Not long ago we did a first review of the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+ which we of course loved because who cannot love a card with that much power? Today we are following up with another EVGA card, the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked. It is almost the same card as the previous one as it has the same clock speeds. The big difference is that this card uses the reference design while the Superclocked + ACX 2.0 uses a dual-fan-configuration. In this review we will focus on the performance difference against a high-end GTX 980-card [the pre-overclocked Zotac AMP! Omega-edition card] and specifically how it handles 2560×1440 and 4K-resolutions.
Since my collegue Mark already wrote a nice intro for the GTX 980 Ti I am going to re-use it here as it of course is just as true for this card.
Filling a slot between the Nivida Titan X and the GTX 980 the EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC features 8 Billion Transistors a core clock of 1102 MHz, 2816 shaders, 176 Texture units and 96 ROPs 6GB of GDDR5 memory riding a 384-bit bus. In short it’s Nerd Candy of the sweetest kind. It is pushing 768 more shaders than the GTX 980, 32 more ROPs, 128-bit wider bus width and an having an additional 2 GB GDDR5.On the flip side of that equation the Nvidia Titan X gets 256 more shaders than the EVGA GTX 980 Ti, 16 more texture units, the same amount of ROPs, the same 384-Bit Bus but gets double the GDDR5 at 12 GB.
What does all that add up to? The EVGA GTX 980Ti is a lot closer to the power of the Titan X than the GTX 980 is. Now don’t get us wrong, the GTX 980 is one powerful card and we wouldn’t kick 3 of them out of our test bed by any means but a single EVGA GTX 980Ti is enough to game at 4k resolution with the Titan X and everything else we’ve seen struggles with 4k gaming. Given the choice of GTX 980 SLI or the EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC ACX 2.0+ we’d pick the EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC ACX 2.0+ hands down. The Scaling in SLI might pick up with Windows 10 and DirectX 12 but scaling still won’t be 100% so we prefer single powerful GPU’s but don’t have anything against running a secondary GPU for Physx..
With DirectX 12 coming out in full force later this year [Late July with Windows 10] DirectX 12 promises to be a game changer for PC enthusiasts. Right now the only way to take advantage of that game changing is an Nvidia 900 series GPU. AMD will shortly release its new R9 300 lineup rumored to have HBM GDDR5 and it’s an exciting time in the GPU arena, so exciting it sends this Geek into trembling frenzies thinking about the possibilities.
Compared to a GeForce Titan X Nvidia choose to slice away two streaming multiprocessors with 256 CUDA cores leaving you with 2816 CUDA cores. We also loose 16 Texture units meaning that we “only” get 176 Texture units compared to the 200 you get in a Titan X.
Products
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC
GeForce GTX Titan X
GeForce GTX 980
Radeon R9 290X
Pricing $669.99 $1150 $544.99 $358.89 Process 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm Transistors 8 Billion 8 Billion 5.2 Billion 6.2 Billion GPU Clock 1102MHz 1000MHz 1126MHz Up to 1GHz Shaders 2816 3072 2048 2816 Texture Units 176 192 128 176 Texture Fillrate 176 GT/s 192 GT/s 172.8 GT/s 176 GT/s ROPs 96 96 64 64 Pixel Fillrate 96 GP/s 96 GP/s 72 GP/s 64 GP/s Memory Bus 384-bit 384-bit 256-bit 512-bit Memory 6GB GDDR5 12GB GDDR5 4GB GDDR5 4GB GDDR5 Memory Transfer Rate 7 GT/s 7 GT/s 7 GT/s 5 GT/s Memory Bandwidth 336.5 GB/s 336.5 GB/s 224.4 GB/s 320 GB/s Board Power 250W 250W 165W 250W
If you already read the previous review of the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+ you will notice that this chart is exactly the same. In fact I copied it directly from that review. As mentioned before the difference between the EVGA GeForce GTSX 980 Ti Superclocked and the EVGA GeForce GTSX 980 Ti Superclocked ACX 2.0+ is the design and the dual fans. Everything else looks the same including the specifications and the price.
After taking a look at NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 980 Ti in May, we summed it up as being the “new King Of High-end”. That being the case, it’s not hard to imagine that an overclocked take on the card, featuring a better cooler, would be anything but a winner. To test that theory out, we’re taking a look at EVGA’s Superclocked+ edition.
To test graphics cards for both their power consumption and temperature at load, we utilize a couple of different tools. On the hardware side, we use a trusty Kill-a-Watt power monitor which our GPU test machine plugs into directly. For software, we use Futuremark’s 3DMark to stress the card, and GPU-Z to record the temperatures.
