NVIDIA - GeForce GTX 980 4GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card - Silver/Black

Hi, I'm a PC enthusiast that reads all the latest reviews and technical analysis on the latest Graphics Cards, CPU's, Motherboards and various PC pieces parts. I have multiple systems that I use for Video Editing, General Business, Competitive Gaming and Streaming. When it came time to upgrade from my dual NVIDIA GTX-760's setup in SLI on my gaming system, I decided to buy a Reference NVIDIA GTX-980 from Best Buy. I understand that all the non-reference designs generally have better air cooling, but I went with the Reference Card because it can be upgraded to a water block and it looks cools with the programaable flashing green "GEFORCE GTX" logo. According to multiple reviews and videos, the NVIDIA Reference GTX-980 is supposed to be stable at 1500Mhz on the GPU Boost Clock and 8000Mhz on the Memory Clock with the Voltage set to standard default. It is also recommended that you use a custom fan curve set on Auto to keep the GPU Temp at no higher than 70C-72C. The GTX-980's were all brand new and factory sealed from Best Buy. I had to drive around to different Best Buy locations and exchange 2 times until I found a GTX-980 that was stable at 1500Mhz GPU and 8000Mhz Memory. The Third card that I tested was perfect and is performing a little above what the reviews and tests outline in their Benchmarking tests. The good news is that the people working at Best Buy Customer service were all very nice and prompt. In each instance, my exchange took less than 5 minutes and I was out the door. 18 months same as cash on the Best Buy card is also a great deal. The Bad News is that NVIDIA needs to get their act together and extensively test their GTX-980's to make sure they can hit their Max performance levels before they get released to retail outlets. In a couple of months, I'm planning on buying a 2nd Reference GTX-980 from Best Buy to run dual cards in SLI. I hope that I get a good one the first time. I hope I don't have to drive all over the place again. Crossing my fingers. :)

This is a well made video card. Operation noise is very low while maintaining performance. System heat did not increase while running games. My system has an Asus Maximus VII Hero with a 4th gen 4790K 4.00 Ghz 1150. Running BF4 produced 165-200 fps as well as every other game or app I tried. Titian Fall would only produce 60 fps at best not sure why but I do think it is the card because other users were reporting the same problem. The digital download was based on a email after purchase and you may not receive it, not to worry. What you must do at this point is call BestBuy Customer Support and have them contact the Digital Download Dept. and retrieve your software key number, have them also email you the number in case your hand writing is as poor as mine. Now you will have to do a little more work and find the web location on NVidia's web site. NVidia's site allows you to reclaim the number which will give you another number with a link to claim and download the digital content on the manufactures site. I would rate the digital portion of this transaction with just a star because the email failed to arrive and both BestBuy and NVidia support did not understand how to deal with each other when I purchased the card, however I was early and most of that is now fixed. Overall the cards performance is outstanding and that's what I wanted in the first place.

Crazy powerful, crazy quiet, and crazy expensive. This card is not for the weak. It is for the ones who are willing to dish out the cash for a top notch graphics card. There are other options out there, cheaper cards with inferior performance.....well just all around inferior products if you ask me. This is a luxury card that screams quality, i have never held a GPU that felt so solid. No flexing, no plastic shroud, just a completely solid feel. It looks amassing, completely amassing. In your hand as well as installed in your PC. The logo LED light effects can be programmed in the Geforce Experience to your own personal taste. These kind of added touches go along way in my book. The out of the box experience is fantastic but the geek in me just cant stop himself......i just wanted to see what this puppy can do. Overclocks even better than i expected. Using MSI afterburner, i set the power limit to max and and the core MHZ +230. This overclock has me boosting to 1500mhz.. It just stays there for hours, never throttling, not loud, and about as cool as the stock speeds. It really is impressive. I have owned many GPUs over the yrs. Never had one that overclocked like this. With such a great OC, it still is very quiet and the temps are about normal. It is impressive. This card is for people who can appreciate all the awesomeness, all at once. It looks amassing and performs as it looks. It is not a budget product, it is not for the weak.........it one serious graphics card with no equals.

Love this card. It has no issues when compared to my original GTX 970 SSC from EVGA. I don't experience any coil whine and the card boost clocks and all like it is supposed to do. I know this card isn't the power of the 980 Ti, but I've found that 980 has fewer problems on games than the 980 Ti does especially the latest Batman game. Though, even with this 980 reference card, you can play it at max graphics and DSR on (that means that like I play at 1080p, my card draws a near 4K image and down sizes the image to 1080p). It makes the graphics a lot crisper, but there is a problem that results from this. Some game it may not be so smooth depending on how many complex things are happening on the screen at the time. I've only noticed this on Project CARS game during a heavy weather of heavy rain and thick fog. The card does have a few issues though. Though the cooler has a back plate and the cooler is a very well designed blower styled cooler with a side mounted LED logo that says "GEFORCE GTX" on it. The cooler even when the card is spinning full tilt at its 80C thermal boost limiter limit, the card's fan is only spinning at about 50%. The sad thing is that it can stay at this thermal limit almost indefinitely in heavy, graphic intensive games. It doesn't hurt the card, but its amazing that it does that. Anyway, I would recommend this card to anyone that plays Witcher 3 or Batman Arkham Knight. It seems to be the best card for those games. And I'd even recommend it for anyone playing Shadow of Moridor cause it won't have the memory issue that the GTX 970 has no matter its form. This card is truly a 4GB card that has 4GBs available all the time without the issues that the GTX 970 had.

Normally, when you hear the words "reference card", you're presented with factors such as "limited overclocking room" or the "manufacturer shipped these units out at very conservative clock speeds". This is true. However, it is a very nice design with reference cooler AND a back plate. My only gripe is for the performance you're getting, you're paying so much more (almost $50+ more). I would suggest getting the EVGA Superclocked version of this GPU. This is the reference card and normally Nvidia will provide these reference cards to 3rd party vendors where they themselves improve on that default model to make it better (most of the time, faster and better cooling efficiency). If you're looking for a fantastic single card GPU or if you're going SLI, this card is it (all while looking super slick - the glowing "GEFORCE" emblem is too cool). The only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is that you're paying more than 3rd party vendors are for 'conservative' clock speed and performance. Asus, EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte, etc. have improved on the reference design to make it faster and better. I personally believe the reference design (this card) is the best looking aesthetically

First off let me say that I was running 2x R9 270x's with 4Ghz GDDR5 on each card.in CrossFireX. I'm getting much better FPS in GTA 5, COD-AW, and even stopped the pixel error I was getting playing Legacy games such as Diablo 2. I'm running two of these in SLI (No OC'ing). Along with a stock clocked AMD 8350 (Not using turbo mode), I was able to score 92% better than all other tested on 3DMark test Fire Strike. Top temps were 75°c while running 3DMark. I could just imagine how high they would have been without the reference cards heat exhaust(exhausts out of the back of the card instead of blowing it around inside the case). If you are going with a custom loop,there are already a couple different manufactures that have a full cover graphic card waterblock out for this card. You can set the brightness and mode such as pulse or breathe on the LED's on the card using Nvidia Experience. They are just Bad a&& looking cards.

You are probably wondering why I would give such an incredible, and beautiful, Piece of hardware only a two star rating. The GTX 980 itself really is fantastic. It ran every new game, flawlessly, on maximum settings at 60FPS1080p. I had no problems with the card what so ever and, it really is the cheapest flagship card ever released. So why the two stars then? The GTX 980 has one simple six letter problem, GTX 970. If top of the line is what you are looking for then go for the 980 100%. However, if you are someone on a budget, like myself, I simply can not recommend the GTX 980 when the GTX 970 is a whole $200 less and is only about 10% less powerful. The GTX 970 is still powerful enough to play any game at 1080p on maximum settings. So, in the end, if you are looking for the best available or gaming at 1440p or higher I would absolutely recommend this card. But, if you are on a budget or still at 1080p, I see no reason to spend the extra $200.

This card is a very good purchase in terms of graphical specifications, and it can run most games at very high settings seamlessly. The only reason that this card is getting a lower score than 5 stars is because of some cooling issues. If you don't have excellent cooling within your computer, you will have a lot of crashes and freezes which will affect your gameplay. There are some models of this card that are manufactured my MSI, Gigabyte, and EVGA that use the NVIDIA GTX 980 chipset. I would actually recommend the Gigabyte version, because it is identical to this model, except it has 3 powerful fans rather than the 1 paltry fan of this model. Overall this is an excellent card for the value, and I love it.