 Star card, and I would buy it again. But to be fair, check your expectations at the door, and if you want something with similar performance but for a whole lot less, wander over the AMD camp. They have cookies. Nvidia has the cake 😛 PS Thumbs up for EVGA quality too!
51 of 56 people found the following review helpful
Good Power Managment and Excellent Performance For The Price,
This review is from: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB SC GAMING, Silent Cooling Graphics Card 04G-P4-2982-KR (Personal Computers)
What differentiate this card from other Nvidia series is the improved cooling and power management but in terms of performance there is really no big change specially if you own 780 TI. I bought two cards immediately when they hit amazon on September as a replacement for my 690 card and I got a gain in performance around 70 – 80 % when installed ( I bought the cards from amazon not the resellers with a price of 570 $). Also what I noticed that the temperature never goes more than 74 C with the heavy loaded GPU even though these cards are overclocked, finally here are some benchmark results from some benchmark tools and games:
Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0: 100.4 FPS, Score: 4201 Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0: 117.6 FPS, Score: 293 Crysis 3: 71 fps Metro Last Light Redux: 118 (without SSAA), 88 FPS (with SSAA) Metro 2033 redux: 96 (without SSAA), 72 (With SSAA enabled) Ryse: Son of Rome: 50 – 55 FPS (I put ryse after the SLI support from Nvidia and Crytek even though the game still not that optimized but what do you expect from a ported game!!) Assassian Creed IV Black Flag: 51-63 (even though the frame rate is locked in this game) Bioshock Infinite: 165 FPS (With UlraDX11_DDof) Far Cry 3: 80 – 100 FPS Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor: 82 FPS Tomb Raider: 100 FPS (4X SSAA) Hitman Absolution: 81 FPS (8x MSAA) The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter: 100 – 130 FPS (SLI Enabled Through Nvidia Inspector == Bullletstrom Profile) Sniper Elite 3: 105 FPS Max Payne 3: 80 – 100 FPS. Sleeping Dogs: 136 FPS (with High Resolution Texture) Thief: 88 FPS All benchmarks done on 1920×1080 resolution with the maximum settings the games allowed. My PC spec: |
An appropriate upgrade over the previous generation,
Pre-face: I received my card from NewEgg.com, 2 weeks ago, I used a $20 coupon So I did get the card for $560 plus no taxes and the card has given me no problems whatsoever. I purchased this card to give my release day EVGA STOCK GTX 780 a rest in my wife’s PC, who’s more of a casual gamer. The GTX 970/980 cards use less energy than the 7th GEN ones and the lower power consumption should save me a couple of bucks over the next couple of years. A noticeable improvement this gen is that these cards come with HDMI 2.0 and 3 Display-Ports all capable of 4K resolution. Meaning for me that I can finally have all 3 of my 1440P monitors connected on one card. This was possible before but only through adapters or very select cards. I’m currently using 2 Dell U2713HM, 1440P Monitors at 75 Hz and 1 QNIX DVI-D monitor at 120 Hertz. The QNIX is my main monitor for twitch shooters and FPS games as well as my preferred Sim Racing monitor, while the other two monitors I obtained via work and are amazing for color reproduction and Surround screen gaming.
Noise/ACX 2: These cards are quiet running at 43-55 db at 40-100% fan use at 12″ inches away from the monitoring sensor (or your face). Mine has no noticeable Coil-Whine that plagued past gen cards. I looked at the fans and thought about the fact that they where backwards which made wonder if I’d have to readjust my Push-Pull configuration, but then I research ACX 2 and I’m an idiot, the fans are fine they actually rotate the opposite way to create negative pressure around the cooler, basically what this means is that it does the same as if they where traditional ACX, it just cools a different way. I don’t have and ACX card to compared to but forums seem to be saying the ACX 2 are slightly quieter, again take that with some salt but give it some thought.
Temperatures: My card stays cooler than my old EVGA Stock GTX 780 at above 80% and it stays even more cooler at lower consumption. The card has yet to reach 70 C on my Push-Pull configuration with 2 fans directly shooting air at it from above. The actual noise levels of the card at max usage are actually below that of the 2 Corsair 120mm fans at 80% (62 db) hitting the card, so no complaints there. Temperatures when bench-marking usually hit 63-65C, while idle they would hover 29-33 C. My ambient room temperature is 22 C (72F).
Performance: Using my preferred bench-marking tool, Unigine Valley this card achieves an average of 70 FPS and a score of 2930 on the Extreme HD preset at 1080P, this is roughly an increase of 18% from my Stock EVGA 780. Not a large gap up but definitely worth an upgrade if gaming is your thing.
