Conclusion

The Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 Gaming is plenty fast and overclocks well but is compromised by noisy fans and a high street price.

Companies engaged in producing aftermarket GeForce GTX 980 cards need to balance performance against cost. Gigabyte charges a £70 premium for the G1 Gaming version of the GPU, outfitted with a WindForce 3X 600W cooler and an elevated core speed.

Impressive performance aside, Gigabyte's overclock is matched by cheaper rival cards equipped with similar core overclocks. To stand out in this high-performance crowd partners need to excel in every area. The Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 Gaming is plenty fast and overclocks well but is compromised by noisy fans and a premium street price.

We'd encourage Gigabyte to offer extra performance by way of memory overclocking and to spend a little time striking a finer line between temperatures and noise. Should it do that, the G1 Gaming would become one of the very best graphics cards available. Time will tell if our recommendations fall on receptive ears.

The Good		The Bad
Superb performance Flexible display outputs Overclocks well		Can get noisy under load High street price No memory overclock

Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 Gaming

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The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 G1 Gaming graphics card is available to purchase from Overclockers UK.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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First line of last paragraph has, “…striking a finer liner”.

Hexus, PLEASE use Guild Wars 2 as one of the framerate tests

Seems bit overpriced for a reference PCB, also evga and msi versions are 20 quid cheaper. Also it doesn't have that boom in your face performance as its predecessor the windforce x3. Also not sure if I should sell my 780 and upgrade to the 980 or sli my 780, the price difference will be about the same. Any Ideas guys?

Ksyruz
Also not sure if I should sell my 780 and upgrade to the 980 or sli my 780, the price difference will be about the same. Any Ideas guys?

I had similar thinking with my 680 whether to maximise the 2nd hand value you'd get for it or SLi it?
In the end I sold it but I then regretted the fact I couldn't afford anything at the time, so I've been sitting around for a bit.
Overclockers currently have some excellent prices on their 780 Ti GHz, around £140 less over this G1, albeit limited to Gigabytes cards but I'm thinking 2 of those.
The 780 Ti is not that far behind the G1 and assume the benchmarks are vs stock 780 Ti, so these would still last a good 2/3 generations.
The 580s have kept their 2nd hand value and still in demand.