EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB SC GAMING ACX 2.0, 26% Cooler and 36% Quieter Cooling Graphics Card 04G-P4-2983-KR

I mostly got this version because I love Nvidia's Reference Design for their cards and it was out of the box OC, and can still be pushed even more. It is a $500 dollar GPU. When it comes to PCs money literally buys performance. Especially in terms of CPU and GPU. So it performs amazingly in everything I have played.My PC Hardware:CPU: i7-4790k.GPU: This one?.RAM: Kingston HyperX 2x4GB.SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 120GB for Operating System (Win 10 64bit) and Apps.HDD: 1TB Western Digital Green for games (and videos I record).Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare; This game runs amazingly at max settings excluding super sampling. There does not seem to be a noticeable difference with super sampling on. I see about 90FPS all the time during gameplay no matter what is going on in Campaign. In multiplayer the framerate is well over 100FPS with now stutter or slowdown.Skyrim; The game destroys skyrim. Okay that is expected. BUT it also runs rock solid 60FPS with ENB mod and Many many other graphical and physics mods active. The only Mods that hurt the framerate are those ridiculous grass mods. That drops the FPS around 40 sometimes which is a bit disorienting when in combat. Other than that it will handle any mod you throw at it with ease as far as I have seen.Tomb Raider (2013); Runs 60 FPS MAX with 2xSSAA (4xSSAA is just weirdly demanding. There is still plenty of VRAM left, system RAM, and I have a i7-4790k so i seriously do not understand what the problem is with 4xSSAA). The only time the game drops frames is during cutscenes when the camera gets close to Lara's Hair when TressFX is on. Other than that I have played through the entire game and noticed no other performance problems. You can check out a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP5C6aYIkik You will notice the only time it drops frames is when the camera gets close to her hair.Firestrike Demo: Scored 14,214 for Graphics Score. 11,895 for Overall Score. (Better than 87% of results it says)Now I do not know the power draw and all of those super specific kind of things but it only has 2 6pin power connectors which should tell you it is very power efficient for how powerful it is.The default fan profile is really quite and keeps the card from killing itself (along with throttling back).My card boost up to 1380MHz after GPU Boost 2.0 does its thing. I have tried lightly overclocking the card's GPU which worked fine but caused coil whine. I fixed the coil whine by setting the card back to default values then simply stressing it out with games and benchmarks for a little while. That method has worked for me but I would caution against OC the card further. I have since left my card at stock. (I will probably overclock it again anyway, I am weird like that lol).I tried bumping the RAM speed up a little. All i can see for this is do not do it lol. I do not know why but my card threw a fit and the graphics driver crashed. A LOT of reviewers of the base model 980 and all the 3rd party derivatives bumped the RAM speed up to a woping 7010MHz (10 from the base 7000MHz) and left it there. This card as you probably saw in the specs list Some said it was because of the way that power is allocated on this series (900) cards that OC the ram would take power away from the core so they just put all the OC effort into the Core. I think it is for a different reason but again I cannot be for sure.The moral of the story is this card can handle pretty much anything @1080p you can throw at it. And it looks nice....really nice. It is pretty. It is quite at base fan profile like all the other cards with this cooler. If you have the money for this and not the 980ti/Fury X i would recommend it.

I'm a conservative gamer. I even prefer to play with a controller. Hey, I grew up a console kid, no judgments from the PC Master Race. That being said, I was slow to join the darkside, but I have a lot of tech knowledge, so to not build my own gaming rig didn't make sense.So I finally decided instead of getting a PS4 (I actually did end up getting a PS4 for xmas, but I never use it), I would build a gaming rig. I started with an R9-280, but it couldn't quite keep up with me, so I tried the R9-290. It was a good card, but it liked to run hot, and I felt like the performance was not as strong as it should be. I considered the R9-290x, but it wasn't enough of a boost to justify the change. I also considered the R9-295x.The problem with the R9-295x is it's basically a crossfired card. The problem with crossfire (I tried it with 2 r9-290s), is it gives terrible micro stuttering (and BSOD too!). I can't abide micro stuttering or tearing at all. It's like nails on a chalkboard to me.After looking far and wide for the strongest single GPU card, all the benchmarks led me here, to the GTX980. The only problem is the price is a little high. Okay, it's a lot high, so I was expecting a lot of performance per buck. I did some initial benchmarking with the card against the R9290, and I was surprised at how well... the r9-290 kept up. I actually wanted the GTX980 to destroy the R9-290. After all, the R9-290 is at a price point of around $250 to $300 bucks. So the GTX980 being twice as much at $550, I expected twice as much power. Not so.That is not to say the GTX980 is not an amazing card. It is. And it is certainly better than the R9-290, but it is not incredibly, unbelievably better. It's about... 20% better. But where this card really shines is in a few different places.First, power usage and heat output. This card is probably 33% cooler than an AMD card, and that's a big plus. It means I don't have to worry about it overheating and can just get my game on.Second, I have also found it handles memory better, especially with games with high textures, like modding some games to death with 4k textures. It doesn't complain about it like a little girl. (i.e. crashing or black textures)Third, and most importantly, it runs much smoother than the R9290. This is a measurement that you don't see on benchmarks, but this card just gives consistent performance. And what I'm referring to here is dropping frames. You can run through a crowded street, and maybe your FPS will drop, but it does so consistently. 60...55...50...45...50...55...60. With the R9290, it's like 60...10...40...50...30...10...60. It jumps all over the map! It's annoying. But the GTX980 is just smooth.All and all, this is a 5 Star card, and I would buy it again. But to be fair, check your expectations at the door, and if you want something with similar performance but for a whole lot less, wander over the AMD camp. They have cookies. Nvidia has the cake :PPS Thumbs up for EVGA quality too!