Over-clocking: I always run my cards OC with no side effects but be aware over clocking can vary depending on the card you receive and can even damage your card if done irresponsibly. My own card can be OC an additional 134 MHz to the core and 550 MHz to the memory without increasing the voltage or worrying about any serious OC side effects. This puts my card at a healthy 1665 MHz core clock. Now with that said and with the OC my card has improved my FPS on 1440P by an average of 10 FPS from my Stock GTX 780 on Skyrim 240+ MODS so I’m now at a stable 60 FPS which is nice. In BF4 it has improved my FPS by an average of 12 FPS and in Metro: Last Light it bumped me up by 18 FPS. What I did notice most about the card is that the higher the resolution you play on the better it performs relatively. What I mean is a 1080P game doesn’t see a big step up from a GTX 780 but a 1440P game and a 4k game really does! We’re speaking approximately 30FPS at 4K with just ultra and 4xMSAA. My results for my OC on Unigine valley benchmark at the same settings is 73.7 FPS and a score of 3223. Which is an appropriate increase for the slight OC on the card, over the factory default OC.
Conclusion: Overall I would recommend the GTX 980 only for higher resolutions or if it’s a major upgrade from your old card. I’m happy as can be and am glad I got one before it was price jacked by re-sellers. I did fix this review up quite a bit since the original formatting was messy and even updated some values for you guys and I hope it helps those looking to make a decision on these cards. Good luck to you and feel free to ask me any questions I’ll try to answer as best as I can.
CON: The only cons I would list are the fact that these cards currently have 3 Display-Ports. 1 HDMI 2.0 and 1 DVI-D port. If I had my ways I would have one or two of those Display-ports made into additional DVI-D’s or HDMI 2.0’s. Which would be much more useful for multi-display set ups, especially in the coming 4K days. The other con is the price since for about $200 less you can buy a GTX 970 which is 75% the beast this card is with almost identical features, however this is a non-problem if money isn’t an issue or if you intend to reward yourself with this card. No Back plate are included with these…
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|My journey to the GTX980,
So I finally decided instead of getting a PS4 (I actually did end up getting a PS4 for xmas, but I never use it), I would build a gaming rig. I started with an R9-280, but it couldn’t quite keep up with me, so I tried the R9-290. It was a good card, but it liked to run hot, and I felt like the performance was not as strong as it should be. I considered the R9-290x, but it wasn’t enough of a boost to justify the change. I also considered the R9-295x.
The problem with the R9-295x is it’s basically a crossfired card. The problem with crossfire (I tried it with 2 r9-290s), is it gives terrible micro stuttering (and BSOD too!). I can’t abide micro stuttering or tearing at all. It’s like nails on a chalkboard to me.
After looking far and wide for the strongest single GPU card, all the benchmarks led me here, to the GTX980. The only problem is the price is a little high. Okay, it’s a lot high, so I was expecting a lot of performance per buck. I did some initial benchmarking with the card against the R9290, and I was surprised at how well… the r9-290 kept up. I actually wanted the GTX980 to destroy the R9-290. After all, the R9-290 is at a price point of around $250 to $300 bucks. So the GTX980 being twice as much at $550, I expected twice as much power. Not so.
That is not to say the GTX980 is not an amazing card. It is. And it is certainly better than the R9-290, but it is not incredibly, unbelievably better. It’s about… 20% better. But where this card really shines is in a few different places.
First, power usage and heat output. This card is probably 33% cooler than an AMD card, and that’s a big plus. It means I don’t have to worry about it overheating and can just get my game on.
Second, I have also found it handles memory better, especially with games with high textures, like modding some games to death with 4k textures. It doesn’t complain about it like a little girl. (i.e. crashing or black textures)
Third, and most importantly, it runs much smoother than the R9290. This is a measurement that you don’t see on benchmarks, but this card just gives consistent performance. And what I’m referring to here is dropping frames. You can run through a crowded street, and maybe your FPS will drop, but it does so consistently. 60…55…50…45…50…55…60. With the R9290, it’s like 60…10…40…50…30…10…60. It jumps all over the map! It’s annoying. But the GTX980 is just smooth.
All and all, this is a 5 Star card, and I would buy it again. But to be fair, check your expectations at the door, and if you want something with similar performance but for a whole lot less, wander over the AMD camp. They have cookies. Nvidia has the cake 😛
PS Thumbs up for EVGA quality too!
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