Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming Waterforce Review

Performance Analysis

Given the specifications, this card was never going to disappoint in performance and the results speak for themselves. It tops the charts in all but one case, which is GTA V at 1440p where CPU limitations and benchmark variations affect the minimum frame rate. Even there, it is only 1fps behind the top result and its average frame rate is the highest. The combination of a heavily overclocked GTX 980 Ti and liquid cooling is an extremely potent one, as the cooler means the card can boost to consistently high speeds. Our sample stayed rock steady at a massive 1,430MHz in all benchmarks. The GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming makes light work of games at 1440p, with minimums always above 60fps, and it's one of those rare cards that can keep all of our games at a minimum of 30fps (and often considerably more) at 4K.

Average frame rates are useful for loose comparisons between cards and using these we find that this Gigabyte card is 2 percent faster than the MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning. Clearly, this is pretty irrelevant, but the clock speed differences between these two are even less so it does show again the effectiveness of liquid cooling in keeping the boost speed up. Next to a stock GTX 980 Ti, we observe an increase in performance of 17-19 percent depending on the resolution. Lastly, this card is 28 percent quicker than AMD's R9 Fury X at 1440p and 22 percent ahead at 4K. The red team simply doesn't have an answer to overclocked GTX 980 Ti cards yet, as the R9 Fury X's overclocking abilities are stunted to say the least.


Our system's peak power consumption hit 434W running Unigine Valley on loop, which is unsurprisingly in line with other overclocked GTX 980 Ti cards like the MSI Lightning one. It also happens to be just less than the R9 Fury X, once again demonstrating the Nvidia's current efficiency lead. The thermal figures do not disappoint either. While the delta T of 39°C is still some way off the 23°C achieved by the Asus GTX 980 Ti Poseidon, that card was tested using proper custom water-cooling with everything at 12V and was much noisier. 39°C is a perfectly healthy delta T result - 10°C cooler than the coolest running air-cooled GTX 980 Ti we've tested thus far, and a huge 24°C less than the stock card.

It's also pleasing that Gigabyte has switched to a less aggressive fan profile than we've seen on its previous efforts as, while there is a small amount of pump noise, the fan was virtually inaudible, never spinning up to more than 30 percent, or about 1,100 RPM (slightly higher when overclocked, but still blissfully quiet), and coil whine was totally absent too. The fan is not semi-passive, but regardless of whether the card is idle or under load you're unlikely to hear it.

Our 9 percent core and 14 percent memory overclocks yielded performance gains of between 8 and 12 percent, depending on the benchmark. There isn't really a card for the GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming Waterforce to overtake, but it's still nice to get even more performance, and total system power consumption was still well below 500W.

Conclusion

While we do wish Gigabyte had used a high-quality cooler shroud, this is pretty much our only complaint with the GTX 980 Ti. Performance wise, it's just an absolute monster, capable of handling games at 1440p with ease and even at 4K. You also get a nice backplate, controllable RGB lighting, and a custom PCB with a protective covering and plenty of power phases. The cooling solution is strong too, assuming you're okay with a slight hum from the pump. It keeps the GPU (and presumably the other components) nice and cool and paves the way for even greater performance through overclocking.

At £600, this is never going to be a card for everyone, but we don't think it's outrageously priced given that it offers almost 20 percent more performance than a reference card (as well as lower temperatures and noise) and even more compared to an R9 Fury X. It's also no more expensive than other GTX 980 Tis with all-in-one coolers and, unlike others, it doesn't have a separate blower fan, just one quiet 120mm. As such, we think it more than lives up to its Xtreme nomenclature, and we're happy to bestow upon it our Extreme award in recognition of this. It's also worth remembering that if you like what you see but want to stick to air cooling, you can opt for the non-Waterforce version of this card and even save a little cash.