• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Does anyone own the GALAX GTX 970 OC or non OC version

I own two GTX galax's ex oc , they perform and overclock like little beasts . im hitting 1500mhz / 8000mhz without voltage increase . the fans even at 80% when pushed are very quiet , just a woooosh even in SLi ... the only problem I have is that in SLI in confined space they get very warm , on their own I have yet to see either hit 70C under extreme load. but under SLI Im having trouble keeping them from throttling .

backplate and overall build quality is great... the fins on the heatsink are a little thin and flexible but providing you don't prod n pock at them there fairly rigid .

would defo recommend them as single cards but just bear in mind they carry a year less on the warrenty if that's something you look for
 
lovelyhead said:
Just wondered if anybody has bought any of the Galax 970 cards.
Click to expand...

Yup.

IMAG0935_zpsw9g6z5uv.jpg


Any opinions on them?
Click to expand...

Yup - great cards, cool running, quiet, oc to a shade below 1500 core and 8000mem, although I'm having difficulties keep the ram cool which causes artifacts at the end of a bench run with that level of oc. Artefacts dissapear at +325 mem or below.

Water blocks going on soon!
 
One significant but not often talked of reason these cards are O/C beasts is that Nvidia review each non-reference card (which is every GTX 970) and set a 'max TDP' ceiling each is allowed to hit via the card BIOS. This ceiling seems to vary between 110% and 130% of 'standard TDP'. The EXOC was given 125% so it's in the upper tiers. That overhead allows higher automatic overclocks (GPU boost) and/or for us to up voltages (and hence clocks) without the GPU being TDP throttled. That's one of the reasons we're seeing ~1.5GHz on the EXOC whereas the cards with a 110% ceiling are ~1.3GHz.

Other than that I'll just second what others have said here. The EXOCs seem extremely well put together (for example placing a lot of voltage regulation on the back of the card to free up space and even heat load) have no capacitor or coil whine, offer complete silence when idling (one fan turn off, the other sits just under 1000 RPM) and near silence under gaming load in single card configs. They're also damn pretty. Easily worth the meagre $ over basic models as they're one of best designs out there right now.

So yeah... A+++ would buy again (but I have an ITX rig so no SLI).
 
Last edited:
If anyone is having problems keeping the memory stable at 8000 + on the Galax OC you will find that the 4memory chips on the back side of the card are getting to hot. Two options remove the back plate and get some air over them or use memory heat sinks or better still use some thermal pads between the chips and the back plate.
 
What are peoples cards volts "boosting" too when under 3d load?

I have two Galax EXOC's and one boosts to 1.175v and the other to 1.212v and the second always shows Vrel, Vop in GPU-Z as the perf cap reason.

I thought 970's "boosted" to 1.25v?
 
Jamielicious said:
The Galax EXOC does seem to be excellent. However I wonder if it comes with a 6-pin to 8-pin adapter as I notice this case runs on an 8-pin plus 6-pin and my PSU only has 2 x 6-pin cables.
Click to expand...

Just checked in one of my boxes - a double molex to single 8 pin converter is included.
 
amigafan2003 said:
What are peoples cards volts "boosting" too when under 3d load?

I have two Galax EXOC's and one boosts to 1.175v and the other to 1.212v and the second always shows Vrel, Vop in GPU-Z as the perf cap reason.

I thought 970's "boosted" to 1.25v?
Click to expand...

Mine sits at 1.212 under load as above and does this whether I overvolt it or not. I'm not sure what the 970 can reach, but typically cards end up with have a spread of different max voltages, even within a specific model. Being 0.013v below the highest reported voltage isn't unusual and would generally indicate a higher quality chip.

I sympathise with 'per cap' being opaque; would be good to know exactly what is limiting things; whether it be max voltage, or if piling on more voltage would hit the power limit etc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom