Customer Ratings & Reviews

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.

price break awesome card does what it suppose to. look great runs fast etc

The card runs flawlessly and does a terrific job with a variety of games.

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.

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.

I was looking for a mac book decided I get more bang for my buck on a upgrade for my windows pc .The guy that is suppose to sell them always looks mad , Like don't touch my stuff , I have to keep them clean and not sell any .This is in the Corpus Christi store, anyways bought this bad boy working out freaking awesome . Hopefully it stays this way good price also Best Buy competes pretty good with Amazon on this card. O yea another cool feature the side of the card lights up . I have mine on breathing mode . Most all the parts in my case I purchased at Best Buy . Happy gaming Best Buy shoppers .

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.

Totally worth what I paid for the card. Yes, I paid about $65 more than if i ordered it online, however......after purchasing it I had it installed in my computer about 45 minutes later. Compared this to a friends R9 390, it out performs it. I assume the only card that's going to beat this card is the 980TI. Nothing extra comes with this card. It's not branded, just a plain NVIDIA GTX 980. There are no adapters, cables, sli bridges, stickers, or posters, nothing. I personally don't care about that stuff, however, I know some people do. All you get is a box with a card in it.

I recently upgraded to the 980 from an SLI duo of GTX 770s. All have been reference cards. I like the fact that Nvidia doesn't change the look of the reference card cases as they are the best in the business as far as design. The performance is much better with the 4GB of VRAM over the 2GB that my previous card had. I noticed the difference right away on Far Cry 4. Also, I had to previously spend money on getting a cooling plate for the 770 to make the bottom of the card look nice. This is no longer necessary on the new line.

I replaced dual GTX 770's with this one card and it more than doubles the performance of the SLI setup. The card is a bit on the larger side so make sure you have a big enough case to house it. The installation was very straight forward and setup even more so. If only Best Buy sold the GTX 980ti.. that is the only other card I would consider getting besides this one. This is an amazing piece of hardware and well worth the purchase. If you have the means to get this card, I highly recommend it.

Best Graphics card you can buy with $600! I have over 130 games on Steam and the GTX 980 paired with a 4th gen i5 and 16g of RAM will play every game on max settings! 1080p, 16x Tessellation, Multi-Frame (MFAA)! and it supports DX12 Exclusive to the upcoming Windows 10! http://steamcommunity.com/id/cryptocreator

This is a basic reference GTX 980 with 4GB of DDR5. No overclocking or extras in the box other than the SLI connector, but it does exactly what it is supposed to do and that is to deliver some serious graphics power. I am currently running Fallout 4 @ 1080 with no issues and BF4 @ 2560 x 1440 with 100+ FPS on a Samsung 4k monitor.

Great card. If i was a serious gamer I would have bought a Ti but this card is fine. Was able to play the new Beta Starwars Battlefield on extreme settings with around 80 fps according to my pc. Used MSI afterburer software to incease my fan speed other wise the card would reach 80*c. I love the card for the mild gaming I do.

This card runs a bit hot, hitting 80c., resulting in dynamic frequency to decrease MHz ever so slightly. This card doesn't over heat, but I researched this and NVidia designs their reference cards this way. NVidia cares more about acoustics (keeping the fan rpm/noise down), more than they care about the temperature and how hot their card gets. Thermal throttling happens at 80c, but over heating happens at 98c, however due to thermal throttling this card should never get that hot. If your reading this review and find my logic to be incorrect, please reply and fill me in on the details. Four stars as this card hasn't given me any problems yet. I've been able to run all games on ultra settings. This GTX 980 reference card was a perfect upgrade for $274.

Its a big step in your life when you spring for your first $500+ GPU, but let me tell you, its well worth it. The card handles 1440p gaming with ease. With literal plug and play action - I was playing BF4 with 150% oversampling at insane frame rates in minutes. This card is so good, im thinking about getting another for SLI action and to get myself ready for full on 4K gaming. This card also overclocks well to give you a slight boost (if you think its not fast enough). Highly recommended card.

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.

This GPU is amazing! Been playing witcher 3 and GTAV on ultra at 1080p with no problem!

Went from a gtx 780 to a gtx 980. What a difference! Great price also. $100 off on sale when I bought it. More ram than the gtx 970 also. Works great with my Asus 144 hz monitor and Battlefield 4 & Far Cry 4.

Found the greatest price through price matching! What a huge improvement in my overall gaming. smooth, and fast!