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Best 980ti for SLI?

metalmackey

metalmackey

metalmackey

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Ello guys,

Now I know what Fury is like I think I'll stick with Nvidia for my next upgrade. What are the best 980ti's to go for for Sli? They need to be 2 slot cards. Currently liking the look of the gigabyte g1 but I know there are other alternitives eg: HOF and strix coming soon. Case 'n specs in sig.

Ta
 
reference blowers would be better though.

With 2 780s though id wait to see what pascal brings in 4/5 months
 
Ch3m1c4L said:
reference cards. Then get yourself some EK blocks :D
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Quick question regarding this, I was under the impression that custom boards have better power supplying capacities & higher binned chips.

May this mean that reference being 'bottom of the pile' may run cool, but be unable to clock that highly?. (Correct me if I'm wrong here, I've not explored custom water cooling yet).
 
They are clocked higher but i doubt any of the manufacturers speed bin the chips beyond the factory overclocks they come with and all cards are capable of that. Years ago, the lightnings were speed binned but after seeing results from the last few gens, i wouldnt worry about it as they are as good as eachother.

The biggest difference between manufacturer is not the better power management or VRMs (only really affects below ambient cooling) is the chance of getting better memory manufacturer. Hynix tends to bench higher clock for clock over Elpida and Samsung higher still generally. People often are mistaken and say that elpida doesnt clock as high which imo is wrong if you compare to hynix (just that hynix seems to score high, timings maybe?), Sammys definitely seem to be easier to clock higher. I have two watercooled reference 290x's and both have Elpida and both can max memory sliders on MSI AB. One will do 1281 on the core with +220mv and the other 1300 with +240mv. I have pumped as much as +300 in there without complaints from VRMs, they stayed super cool when under a custom block, even when i added three times more voltage than MSI AB allowed.
 
Sometimes AIB's improove on manufactures cards with better caps, more phases etc but normally your paying for the cooler which we as watercoolers couldnt care less about.

Just ordered 2 refrence 980tis myself but got the tech labs pre watercooled ones as i had a nightmare with an leaky ek block last time i changed the cooler myself and assume that ocuk will fit and test for leaks before they send me the cards.
 
For what it's worth I'm rocking two superclocked ACXs in my H440.

With a 1-1 profile, the cards never go above 76 and 71 degrees respectively at stock.

I've had a Titan X so I know what the reference cooler sounds like, and two ACXs will be no louder than two reference cards while giving you better temperatures. A 70% fan speed on the ACX is comparable to 60% on the reference cooler. I know my thoughts go against conventional wisdom, but this is my first hand experience of using aftermarket coolers in SLI. You have to remember that most of the aftermarket coolers are substantially better than the reference coolers in terms of noise and heat.

The disadvantage of aftermarket coolers in SLI though is that they'll have an effect on your CPU temperatures, especially in a mediocre air flow case such as my H440. It's increased temperatures by up to five degrees. The ambient temperature inside your case also increases, so things won't go as low during idle as they would with reference coolers. So mostly I would say reference coolers are better than aftermarket ones for SLI, but only just.

EDIT: I should add that I'm using a Maximus Hero VII Z97 board and when both cards are in, they actually have the same breathing room between them and the top of the PSU cover. I think that's why my temperatures are actually in line with one another.
 
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NoobCannon said:
i had a nightmare with an leaky ek block last time i changed the cooler myself and assume that ocuk will fit and test for leaks before they send me the cards.
Click to expand...

I believe they do leak test, but then again so do EK. I have gotten into the habit of running a small loop with just a pump reservoir and whatever i am testing before including it to my loop. My non Crossfire rig has 5 blocks connected with acrylic, i dont want to risk the huge ordeal of taking it apart in case it leaks.
 
Avenged7Fold said:
I believe they do leak test, but then again so do EK. I have gotten into the habit of running a small loop with just a pump reservoir and whatever i am testing before including it to my loop. My non Crossfire rig has 5 blocks connected with acrylic, i dont want to risk the huge ordeal of taking it apart in case it leaks.
Click to expand...

I did test mine outside of the case but unfortunatly i was dumb enough to do it on my dining table and when the seal went after 2 mins of running my d5 on "5" it covered the nice cream carpet in my rented flat with mayhems pastal red coolant.

Needless to say not impressed and having already removed the cooler from card i had to wait to run xfire which only annoyied me more!

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18524440&highlight=startername_NoobCannon
 
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elmarko said:
Quick question regarding this, I was under the impression that custom boards have better power supplying capacities & higher binned chips.

May this mean that reference being 'bottom of the pile' may run cool, but be unable to clock that highly?. (Correct me if I'm wrong here, I've not explored custom water cooling yet).
Click to expand...

Sure, the classified, amp extreme etc have different PCB's, and are thus "better" at achieving slightly higher overclocks, normally. Getting blocks for them can be tricky though, generally have to wait even longer, and then you're not talking about hugely better overclocks anyway. Unless you are going into extreme cooling.
I picked up some of the EVGA acx2 ones, as for some reason their reference card isnt on the deal. Figure it will help resale value if i ever bother to, but its a reference PCB. Just wanted the warranty hence not going for cheapest of the cheap.
 
metalmackey said:
I have cerebral palsy so fiddly stuff like custom water loops are out.
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Wait for the evga hybrid ones dude. They have the pre built all in one water (AIO) cooling. No messing around with anything then.

Inno3d are also bringing out a hybrid AIO water cooled card

After running 2 reference blower 780tis for a year or so, not sure I would again. They reach their max temps and throttle fairly quick, unless you do a one to one fan profile, which I find too noisy. I want a quiet system next, and hybrid cards will be in mine I think.
 
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metalmackey said:
I have 2x non reference 780ti`s in my system now and don't have any problem like that.
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I don't have that problem either, I had two reference stock clocked 980's and even with good case airflow the top card would hit 83c, 84c quite quickly and throttle it's boost speed and the fan speed would hit around 70%+ to keep cool, bottom one was fine, stayed around 74c, fan speed around 50%.

This was with a single space gap between the cards as well, open case or closed with 2x 140mm case fans blowing at them. Even changing the paste to IC Diamond or Liquid Pro made no difference.

I quickly returned them and replaced then with my current 980 G1's. What a much better card. Not only are they overclocked out of the box they run much cooler. Even after hours of gaming in a 23c room, the bottom GPU rarely ever breaks 68c with a 48% fan speed, and the top one never breaks past 82c but normally stays around 78c most of the time with a fan speed of 60%. It's rare to see it hit 80c.

All while maintaining the cards top boost clock of 1367Mhz out of the box.

I will never buy reference cards again, even for SLI. CPU does run 5c hotter when gaming due to the cards dumping all the heat inside, but that's a small trade off considering it's still rare for my CPU to break 65c when gaming anyway.
 
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