GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 970 4GB G1 GAMING OC EDITION, GV-N970G1 GAMING-4GD

Pros: The GTX 970 is in my opinion the best well rounded GPU on the market. Gigabyte has done a great job with the cooler as they have with previous cards. This card delivers smooth 60fps @ 1080p on high-ultra settings with most games without a hiccup when paired with a Core i5 2nd gen or higher.

Cons: Gigabyte customer service is without a doubt the worst customer service of any PC component manufacturer on the planet so if you buy this product with the hopes of getting service within the warranty period you better keep your fingers crossed. About 10 months ago my friend told me he processed an RMA for a GTX 770 through Gigabyte and they flat out denied him stating he had replaced the thermal paste which he swore to me he didn't so they denied his claim and returned his card. This was the same GTX 770 he purchased refurbished through Newegg. Fast forward and I am in the market for a GTX 970 and it was a tossup between the Gigabyte and MSi and the only reason I went with Gigabyte was because of a rebate which I have yet to receive. I have had this GPU in total for almost 2 months. Right after my 30 day Newegg warranty was up I was directed to Gigabyte's RMA department because the GPU became unresponsive and stopped producing a video signal. I tried everything they suggested before I called including rolling back the drivers, installing new drivers and nothing helped. They finally gave me an RMA # and I was told to ship the card to them on my dime which cost me $12. I waited almost 2 weeks before checking the status of my RMA and when I did I was shocked. My RMA was refused because they claim I replaced the thermal paste with after market thermal paste which is a complete lie. After going back and forth with them on the phone they told me there was nothing they could do because I had altered the card and they would be shipping it back to me. So here I am today with a GPU that I spent neatly $400 of my hard earned money that is no more than a paper weight and there is nothing I can do about it. They will more than likely reply to this with some false effort to smooth things over but don't be fooled they don't care. This company will fabricate a lie to refuse your warranty claim.

Overall Review: When considering your next GPU or component for that matter steer clear of this company. You have been warned.

Pros: I'd like to share a few notes for those interested in using two of these for SLI. If you're researching this card or have read the other reviews, you've undoubtedly figured out this particular GTX 970 is the one you should invest in. For those of you who are researching between the 970 and 980, I wholeheartedly recommend the 970, as the frame difference between the 980 and 970 does not merit $200+ difference. If you want Maxwell in your system, this is the card you deserve as a system builder. On to the SLI notes. 1) Speech is silver, silence is golden. Indeed when I stressed my cards in 3DMark11, Unigene Heaven 4.0, AC4, BF4, ARMA 3, and Batman: AO, I could make out a low hum of fans with my speakers off. Playing with any volume from speakers, you're guaranteed to not hear your PC. This is an especially important note to make, since the 970s lack a blower-style cooler (except for some EVGA products), and SLI greatly benefits from blower coolers, like Nvidia's reference NVTTM. Gigabyte's Windforce 3x cooler makes short work of any heat, and stays unbelievably quiet. More on temperatures down below. 2) This is not a 1080p card for SLI. If you play games in 1080p, you'll reap great benefit from just one card. 970s in SLI for 1080p is a beautiful thing, but the extra money for it becomes difficult to justify. For those who plan to buy one now, and a second later - maybe when one card can't cut it anymore- by the time games with more taxing engines are release, Nvidia will have its next generation of cards out and you'll be better suited to pick up a new card. The only FPS metric I really cared to share is Battlefield 4, multiplayer on Caspian Boarder 2014. Anytime I checked my frame counter, I was drawing between 120-150 FPS, Ultra, 4x MSAA, 1080p. I dipped into the 90s once, I think, and looking at the skybox gave me 200. I bought these with the intention of upgrading to a 1440p monitor. So, TL;DR, SLI for 1080p is overkill, SLI for 1440p is more appropriate. Checking review sites will confirm this. 3) Temperatures. A vast majority of enthusiasts care about temperatures because of reasons. A small educational note, as long as the card sits below its intended temperature and is quiet in doing so, the card is fine. And the Gigabyte 970 Windforce delivers this in absolute spades. For reference, I have a Corsair 900D with fans bringing fresh air in the front, and fans exhausting out the top. Additionally, I water cool my i7 4770k @4.4 Ghz with a Corsair H80i, which pulls air from inside the case. This means the heat generated by the 970s will lower the cooling potential of the H80i. But, alas, my CPU experiences normal temperatures for that overclock while gaming and I have no complaints on this front either. Closing note, look no further than these cards, either single or SLI. For those who have hopes and dreams for SLI, I agree with you, but know that unless you game higher than 1080p, you'll get little benefit from a second card

Cons: This isn't for the Newegg crowd. This note is for the PR people who work at Gigabyte. Share this with your design team. Your card is a resounding success, and though I've bounced around between BFG from the 6600 GT days, to EVGA for my 7600 GT KO, to the PNY 8800 GT, a HIS Radeon 4870, and MSI for my 6970s and 7870s, know that I am now a believer in Gigabyte, and I will throw your name in the ring anytime video cards are discussed. But for the love of the Glorious PC Master Race, PLEASE make the Windforce logo an RGB LED. I want mine to glow white, like the rest of my system, not blue. Blue looks weird. I should have taken an egg off for this.

Overall Review: None, I think I made my points clear. I hope this helps fellow enthusiasts who want to know more about these cards and their behaviors in SLI.

