The Joker
Thread Killer MKII
Hi guys
So Galax gpu's are now becoming available in SA through Rebeltech, I recently got my hands on the Galax GTX980 SOC Edition and started messing around with it.
The SOC cards are generally slightly less expensive than their hof counter parts, in this case there is a R1000 difference between the 2 cards, so I wanted to see if I could match and beat the HOF. As it turned out it wasn't all that hard beating the HOF card, took about 20min to OC and get to the absolute top clocks on this particular card.
The card ended topping out on the following:
Core Boost Clock @1506
Mem Clock @2003
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5611934?
With the fan running at 100% (Incredibly quiet even at full tilt) I was able to do countless 3D mark runs without any artifacting or crashes ect, easily beating the HOF card. That said Bench clocks generally aren't stable for gaming and as each game is different I had to drop down to get the happy medium.
Gamging clocks came in at the following:
Core Boost Clock @1479
Mem Clock @1953
For those not sure what these numbers mean, the cards stock clocks are:
Core Boost Clock @1329
Mem Clock @1753
All in all a pretty massive improvement in gaming performance.
From playing with this card and from going through 100's of HOF benchmarks I did find that the HOFcards generally ran around 5c cooler than the SOC.
So is the HOF worth the R1000 extra...
Well if you want a white card you're kind of stuck as its the only 980 that comes in white so in that case you would have to fork out the extra cash, I also think the HOF looks slightly better then the SOC. The cooler shroud looks better and the fans are slightly larger giving the card a more agro look while offering slightly better cooling performance.
Performance wise, I couldn't tell the difference, both cards will clock to around 1500 on air, they'll both run with the elite brands (Asus, Gigabyte, Msi) without a problem and in most cases offer better overclocking than the elite cards.
The HOF does come with slightly higher out of the box clocks, so if you aren't looking at overclocking then yeah the HOF does give you that slight edge.
Both cards come with backplates and both cards come with the same 2 year warranty.
So I personally wouldn't spend the extra, I am not to bothered with the looks of the cards as the SOC still looks great. I only really care about performance.
At the end of the day though, the Galax cards are sure to shake up the local gpu scene with their insane performance for very little money compared to the likes of Asus, Gigabyte and MSI.
http://www.rebeltech.co.za/9003-gal...edition-4gb-256bit-ddr5-core-memory-1228.html
http://www.rebeltech.co.za/9009-gal...2tx-hof-edition-4gb-256bit-ddr5-core-mem.html
Rebeltech is expecting stock of the HOF card at the end of the month and still have a couple of SOC cards in stock.
So Galax gpu's are now becoming available in SA through Rebeltech, I recently got my hands on the Galax GTX980 SOC Edition and started messing around with it.
The SOC cards are generally slightly less expensive than their hof counter parts, in this case there is a R1000 difference between the 2 cards, so I wanted to see if I could match and beat the HOF. As it turned out it wasn't all that hard beating the HOF card, took about 20min to OC and get to the absolute top clocks on this particular card.
The card ended topping out on the following:
Core Boost Clock @1506
Mem Clock @2003
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5611934?
With the fan running at 100% (Incredibly quiet even at full tilt) I was able to do countless 3D mark runs without any artifacting or crashes ect, easily beating the HOF card. That said Bench clocks generally aren't stable for gaming and as each game is different I had to drop down to get the happy medium.
Gamging clocks came in at the following:
Core Boost Clock @1479
Mem Clock @1953
For those not sure what these numbers mean, the cards stock clocks are:
Core Boost Clock @1329
Mem Clock @1753
All in all a pretty massive improvement in gaming performance.
From playing with this card and from going through 100's of HOF benchmarks I did find that the HOFcards generally ran around 5c cooler than the SOC.
So is the HOF worth the R1000 extra...
Well if you want a white card you're kind of stuck as its the only 980 that comes in white so in that case you would have to fork out the extra cash, I also think the HOF looks slightly better then the SOC. The cooler shroud looks better and the fans are slightly larger giving the card a more agro look while offering slightly better cooling performance.
Performance wise, I couldn't tell the difference, both cards will clock to around 1500 on air, they'll both run with the elite brands (Asus, Gigabyte, Msi) without a problem and in most cases offer better overclocking than the elite cards.
The HOF does come with slightly higher out of the box clocks, so if you aren't looking at overclocking then yeah the HOF does give you that slight edge.
Both cards come with backplates and both cards come with the same 2 year warranty.
So I personally wouldn't spend the extra, I am not to bothered with the looks of the cards as the SOC still looks great. I only really care about performance.
At the end of the day though, the Galax cards are sure to shake up the local gpu scene with their insane performance for very little money compared to the likes of Asus, Gigabyte and MSI.
http://www.rebeltech.co.za/9003-gal...edition-4gb-256bit-ddr5-core-memory-1228.html
http://www.rebeltech.co.za/9009-gal...2tx-hof-edition-4gb-256bit-ddr5-core-mem.html
Rebeltech is expecting stock of the HOF card at the end of the month and still have a couple of SOC cards in stock.
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