****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I bought this card around a month ago as an upgrade over the EVGA GTX 670 FTW Edition that I had before. It was during the period where 980s were in very short supply and there was a lot of price gouging by 3rd-party sellers and I managed to snag one of these from Amazon at retail price. This past month, I have had literally no problems with this card and I am extremely satisfied with my purchase.Pros:Quiet: the fans on this card completely turn off when the temperature is under 50 C (see note at the bottom). This results in silent normal operation but when the card gets hot, the fans turn on quickly and stabilize the temperature. But they are still no louder than my case fans and I can barely hear the GPU fans while gaming. Additionally, I have not noticed any coil whine that has troubled numerous other 980 and 970 models.Cool: I have not seen the GPU temp exceed 67 C even while playing demanding games like BF4 and AC: Unity at maximum settings. The driver-operated fan manages to maintain this temperature at 50% speed, which is impressive, though the second fan is VBIOS-controlled and could be running at a different speed. Idle temp is around 32 C, which is pretty good for a card whose fans aren't even running at that temperature. The cooling solution is more effective than the blower fan on my old 670 by far.Fast: This is one of the best-performing cards on the market at this time. Boost clocks are 1327 MHz on my card and it can handle everything I throw at it. I'm running BF4 at max graphics except for no antialiasing at 120% resolution scale and I normally get over 100 FPS. I can smoothly play AC: Unity at maximum graphics settings including TXAA without any stuttering or frame drops. Basically this thing can handle everything you can throw at it at 1080p without any problems.Cons:Price??? Not really a con, but $580 isn't cheap. But you get what you pay for and you're getting a lot.MSI Live Update: it doesn't work on my system. I can't get my VBIOS version information or any useful info out of this application.Caveats: not really cons, but things to be careful of.VBIOS: The default video card BIOS that came with my card had a bug where it would say the fan is running at 1% of its max speed even though the fan wasn't actually spinning. A video BIOS update from MSI fixed it, but as far as I know, this BIOS update has to be found on the MSI forum, not via its update utility. The new BIOS also seemed to tweak the fan profile; the fan now starts spinning when the temp reaches 50 C. I vaguely remember that the fan would start at 55 C using the old BIOS. Neither issue is actually problematic as the fans are so effective and they start properly, but it's something to keep in mind: VBIOS update beneficial.HOWEVER, if you plan to use the newer Nvidia drivers, you MUST update your bios as the newer drivers (after 344.16) don't work well with the old bios. This is a BIOS problem, so newer drivers require newer VBIOS.Drivers: I have heard that there are problems with the past few NVidia graphics drivers. I'm running an old version, 344.16, which most people say is stable and has been perfectly stable in my experience. I am using an HDMI connection and those with DisplayPort and UHD screens might have issues with this driver (these appear to be fixed in the latest beta driver 344.80).Size: Make sure you know how long this card is! I bought this card basically on a whim as it was the only one available at a reasonable price. This card is an inch longer than a standard card and might not fit into smaller cases. I was lucky and it just barely fits in my Zalman mid-tower case. Check the specs!Trivia: You get an MSI gaming mousepad along with the video card. It's a nice, large, stable mousepad with plenty of friction for precise mouse movements, but it has a strong plastic smell that fortunately dissipates with time.Overall I could not be happier with my purchase. This video card and the GPU within are great in every respect.
