Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 980 4GB Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing (accurate at the time of writing)

Gigabyte’s GTX 980 G1 Gaming likely holds a premium over the reference model. We anticipate pricing to be $600 but it could be more, or less, depending on how aggressively Gigabyte want to price. Gigabyte offer a 3 year warranty with this product.

Summary 

We already know that Nvidia’s GTX 980 graphics card is a really strong product so Gigabyte’s G1 Gaming GTX 980 is still an awesome performer. Gigabyte have done a lot with the card in terms of reconfiguring the power limits and power delivery mechanisms to unlock more performance from the GPU. They’ve also equipped what can only be described as a “beastly” cooling solution given how compact the graphics card is. That cooling solution allows for a lot of overclocking headroom, but more importantly for the GPU Boost technology to clock the card as high as possible without reaching any thermal thresholds. It sure isn’t the quietest solution available but the scope for reducing noise output is still there given the fan profile has an aggressive setting straight out of the box. However, even then the typical gaming acoustics are no louder than a stock GTX 780 Ti which once inside a case was a very quiet card.

Gigabyte have learned some lessons on design from past video card releases. I think it is fair to say that the G1 Gaming GTX 980 looks much nicer than past WindForce based cards, the fact it has a backplate with the writing facing the right way up helps too. I very much doubt we will see other vendors launching such an aggressively cooled video card with such high clock speeds today. For that reason Gigabyte’s G1 Gaming GTX 980 stands out because of its exceptional performance, great overclockability and impressive cooling. Given that the stock speed of the GTX 980 is over 1GHz, it seems to me that Gigabyte have brought their “GHz” edition philosophy to this graphics card under a new name. Either way, it is pretty darn awesome.

Pros

• Excellent cooling
• High out of the box performance
• Solid overclocking headroom on core and memory
• Backplate and clean aesthetics

Cons

• Not the quietest solution under extreme loads
• Power consumption can skyrocket under extreme loads due to higher power limit

“Gigabyte’s G1 Gaming GTX 980 offers brilliant performance and cooling combined with great looks and overclocking potential. If you’re looking for a timely upgrade to your current graphics card then this product will blow your socks off.”

Thank you to Gigabyte for providing this review sample.