MSI Gaming GeForce GTX 980Ti ‘OC’ 6GB Graphics Card Review

Rikki Wright / 9 years ago

Final Thoughts

Price

The MSI Gaming GTX 980Ti OC is currently available from OverclockersUK for £575.99, in the US, you can get this from Newegg.com for $679.99; this isn’t to be confused with the slightly cheaper LE edition.

Overview

The GTX 980Ti is an absolutely storming card, yet MSI has made it more powerful by adding the Military Class components and optimised manufacturing process. Thanks to the GTX 980Ti being based on the Maxwell architecture, it is ready for DX12 and Windows 10, features DSR, G-Sync and Gameworks technology; which really brings some amazing features to games and the upcoming Virtual Reality.

The card looks great with the red and black contrast on the Twin Frozr V cooler, the main red ring and small red dashes add enough colour to stand out, but not too much to be in your face. The overall design of the card is also very good, the fact that the overall depth (PCB – top of fans) of the card is less than two slots makes this a great option for SLI thanks to the additional gap for air movement. One thing I really like about the looks of this card is the incorporation of the backplate, not only does it look good, but it adds thermal cooling for the rear components.

Well it put be in my seat, we already knew the GTX 980Ti was powerful, but this just puts it into a whole new league. It now completely dominates the Titan X, even with the limit of 6GB VRAM; that’s not enough hinder it in the slightest. Once overclocked, it turns from domination to complete humiliation. Okay, you can overclock the Titan X too, but from a card that costs around 20% less, this makes the perfect option for gamers.

MSI bundle in the Gaming App with this model of the GTX 980Ti. The Gaming App opens up the card and allows you to over/underclock the card to 3 presets, although I don’t see why you would spend £575 on a graphics card and cut back the performance by using the Silent mode. I can see features like this becoming more common place with graphics cards, especially if you can seriously cut down the power consumption for the Silent mode.

There is just one bad thing I can find with this card; because MSI have used a custom PCB to shorten the overall length to fit under the Twin Frozr V cooling shroud, the PSB has had to undergo a widening process to fit all of the components on. This has made the PCB around 1 inch wider than usual. If you were using just a single card or purchased two of the same card; this wouldn’t be an issue. However, if you already purchased a standard width GTX 980Ti (or two if you had the money), using a rigid SLI bridge would be impossible.

Pros

Extremely quiet
Great cooling
DX12 compliant
Great price
Well executed Gaming App

Cons

Wider PCB can prove troublesome for some chassis and SLI compatibility

“A great graphics card made even better thanks to an awesome MSI makeover. This is a card that is definitely worth the premium over the reference GTX 980Ti..“