Palit Super JetStream GTX 980Ti 6GB Graphics Card Review

Introduction The graphics card world experienced a shake-up when NVIDIA announced the Titan X, a 12GB VRAM monster, then did it again just a few weeks after with the launch of the GTX 980Ti. With this, it brought extreme performance to a much more affordable level and at just $600, it was around half the price of the Titan X and a in some tests just 5% slower than the Titan X. Today on the test bench we have the Palit Super JetStream GTX; the Super JetStream branding is reserved solely for the top end air-cooled Palit graphics cards. Poised at just £539, this is only £10 more expensive than the reference design and boasts figures that only some of the higher priced models can achieve. The card features twin 10cm turbo fan blades with are designed to disperse heat as much as possible and also are translucent to project the built-in LED lighting even further. We know that the GTX 980Ti is the current top mainstream graphics card and when it's given to a sub-vendor it only gets better; so let's find out how it performs in today's review! The outer skin is plain, displaying only key information with the trademark black and gold theme. The back of the box is filled with information in many different languages. The key information revolves around the display features, gaming features and new ways to game, such as VR. This box has a front door with all of the information you could want to know about the graphics card itself. Not only does it give you a graphic rendering of the card, there is a window into the box so you can see the GPU design directly. Inside the box, you have a HDMI to DVI adapter, manual, driver disk, JetStream sticker and PCIe power adapter. A Closer Look The Super JetStream is a great looking card, very understated and drives home the classic silver and black theme; which seems to be making a comeback. The face of the card is dominated by the huge waved 10cm fans. The backplate is very brushed metal with cut outs to cool some of the rear mounted components; simple yet effective. The power is delivered through 1x 6-pin and 1x 8-pin PCIe power connectors towards the rear of the card. This card features twin SLI fingers, so is compatible in a 4 card SLI configuration. One issue I can see with the cooling shroud is that it starts to raise by the second finger; this would make it impossible to use a rigid 3 or 4 way SLI bridge. As you can see here, the radiator and cooling shroud overhang the card by around an inch, this would need to be taken into consideration if you are looking to buy two or more and plan to use a rigid bridge. The face of the card is dominated by the twin 10cm fan design. At the business end of the card, there is a DVi connector, three DisplayPorts and one HDMi. Testing & Methodology Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to overview our test system. All tests will be conducted with the latest drivers available; results will be taken from an average of three tests. Hardware Motherboard - Gigabyte X99-Gaming G1 WiFi LGA 2011-3 Motherboard Processor - Intel Core i7 5820K at Stock 3.3GHz RAM - 16GB (4 X 4GB) Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz CPU Cooler - Thermaltake Water 3.0 with Gelid GC-Extreme Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 1200W Main Storage Drive - Crucial M550 512GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Displays - AOC U2868PQU 4K Operating System - Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit "Killawatt” style electricity usage meter wall plug Precision Gold N05CC Decibel meter Drivers Software Batman Arkham Origins Battlefield 4 Bioshock Infinite Grand Theft Auto V Hitman Absolution Metro Last Light Tomb Raider 3DMark Unigine Valley Unigine Heaven CPU-ID HWMonitor TechPowerUp GPU-Z Luxmark Sythentic Benchmarks During our testing, we use a range of readily available synthetic benchmarking tools which are free to download from the respective websites. We do this so the readers can download and compared to our results. Download links are contained within the “Software” subheading. Noise Everyone has their own reasonable noise level when it comes to comes to components in a computer. Some can handle all fans at 100% load to keep temperatures down, some want a completely silent computer. Power Consumption With electricity becoming increasingly expensive across most parts of the world the need for computer components to become power efficient has never been more relevant. Graphics cards are often the most power-hungry components inside a desktop system so having an efficient graphics card is very important to keeping power bills under control. Power is often correlated to heat and so lower power consumption means a graphics card is likely to run slightly cooler and put out less heat into your system meaning your other components will run cooler with improved longevity. AMD and Nvidia have both made power consumption an integral part of the way graphics cards dynamically overclock so the need for graphics card vendors to use efficient VRM and PCB designs is becoming important to maximise performance. We take power readings after 5 minutes of two different load scenarios: desktop idle and Unigine Heaven load. Temperatures The cooling solution which graphics card vendors choose to implement is one of the main differences that consumers