Gigabyte GV-N980G1 GAMING-4GD G1 Gaming, GeForce GTX 980, 4GB GDDR5 PCiE Video Graphics Card

I purchased this card right when it first came out and have had it about 2.5 months.The review from every tech site was GLOWWWWWING on this one. I mean quietness, power consumption and most of all overclocking. It met all expectations for everything except overclocking. While I understand tech reviewers get cherry-picked GPUs to make the manufacturer product look better than they actually are, my GPU would not overclock past what Gigabyte provided. What's worse is that it would FREEZE OCCASIONALLY AT STOCK CLOCKS and at room temperature or hotter (75+ degrees F). I would get a NVKLLM driver error or audio would cut out followed by a system freeze or the game and the OS would freeze entirely. This was playing old unreal 3 engine-based games, civilizations, battlefield anything so it was not anything specific.Folks if it sounds like I'm nit-picking its because you are not a gamer. The only reason to pay a premium over a stock 980 is for the overclocking potential. If it does not overclock go elsewhere MSI, EVGA, ZOTAC< ASUS, etc. My previous ASUS which was not as well-built overclocked nicely. Remember folks it does not matter how big the heat-sink is, the capacitors used, the military components onboard, etc. if in the end it cannot do what you bought it to do. I rolled the dice on this one vs. the ASUS products that I usually get and got jipped on this one.I am probably going to sell this card and get the 8GB version when it comes out of if the AMD 390s are much faster turn to one of those.

Coming off a pair of Gigabyte Windforce GTX670's in SLI I had some good faith in Gigabyte and looked to upgrade as I am running 5760x1080 on 3 monitors with NVIDIA surround with an accessory 4th monitor. Reducing the complexity, noise, and inherent problems of SLI was one of the drivers for upgrading this card along with the forthcoming support for the DK2 to decrease latency.The card does not disappoint, it is a large card, but not huge, pretty much the same same size as my old 670's (a hair wider and longer). I have a full size case so this does not matter. The amount of memory is great, I went from having 2GB (Since SLI only uses one card's memory) to having 4GB, latency, tearing, and stuttering are all gone. Card speed is amazing, I have tried to tax it but nothing I play (E:D and sim racing titles) do not really push it. I wanted a card that could last for a couple years and it should as it is as good or better than a 780TI which is a couple hundred more expensive.One of the main reasons why I wanted to purchase the Gigabyte over a stock 980 was the outputs, 6!!! So while it can only use four of those, it switches automatically for those that are plugged in. Since I have surround with the DK2 this enables me to be flexible for what type of connector I want to use instead of having to get a bunch of adapters or upgrade my monitors to support my card.Great card, quiet, cool, powerful, great bang for the buck. The 970 is cheaper, but if you want raw power I think the 980 is worth it (I only buy a graphics card every couple years). If I need to in the future I might look at upgrading to a SLI with the 980 but I have yet to find a reason for that yet. Also as you tax a video card it will automatically scale back to cool off, the windforce with its 600W of cooling ability ensures that no matter what I throw at this card, it will be one cool fast beasty!

Great video card that can max all the games that I currently play. On idle it's pretty silent as the fans go down to 12%, on load they don't spin up high enough to be audible over my case noise dampening and other fans and the hottest the card has gotten is 66C in a pretty warm room. The first one I got seemed to have had the backplate attached to the pcb too hard in manufacturing and was bent at that point, so I returned it and the second card was much better. It boosts to 1380mhz in games without any overclocking done by me so far. The card is pretty long so I ran the power cables above it to give it a bit of extra support. Overall I'm very happy with this gpu and I know it'll let me game in ease for a long time to come.I took off one star for a slight electronic buzz that the card emits, that I can only hear if the room is completely silent and my ear is close enough to it. I should point out this was present in the first card I got with the bent pcb, but is much less intense with my current one.

On arrival we had to underclock the memory in order for the GPU to be stable. This was okay at first since the product was cheaper than other offers and the underclock was minimal. But as time has gone on the card has become more unstable and we are constantly having to underclock the memory more and more to the point it is affecting it's ability to run games at all. We assumed at first that it had to be a problem with our own PC so didn't follow through with the return. Only after the 30 day warranty expire did we have to start increasing the underclock beyond what we needed it to on day 1. Still it was a competitive buy so I haven't complained. But it has gotten to the point where I can't get the memory low enough without causing other problems. There is no doubt that this issue would have been obvious before it was shipped to me. I have tried it on MULTIPLE PC's now and am having to underclock to the exact megahertz in order to keep it going well enough. This has been horribly disappointing given the price I paid for the item. I have found no way to justify having bought this. However I try. I wanted to give you a second doubt but that only exasperated the issue. You would have known the card was faulty. Which I assume is why it was priced the way it was. You could have atleast told me at what level I could have expected it to be stable. If you had any intention of being transparent at all. But you were lucky enough to get just the right kind of sap who didn't return it first thing.