amazon Inno3D GTX 980 iChill reviews
Inno3D – The sudden return
Inno3D is very difficult to forget the names of people love PC years 2007 – 2008. It is the 8600 GT and the fever … its sudden disappearance, leaving a lot of regret and indignation. But, old things should not be repeated much.
For those who do not know about this brand, I would like to introduce a bit. Established since 1998, far Inno3D has established a strong position 1, have a distribution system in 50 countries, the No. 1 market share in the Philippines, 2 in Germany and Malaysia. Inno3D is an important, longtime partner of Nvidia.
Products are introduced to readers today as the GTX 980 iChill – mononuclear monster of today’s most powerful Nvidia Green Giant.
Inno3D GTX 980 iChill
Inno3D does not care for the packaging of its flagship product. The box is large, but it is made of thin cover, which is used for midrange and universal graphics cards. The images presented on the box are also not impressive.
Card is plastic coated with antioxidant at the interface. Included accessories include guide books, 3DMark 2013 gift, 2x 6 pin power -> 8 pin, DVI-Dsub switch, dedicated screwdriver to remove the heat sink. There is also an iChill touchpad included.
The appearance of the GTX 980 iChill makes me look overwhelmed. Card to, long, heavy and dense. Looks like a monster with sharp claws full of yourself.
All the details are superior in appearance: from surface finish, corner braces to individual cut shapes on the radiator grille.
With a long chassis board with heavy heatsink, the card is equipped with a strong back-plate to support the circuit board.
Heat dissipation makes the card thick, occupying three PCI slots.
Although the “super” version, the GTX 980 iChill has only two 6-pin auxiliary power, maximum power consumption of 225W. Users only need 500 watts of real power supply, but I’m afraid the overclocking will be limited.
Two SLI ports, ready to run SLI 2, 3 or 4 cards. However, with three PCI slots, users can only run two SLI cards that are the same.
The upper edge of the card is very strong and personality. For case users with mica, boom guarantees quality.
In addition to the three large heat sinks, the GTX 980 iChill also has a small fan. This fan points directly to an additional heat-pipe located inside the heatsink, which acts as a direct heat source for the power phases and memory chips.
Three 15-blade low noise loudspeaker fans, mainly GPU heat dissipation.
This unique Inno3D radiator is named HerculeZ. However, I find that the card evokes more monster claws than the Greek goddess.
The card features up to three DisplayPort ports, an HDMI port and a DVI port. The GTX 980 is capable of exporting up to four monitors simultaneously.
Components & Radiators
Now it’s part of the dissecting part of the heat sink & component – my job is to look at a “super” product.
Card uses black board. As in the picture, we can see that all of the memory chips, chokes and mosfets are heat sink-mounted heat sinks.
Particularly heat-sink heat sink for mosfet and inductors is connected directly to an extra heat-pipe, cooled by a small heatsink fan.
Heat-sinks come in contact with thermal-pad memory chips.
Inno3D uses Samsung memory chips for this flagship product.
However, the process of striking the bar here is finished. I’m going to remove the remaining heat sink to see if the power phases are blocked by the warranty stamp (sticking on the screws).
Let’s go through the heat detector next. A new discovery I discovered: a switch located near two 6-pin auxiliary power, which controls the LEDs on the heatsink.
Large, long and heavy heatsink.
The glossy aluminum foil, are clean.
Up to 5 heat-pipe brass heat from GPU to aluminum foil. All are nickel-plated. The high-end graphics cards I’ve been exposed with only three or four heat-pipes are the same
The radiator grille uses a special screw type, which can be opened with the accessory supplied in the accessory. However, one of these snails was also stuck with a warranty.
Configure the test
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4
Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K @ 4.5 GHz
Memory: 2 x 4 GB Kingston HyperX T1 1866
Hard Drive: Kingston HyperX 240 GB SSD
Source: 660W
Graphics card:
– Gainward GTX 980 – ref radiator, original pulse 1127/1753 MHz
– Inno3D GTX 980 iChill – 1228/1800 MHz (native Nvidia 1126/1750 MHz)
Inno3D GTX 980 iChill is overclocked to 1228/1800 MHz, 9% higher than the original Nvidia.
When working, three claws on both sides of the red LED look very “fashion”. These LEDs have three modes: light, flashing and off using the switch I mentioned above.
The side section also has 1 LED strip. For anyone with a case with mica hips will definitely be extremely beautiful.
Test results
Because high-end graphics cards are a bit difficult to borrow, in this section I will only compare the performance of the Inno3D GTX 980 iChill with another GTX 980 card using the ref heatsink and Nvidia’s clock output. As for the performance correlation between GTX 980 and other products, you can refer to the results of techpowerup.
where can you get a Inno3D GTX 980 iChill online
VGA INNO3D GTX980TI ICHILL AIR BOSS X4 ULTRA 6GB GDDR5 384-Bit Free Shipping.: Buy it now
Overclocking – temperature – noise level
My test time took place when Hanoi was still warm, room temperature was 26 degrees Celsius.
The 1228/1800 MHz clock speed of the GTX 980 iChill is already very high. In addition, the card uses only two 6-pin auxiliary power (maximum power consumption of 225W), so the overclocking ability is not much. However, the last pulse I achieved was quite impressive: 1390/1950 MHz.
At this pulse, the performance of the GTX 980 iChill increased by 11.1% and was stronger than the GTX 980 by 18.6%.
Inno3D GTX 980 iChill operating temperature (bench temperature of 26 degrees Celsius):
– Idle: 30 degrees C.
– Gaming (Default 1228/1800 MHz): 58 degrees C; 35% fan ~ 1420 rpm.
Gaming (@ 1390/1950 MHz): 61 degrees C, 36% fan ~ 1485 rpm.
For the GTX 980 in general, when it reaches 80 degrees, the boost pulse will decrease. So just maintaining <80 degrees was too good. IChill Herculez radiator does much more than that. Let me recall that the room temperature at the test is 26 degrees Celsius.
Due to the low temperature, fan heat dissipation is not fast so the card is 100% smooth operation, no noise at all. 10 points for iChill Herculez heatsink!
Summary
Performance summary of Inno3D GTX 980 iChill (with reference to Techpowerup results):
The return of Inno3D this time is very strong and impressive. The company does not choose the path up from the low-end and mid-range segment, which affirms its brand with premium quality products. Other graphics cards like the GTX 760 iChill, the GTX 770 iChill or the GTX 970 iChill are also extremely bumpy.
If you are in need of a VGA, add the name Inno3D to your reference list.
Pros:
– So beautiful.
– Controlled LED on the heatsink.
– Overclocking is high, performance terrible.
– Components, heat dissipation.
– Cool, absolutely quiet.
Cons:
– Occupy up to three PCI slots.
– Stamping the warranty on the screws.