HIS Radeon R9 390X IceQ X2 OC

MSI GeForce GTX 980 GAMING 4G Specifications

GeForce GTX 980 is no longer the fastest single-GPU offered by NVIDIA, however it is without a doubt one of the most popular cards around. Radeon R9 390X is direct competitor to GTX 980, as both cards offer similar performance.

GeForce GTX 980 comes with GM204 GPU equipped with 2048 CUDA cores, 128 TMUs and 64 ROPs. All GTX 980 cards are featuring 4GB 256-bit memory configuration — higher capacities are occupied by 980 Ti (6GB) and TITAN X (12GB).

MSI GTX 980 GAMING is factory overclocked to 1216/1317 MHz, with memory speed left at stock 1753 MHz.

Card features custom made PCB with dual 8pin power connectors. The cooler is a new version of Twin Frozr V solution. The best feature of 980 GAMING is definitely the ZeroFrozr technology. Simply put it disables the fans when card is in low power state (when temperature is below 60C).

MSI GTX 980 GAMING also features HybridFrozr technology, which in my opinion is even more interesting. HybridFrozr is basically ZeroFrozr technology for each fan. In other words, while one of the fan starts spinning at 50C, the other will start at 60C. This technology was designed for two reasons: two avoid higher temperatures at idle state (thus improving environment required to sustain longer lifespan of components), and to keep card very quiet.

The only problem with Hybrid Frozr technology is that 50/60C is quite common temperature for GPU, especially during web browsing. That said those fans will start to work non-synchronously every few minutes. After using this card for few months, I can actually tell the difference which fan has just started spinning. It may sound funny, but it gets annoying over time. The good news is that Hybrid Frozr can be controlled through special MSI app called Independent Fan Control. It can be disabled with one click, which I did.

Here are the specifications of MSI GTX 980 GAMING.

MSI GeForce GTX 980 GAMING 4G Specifications
	GTX TITAN X	GTX 980 Ti	MSI GTX 980 GAMING	GTX 980
Picture
GPU Codename	GM200-400	GM200-310	GM204-400	GM204-400
Unified Cores	3072	2816	2048	2048
TMUs	192	172	128	128
ROPs	96	96	64	64
Base/Boost Clock	1000/1089 MHz	1000/1076 MHz	1216/1317 MHz	1127/1216 MHz
Memory Clock	1753 MHz	1753 MHz	1753 MHz	1250 MHz
Memory	12GB GDDR5	6GB GDDR5	4GB GDDR5	8/4GB GDDR5
Memory Bus	384-bit	384-bit	256-bit	512-bit
Bandwidth	337 GB/s	337 GB/s	224 GB/s	320 GB/s
Power Connectors	8pin + 6pin	8pin + 6pin	8pin + 8pin	8pin + 6pin
TDP	250W	250W	165W	165W

Four heat pipes