Introduction
Nvidia’s Maxwell GTX 980 arrived into the high-end graphics card market with a thump just a few weeks ago, causing significant whiplash to AMD’s highest end offerings. The GTX 980 holds a notable advantage in terms of performance, price and power efficiency over AMD’s flagship R9 290X. During the GTX 980 launch it has been easy to forget that Nvidia actually launched the GTX 970 too which comes in $230 cheaper with only a marginal decline in raw GPU horsepower over the flagship GTX 980. On paper, at least, the GTX 970 looks to be a performance to price champion in the high-end graphics card market as it offers the best synthesis of price, performance and power consumption.
Today we get our first glimpse at what the Nvidia GTX 970 has to offer as we examine a custom GTX 970 from Gainward under their Phantom line. As the name suggest Gainward equip their infamous Phantom cooling solution as well as a hefty out of the box overclock, from what we can infer this treatment commands a 10~% price premium over Nvidia’s reference MSRP of $329.
Packaging and Accessories
The accessory package that Gainward provide with the Phantom GTX 970 is basic: a power adapter and DVI to VGA adapter with a quick install guide.
finaly nice link to phantom 970 review, i love the noise levels, cooling levels, and a little bit lower price than asus strix version, also 6+6 pin tempting, got tired of 6pin+8pin stuff, currently asus strix with 8pins are out of stock, and i’m tired to wait for the card, so i am going to get phantom version, hoping for no coil whine too..
I have questions about the power consumption since you give very few details about your measuring procedure. Are the readings taken at the wall socket? Are the results given an average? What about power spikes? the 970s and 980s seem to have microspikes. Are the results for the whole system? They seem to be very low, I mean only 550 W for an SLI 980? I am curios about the cards actual power consumption because nvidia’s 145 W TDP is just marketing, it’s always gonna be more than that. Please elaborate more on the power consumption as the details given are vague at best.
I just received my card from the couriers and oh my…I cannot explain
the levels of elation I am experiencing (wont be though to imagine as my
previous card was an Asus Geforce Gtx 550 T.I. Oc edition) I am running
the card beautifully on a Vantec Ion2 520 Watt power supply..the two 6
pin power connectors is an more than welcome addition.Running every
title available at the moment at Ultra settings with a gliding smooth
frame rate, great respect to Gainward…this card truly does deserve
10/10 as awarded by a German site Tek.no (And as I have it the Germans
kinda knows their shit when it comes to engineering) As the Geforce 900
series is sparkling new it is certain that the insanely innovative
technology the card utilities (T.X.A.A) etc will only be fully
implemented in games from 2015….plus with this version I don’t know
what the world is on about apparent coil noise on the 970 series as I
experience none 🙂
playing the whole reach VIP level my 780 oc gets average 72 fps …… maybe the new drivers are holding these new cards back?
oh man.. I just ordered 1 and can’t wait to try it on BF4 and COD Advanced Warefare!!! 🙂
How do you rate your overall experience with the gtx970 Phantom? Temps, coilwhine, performance @1080p