have to contend with when choosing a graphics cards. Apart from their acoustic properties, the thermal properties of graphics card coolers are extremely important. Lower temperatures are always better and with AMD and Nvidia opting to use dynamic overclocking algorithms that take temperature into account it is important that graphics card vendors use high performance cooling solutions in order to maximise performance. The era of graphics cards reaching dangerous temperatures are now in the past but the importance of lower temperatures still remains. Lower temperatures mean better stability, longer component longevity and lower fan speeds .We take temperature readings after 5 minutes of two different load scenarios: desktop idle and Unigine Heaven load. We always record actual temperatures and make a note of the ambient; in the case where more than 1 GPU is used an average is created. Syncthetic Benchmarks 3D Mark Straight into the first test and the Palit 980Ti proves more powerful than the Titan X by a good margin. Unigine Valley Unigine Valley isn't a playable game, but it gives a much better impression of the performance difference between each card tested. Compute Performance The additional tweaks that Palit has done to the GPU not only improved the graphical performance, but it improved the compute performance massively. Batman: Arkham Knight This card can shrug off Batman with a good 52FPS at 4K, very impressive! Battlefield 4 Top of the charts again, 88FPS at 1440p is a great achievement. Bioshock Infinite The first graphics card to hit 60FPS at 4K in Bioshock, again, this is very impressive for a single GPU. Grand Theft Auto V GTA V is a harsh game with the settings we use, although 70FPS at 1440p shows great performance. Hitman Absolution Hitman proves the latest update was to negative effect with the 980Ti. Metro Last Light Metro is still a very demanding game, but to hit 49FPS at 4K resolution is good going. Tomb Raider Tomb Raider is a very easy game to play with the Palit GTX 980Ti managing a huge 67FPs at 4K. Overclocking From previous testing, we know we can achieve huge overclocks on the GTX 980Ti. The non-reference models already come overclocked slightly from factory, so the potential is limited slightly. We can see here that Palit Super JetStream 980Ti can achieve a huge overclock of 1374MHz boost. The memory was left standard as it adds very little benefit. 3DMark Fire Strike The overclock, while not massive, yielded a decent 7% performance increase. Noise, Power Consumption and Temperatures Noise The JetStream cooling solution proves really quite, with 0db function at low load conditions and even when overclocked; it only hit 44db. Power Consumption Palit has given this card a great tune up, but that required a moderate voltage increase to sustain the overclock. Not a huge jump between overclocked and stock, however. Temperatures Temperatures are slightly high, but that is because of the new addition of 0db running. Idle temperatures don't really drop below 50°c, but at load it is held steady at 71°c. Final Thoughts Price The Palit Super JetStream GTX 980Ti 6GB graphics card is currently available from OverclockersUK for the completely absurd price of £539.99. In the US, it isn't currently available from one of our recommended retailers, but prices are estimated to be $625. Overview There isn't really much to say regarding the GTX 980Ti now, we know it is one of the most powerful graphics cards on the planet and with that it has cemented itself at the top of almost every enthusiast wish list. Palit has really made a great addition to the product line-up and it is definitely worth to Super JetStream branding. The Super JetStream 980Ti follows a similar styling design to that of the rest of the GTX 900 series JetStream cards. It doesn't feature the triple fan design iconic of Super JetStream models of old, but with the progression of newer nano processes being able to run cooler for longer; this means cooling solutions no longer need to be so big. This is extremely prevalent with NVIDIA GPU's thanks to the low TDP and great reaction to even the most basic air cooling. The actual design itself is pretty basic, but Palit has managed to add a nice touch to the fans with the incorporated LEDs around the base of the fan that reflects well at night. It performed amazingly, especially considering the price point of just £20 more expensive than the reference model. It just goes to show how much potential is contained within the Maxwell GM200 core, even though it is a cut-down version of the Titan X. Overall, the graphics card is great and the only issue I can find is with the width of the cooling solution and the position of the angled piece that starts the extended width. This would not only prove difficult to fit inside slimmer cases, but also prevent the use of rigid SLI bridges if two of these cards were used together. he Pros Extremely quiet Subtle styling and colour theme Much better than reference performance Great for higher resolution gaming Not much more expensive than reference Cons The cooling shroud could be a tight fit in some smaller cases "Palit has really nailed it with the Super JetStream 980Ti, offering great performance with an amazingly low price, making this one of the best graphics cards we've ever seen!" Thank you to Palit for providing this review sample.