Pros: Maxwell (and the features and performance that come with it) Incredible Cooling Factory OC Binned GPU Outputs Everywhere (2xDVI, 3xDisplayPort, 1xHDMI - Can use 4 at a time) Looks fantastic Excellent packaging It lights up? :)

Cons: Not a 980 312mm Length could be a con, check your case. I only have one for now

Overall Review: This card is long. It is over a foot long. It is 312mm or 12.28 inches long (according to Gigabyte's Spec sheet for it). There are many cases which could not support it. I recently moved into a Corsair 750d which has room to spare (supports up to 450mm) but no previous case which I've owned would have allowed the use of this card. If your case can hold this monster, it is a beautiful beast. For the pricepoint, which is admittedly a little higher than other 970s, you do get a few things You get a monster of a cooler that runs the GPU at its (already significant) factory overclock without going much over 60c. You also get a binned GPU (Gigabyte's 'GPU Gauntlet Sorting') which may allow you to push it even further if you are so inclined. Finally, you get a pretty blue LED 'WINDFORCE' logo. Yeah, there are cheaper 970s available to be sure. This is the route I decided to go and I'm glad I spent the extra $40.

Pros: Runs everything I've been throwing at it flawlessly Quiet Looks great in case with the lit up "Windforce" logo

Cons: The moment I read that the card is actually 3.5g, all of my games suddenly looked like they were running on Commodore 64 graphics. I am infuriated, and all of the smooth gameplay and crispness I was granted when I was FALSELY lead to believe that it was a 4g card went out the window. Everyone grab your torches and pitchforks right now, and let us march to Nvidia... ----Are they gone?--- Great! In all seriousness, I have no cons for this card. The only thing is my CPU, which is causing a serious bottleneck in certain games, but that's not the card's fault.

Overall Review: For those dealt a serious blow and are crushed by the 3.5 fiasco, put some peel and stick flames on the case. It'll really help.

Pros: This card is extremely fast. I switch graphic cards fairly often since I got back into PC gaming in 2013 (I went from Dual 7870s, to Dual 7950s, to a GTX 690, to a GTX 780 ti) Needless to say i'm insane but I love breaking and building my rig... Anywho... The Gigabyte G1 GTX 970 is the best price/performance/per watt card you can get for high end gaming. You get 85-90 percent of the power of a GTX 980 at default over clocks and this card at 60 percent of the price. here are some common metrics when playing games such as Crysis 3, TitanFall, Battlefield, and SHOGON 2: TOTAL WAR @1080P all setting to Max. GPU Temps: 58C max Total system power: 310W (I have a i7 4790K) FPS locked @ 60FPS with the except of Crysis 3. You could Tri-SLI these and still use much less power than a R9 295X2 at the same price but with 30-40 percent better performance. This card is also whisper quiet under load. The Card is also very overclockable I was able to get +500 memory clock and +185 Core clock and temperatures raised into the mid/high 60s.

Cons: I can't think of any at all. This is about as fast as a GTX 780 ti, consumes 40 percent less power, and is cheaper.

Overall Review: If money is no object at all to you then I would recommend a GTX 980 or a Titan Z, or an AMD R9 295X2. If you have a GTX 6 series single GPU, or an AMD 7 series single GPU or older then you will notice very nice bump in performance. I want to eventually Tri SLI these bad boys when I get my 4K TV.

Pros: Came from an AMD R9 290 and I was absolutely blown away by this card. Started up BF4 with adaptive V-Sync on my 120Hz BenQ XL2420T and noticed an immediate and dramatic difference in framerate (~20 more FPS at near Ultra settings 1920x1080), AA on transparent textures, and no screen tearing compared to R9 290 running with V-Sync off and the same video settings. Overclocking was a breeze too. While clocked at 1529MHz core | +37mv | 112% Power limit and running Unigine Heaven Extreme Tess-moderate 1920x1080 4x AA I observed the following: - GPU core temperature hit a max of 60C at 19C ambient (winter is coming) - Fan speed never went above 49% (very quiet) - TDP 80% max as measured by GPU-Z - Min FPS 34.8, max 129.1

Cons: - Big card at 312mm but my case is plenty big for it (Antec 1100v2) - Doesn't quite match a 980 in performance (duh)

Overall Review: If you can nail one of these during the small windows they are in stock you won't regret it!

Pros: Runs extremely quiet under load. I have been playing KOA Reckoning with everything maxed and HWmonitor that my temps do not break 37C! While this card comes with one of the highest stock overclock, the overclocking potential is phenomenal. Best out of all the gtx 970's and well worth premium. Also blue LED Windforce logo looks extremely sleek

Cons: None. Only thing I can think of was that I had to tuck in the black and red led wires that illuminates the logo into the card because the red wire does not match the rest of my build. Very minor.

Overall Review: Has a nice feature where LED can pulse based off audio output. Not very practical but fun.

Pros: This card is simply amazing. Out of the box boost clock (for me) is 1379MHz with overhead left to OC even further. The cooling solution by Gigabyte is very impressive, running a rather taxing Skyrim Enb that my old GTX 670 could only manage about 25-30 frames with temps as high as 66c-70c, the 970 runs at at a very smooth 50-60 frames (almost always 60) and only runs at 57c max that I have seen so far, considering this is with the 970's fan speed turned down quite lower than my 670's used to be, it's very impressive. That's even giving it a small bump to the GPU clock offset for an "extra" OC. The fans are extremely quiet, unlike my 670's blower style, which sounded like a vacuum cleaner and a hair dryer "getting it on" under load. I can't even hear the 970's Windforce cooler. Very Recommended. There's something seriously wrong if you are upset by this card's performance (or your standards are unrealistically high). It also has a massive amount of outputs. 1x DVI-I, 1x DVI-D, 1x HDMI 2.0, 3x DisplayPort.

Cons: The only "con" I can imagine is that it's quite long. That's not even a con, just something you need to check for. It's 12.28 inches.

Overall Review: Pretty much everything the reviewer about me has said is spot on. It's a great card at a great price. This sucker runs cool, quiet, and fast.