Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980Ti Xtreme Gaming Review

Overclocking and Overclocked Performance

The overclocking process took more time than I initially expected because there was a clear discrepancy in stability between Heaven 4.0 and 3DMark. For example, I could add an extra +20 to the core, and +45 to the memory and complete the Heaven benchmark without any graphical artefacts. However, 3DMark was a completely different experience and instantly failed upon start with these settings. To ensure we have a fully stable overclock, the settings displayed below managed to complete both Heaven 4.0 and 3DMark on multiple runs. This entire situation made me re-attempt each benchmark multiple times, in the interest of fairness.

By default, the graphics card’s opts for a very strong factory overclock which means you have to be realistic about the potential for manual boosts. Here we can see, I achieved a fairly decent figure on the core but it’s far from being the strongest result out there. In a similar fashion, the memory overclock was good although it’s some way off being ground breaking. Of course, your results may vary and it’s down to the silicon lottery.

If this procedure feels quite daunting, then you can easily leverage extra performance via the OC Guru II software. Here you can enable an OC mode with a single click which increases the base clock to 1241MHz and boost to 1342MHz. This is a great addition for beginners who feel a bit overwhelmed by manual overclocking.

3DMark Fire Strike

Here we can see the manual overclock allows for a fantastic Graphics score which exceeds the 21,000 mark. Furthermore, it competes rather well against another premium GTX 980Ti.

This pattern continues in Fire Strike Extreme, and the GPU attains a massive Graphics score above 10,000.

Finally, the GPU’s 4K performance is ridiculously good and not too far away from achieving a total score of 5000.