With the long standing WINDFORCE 3X cooler attached, we were expecting to get a little extra headroom in terms of overclocking and we also expected idle loads to be very quiet if not silent.
Overclocking
Gigabyte cherry pick the GPUs for their G1 Gaming series cards but you can’t guarantee any overclock beyond the rated specs on the box so remember that anything over the specification sheet is a bonus.
GTX 970 G1 Gaming Experience
When overclocking, we managed to hit 1610 MHz boost result via MSI Afterburner with 7410MHz on the memory. Keep in mind that the stock boost clock for a GTX 970 is 1178MHz and the G1 Gaming version gives you 1354MHz in “Overclock Mode”. This translated to an additional 15% average performance improvement (depending on the game) in gaming benchmarks which meant that in some games like Tomb Raider and Battlefield 4, the GTX 970 G1 Gaming was up there with a GTX 980 (not overclocked). Temperatures when overclocking the card didn’t go over 66 degrees and the fan speed maxed out in our testing at 67% or 2108RPM. At 50cm on the open test bench the decibel meter gave us 19.5dB(A) which was barely reading above ambient room noise. That said, we could hear the fans working but the noise wasn’t high pitched nor was it droning.
GTX 960 G1 Gaming Experience
Again, we had high hopes for the GTX 960 G1 Gaming. So we fired up Afterburner to keep it consistent and managed to hit 1545MHz on the GPU and 7904MHz on the memory. This translated to a ~12% improvement in gaming benchmarks but still didn’t bring the card anywhere near the GTX 970. The stock boost clock is 1178MHz on the GPU and 7000MHZ on the memory, the G1 Gaming edition guarantees 1329MHz on the GPU and 7010MHz on the memory.
The thing we were hoping for was to boost that average frame rate over 60FPS for the folks running 1920×1080 resolution on 60Hz displays. In the end, the extra headroom is a nice boost if you can get it.
The fans on the GTX 960 G1 Gaming card were inaudible at idle, even when they were spinning. During overclocking, the fans peaked at 41% or 1330RPM and the temperature didn’t break 67 degrees. At 1330RPM, our decibel meter wasn’t able to register a reading above the 18dB(A) ambient room noise.
Power
Our Peak power load for our system was 266W for the GTX 970 and 180W for the GTX 960. When you compare this to the 278W that the GTX 980 needed, it’s a consistent and welcome result. Graphics cards are getting faster, cooler and more efficient.
Noise and Temperatures
Under load (even overclocked), neither card went over 66 degrees or 67% fan speed. On the open test bench, the GTX 970 barely registered 19.5dB(A) whilst the GTX 960 didn’t register at all. The WINDFORCE 3X cooler is louder than the MSI twin FROZR V on the open air test bench under full load but when installed in a traditional build with a closed case it’s audible but not noticeable.
Please note: When testing on an open air test bench, the temps are usually better because airflow isn’t restricted by the case. At the same time, there isn’t a standard case enclosure around the system absorbing any of the noise from the card so we hear more from the platform. Inside a standard case, the ambient temperature will increase a little which can make the fans work harder, therefore louder. The other thing to note is that the fan profiles can be tweaked to change the noise/performance ratio.
The WINDFORCE 3X implementation on both cards is good but don’t buy either card expecting recording-studio grade silence.
GTX 970 Coil Whine & Memory Partition Issue (GTX 970 ONLY)
We noticed some coil whine on our GTX 970 sample when it was on the open air test bench. It was more obvious at some main menu screens and in games where the frame rate was insanely high like the intro to Far Cry, the character selection screen in Elder Scrolls Online and during some loading screens. The bad news is that this phenomenon is not unique to Gigabyte cards and we’ve found posts on forums for all major brands and some fringe brands referencing the issue. The good news is that it wasn’t present all the time and we didn’t notice it once the card was installed in our Cooler Master Cosmos SE case as opposed to the open test bench.
We asked Gigabyte about the coil whine and they advised that it’s a common question and not uncommon when the GPU is operating under load at ~90%. They said that the GPU requires higher voltage and current to support the calculation for displaying the objects. They also said that if the card is doing the coil whine noise constantly, even under idle then the card is likely to be defective.
The Memory Allocation Issue associated with the GTX970 GPU that sees the 4GB of DDR5 video memory partitioned into a fast 3.5GB block and a much slower 512MB block is currently the topic of much discussion. Examples are emerging of stutter when using high quality textures that tax that smaller partition. This is a concern as texture packs get larger and resolutions get higher. As we understand it, this is an architectural constraint present in all GTX 970 graphics cards. Although we didn’t experience any issues in our testing, we also weren’t gaming at 4K.