To test, the area around the chassis is checked with a temperature gun, with the average temp recorded. Once that’s established, the PC is turned on and left to sit idle for five minutes. At this point, we open GPU-Z along with 3DMark. We then kick-off a full suite run, and pay attention to the Kill-a-Watt when the test reaches its most intensive interval [Fire Strike GT 1] to get the peak wattage.
Despite its clock boost, EVGA’s ACX 2.0 cooler managed to shave 7°C off of the peak temperature of the reference model – and in a room that happened to be 2°C warmer. Admittedly, that’s not too surprising, but what is, is that even with the ~10% performance boost, EVGA’s card drew only 6W more than the reference card, and 5W more than TITAN X.
Overclocking
When I got down and dirty with overclocking the reference 980 Ti, I had no idea just how much time I’d end up spending eking out as good of a clock as possible. As I’ve covered in dedicated overclocking articles, I don’t settle on an overclock unless I deem it be 100% stable. Sometimes, that means I end up having to go back to the drawing board, spending more time figuring it out. Well, when all said and done, I spent even more time overclocking EVGA’s card.
Even when finished, I felt like I could have pushed things a bit further, but alas, I had to stop somewhere. That somewhere is +150MHz core and +350MHz memory.
Before settling on these clocks, I had thought that +160/+400 was rock stable. Fire Strike was passing without issue, and so did Crysis 3 at max detail for 15 minutes. After a reboot, though, Fire Strike decided to halt during its run, forcing me to tweak further. That’s the “fun” with overclocks – what seems stable at first glance might not be stable at all, and you sure don’t want to find out about an instability in the middle of a game.
Given just how stable those higher clocks did feel, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if others managed to hit it just fine. But, it’s not like I can complain about another 150MHz on the clock, and fighting tooth and nail to stabilize that extra 10MHz is hardly worth it.
With these stable clocks in hand, what kind of performance gain do we see? Well, quite a good one, actually. In fact, the overclock on this card even managed to beat out the stable overclock I hit with TITAN X in the Fire Strike 1080p test. TITAN X’s 1440p and 4K scores still manage to come ahead of the EVGA overclock – those extra cores must be put to great use.
EVGA’s 980 Ti Superclocked+ provides a nice performance boost over reference on its own, but applying our achieved overclock makes another notable improvement. GTA V rose from 64 to 70 FPS, while Dying Light went from 66 to 73 FPS. Note that not all of the games here were tested with the same settings from our regular testing or Best Playable – in some cases [such as with Black Flag], I cranked the detail levels to put some extra stress on the card.
Overall, I’d say that this overclock is worth it. Even if you wanted to be really modest and just stick to +100 and +250MHz, it’d be worthwhile.
Final Thoughts
As I mentioned in the intro, I called NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 980 Ti the “new King” of high-end GPUs last month, so it’s pretty hard to go wrong with a solution that builds off of that, cranks the clocks even further, and decks it out with an improved cooler. EVGA’s Superclocked+ GTX 980 Ti is a great card.
The GTX 980 Ti in general is such a powerful card, it’s best-suited for those who want to top out their game detail levels at 1440p, or delve into 4K gaming. For an “ideal” 4K experience, which means not having to sacrifice detail levels, multiple cards will be needed. But, one 980 Ti is luxury enough, so if you’re willing to sacrifice some detail levels [and still have great-looking gameplay, it should be said], one card will prove more than suitable.
The biggest question that arises when dealing with a card more expensive than SRP is: “Is it worth it?” What EVGA’s Superclocked+ brings to the table are boosted clocks that deliver a worthwhile boost to performance, a backplate, a cooler that allows the card to run cooler than the reference model, improves overclocking, runs quiet even when under stress, and has a great design to boot [good cooler design, nice touch with the rubber inserts to protect the ports].
If you don’t want to fiddle with overclocking, I definitely think the $30 premium on this card is worth it, because it’s in effect a 5% price premium for a 10% gain in performance. If you’d rather overclock yourself, EVGA also sells an ACX 2.0 model that’s priced at SRP, but lacks the backplate, and happens to be constantly out-of-stock. But, if you can find it in stock, it’s another great 980 Ti choice.
Pros
- It carries enthusiast pricing, but it delivers enthusiast performance.
- 35~40% faster than the GTX 980; more powerful than reference TITAN X.
- 6GB framebuffer offers far improved future-proofing than GTX 980.
- A massive upgrade for those wanting to upgrade from GTX 680.
- Power-efficient [~400W at load with an overclocked i7-5960X].
- Very overclockable, allowing us to almost catch our TITAN X overclock.
- Handily beats out AMD’s Radeon Fury X.
Cons
- Finding the non-SC+ version in stock is tough.
Support our efforts! With ad revenue at an all-time low for written websites, we're relying more than ever on reader support to help us continue putting so much effort into this type of content. You can support us by becoming a Patron, or by using our Amazon shopping affiliate links listed through our articles. Thanks for your support!