Yes, this is true. If you watched the Nvidia promotional video on the GTX 980, towards the end where they did an exploded view of the 980 piece by piece, you can see the triple heatpipe design. It is significantly cheaper going with the standard copper heatpipe design rather than going for the vapor champer baseplate, which is expensive to produce. And also the GM204 core aren't as hot running as the earlier GK110 anyway. Smart Nvidia did this so that they can keep the costs as low as possible for the GTX 980.

anyone know if my CPU as in my siggy will bottleneck 970 ?

Want to ask if the latest 344 drivers screwing with anyone's GTX 760?

hi guys , is there any news regarding 970 Reference coming to Malaysia ? i prefer a reference than aftermarket cooler . Thanks !

The problem with most reference based cards (assuming the base level Zotac 970 is based on that similarly, if such reference design for 970 ever exists) is that they tend to somehow exhibit some certain level of coil whine when under load (usually when running benchmarks). And what SSJBen says is true, my personal experience with Asus and MSI cards is that they really do not have any such issues. I believe it's because they've used superior quality chokes (SAP for Asus) and (SFC for MSI). However, my reference based 780 AMP! Edition does not have any coil whine, fortunately. But most reference based cards I've tested sadly have this problem plaguing it.

Only gigabyte have side LED for 970 is it? I know this may sound silly..but the side LED illuminating the logo is a huge attraction to me.

Just sold one of my R9 290s to buy a GTX 970...since there is no reference GTX 970 (sad, I wanna do SLI), which one is the best? MSI or Gigabyte since I am aiming for either one. I prefer the Gigabyte for looks, but not sure about the cooling against MSI Gaming

dunno is it longer than the Tri-X leh, this Tri-X is the LONGEST GPU I've ever owned...Anyway so the TwinFrozr is RM100 more compared to Gigabyte, hmm...

How much can u sell a 2nd hand 290 now? How much you lose from selling it off? 970 price plus the lose from selling off 290 is already so much

900 wadafak?

Got bored this morning. Went out and bought this while waiting for its twin brother to fly in from the states.

hmm, plan to dissemble my gpu - Asus. on the 1 of the screw, got 1 white round sticker on it. i think its an indicator to see whether its removed or not for warranty purpose.

so um, is it safe to remove and re-stick it?

47 idle in silverstone case. hence, i found it strange that naked open temp decrease juz 3-4C + got a stand fan cooling it with fresh air from outside the window

Just tried it with the R9 290. There is an obvious increase in image quality. Playing it at 2560x1600 is quite ok.

There's a decent hit in performance, but game is still playable with around 30 to 40-ish FPS.

just wanna ask, will it be significant difference when gaming in 1080p or 4K?

because, IMHO, when you game, especially those high pace games, all those details, will your eyes even have time to really scrutinize them? 

I think unless you really only play the latest games at 4k, it's still quite a bad time to jump into 4k monitors.

Throughout the next year, we are going to see a huge influx of 1440p monitors (some of which we can expect are G-sync 2.0 compatible at a much lower price). 4k monitors will drop a lot in prices and Windows 10 will have proper support for 4k resolution, including many other programs.

So no, unless it is mostly for playing the latest games in 4k (of which you'll need a multi-GPU setup as well), 4k isn't worth the investment at this point in time.

I second that bro. It's been a while where 1440p monitors has remained stagnant at above 1.5k.

Where are the 1440p, native 120hz (non-lightboost) monitors from Dell, LG, Samsung or even, dare I say it, Acer? I mean... Qnix has been doing it for how long now (though theirs need to be overclocked and results aren't guaranteed)?
Also, we need G-SYNC 2.0 here asap and at a much lower price point, $200 for the kit alone is still out of reach for the majority of gamers. Running on a single DP 1.2 port isn't much fun eventhough it is in theory, what most people really only use.

How hard to pull the damn sticker? One stupid things MSI did is to glue the middle bit where the sticker meet the fan center. That is where people damaged the fan. If they don't this thing won't happen

Anyone with a GTX980/970 or a 6GB VRAM card played 'Shadow of Mordor' with HD Texture Pack + Ultra Textures turned on? 

I tried it on my 'now' merely mortal GTX680 2G, and it is a slide-show fest at 1080p about 40-50% of the time.

Well, I've read how some gamers are freaking out and calling it BS without actually downloading the HD Texture Pack in the first place since it recommends 6GB VRAM for Ultra.

That said, they have discovered that, 'Shadow of Mordor' will use at most 3.7Gb of VRAM (at 1080p) in Ultra.

I am waiting patiently for the rumored 8GB GTX980... no idea if it will ever benefit a mere 1920x1080 display or that my i7-870 (OC'd to 4Ghz) will bottleneck.

Ultra:


High:


Open the image in a new window and compare them side-by-side, minimal but somewhat noticeable difference.

Source:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4926657&postcount=85

Guys, what do you think of the Gainward Phantom 970? Idealtech selling at RM1199. Clock speed reaches 1304Mhz with "boost".

What is this "boost". Do I only turn it on when gaming?