ZOTAC STEAM Machine Unvielled: The SN970

Zotac has revealed a new SFF Machine with a STEAM OS in it along with other systems classified as STEAM Machines. The Zotac EN760 which set a good standard as a SFF PC with a powerful and efficient GPU is set to have a bigger brother in form of the SN970. The 970 in the serial number denotes a GTX 970M in it, which has twice or more the power of the 860M in EN760. I know Dell Alienware already has one in form of the Alpha but it's specced quite the same as the EN760 with the 860M installed.

I'm definitely sure this will be bigger than the EN760 as I reckon it'll be dimensioned the same size or similar size as a console. Still, it'll be pretty nice and small enough and like many Flat desktop or Horizontal Desktop Form Factors, you could simply save space by just plopping your monitor on top. Of course you can change the orientation as you'd like.

Zotac revealed that it will have a Skylake CPU which is the successor to Broadwell. Broadwell for the Desktop if memory serves, is not available yet so it makes me wonder what difference will Broadwell be against Skylake. So I'm a bit doubtful of the CPU's capability at the moment. But the GPU is proven capable, that is definite. The Maxwell Architecture really has set some solid ground from my GTX 970 SLI experiences despite the 3.5GB controversy. So I won't be surprised at its definitive performance. With 1280 Maxwell-based CUDA Cores and 3GB of Video Memory on a 192-bit bus, it's a definite sweet spot for Home Theater gaming at 1080p with an extent to even 1440p and 4K and more than enough for current today's AAA titles at close to maximum settings. I read somewhere on Zotac that the GPU is a MXM Module based card, so I guess it's possible to bump this up down the road should you want. We'll wait for November to be absolutely sure though. But if it is confirmed that this should be the case, this will be an awesome feature to have, especially in a event should your GPU happen to fry itself somehow.

One thing I notice that this thing has a crap tonne of HDMI! Those are nice to have, so if you plan to  go NVidia Surround, you can. Each HDMI is at the 2.0 standard and supports UHD resolution at 60Hz so 4K gaming is definitely possible there, especially given the horsepower of the GTX 970M. But this also functions as a HTPC and you'll want to have the option of plugging in some add-on players to record movies and TV Shows to your SN970.

The unit is set to launch in November. And as far as it's certain, I was told by Dennis from BeyondGeek, the retailer whom I personally bought my former Zotac GTX 780 AMP Card 1.5 years ago from, a high chance that a Barebone will be released as well. Knowing Zotac, they always sell barebones for their ZBoxes. I'll gladly look out for one because I want to transfer my 8Gigs of RAM and my 2.5" Samsung 840 250GB SSD from my X11 to here. But I'd definitely take a 64GB M.2 as my boot if you ask me. Likely a definite Win-Win for Zotac.

Rumored Specs:
CPU: Skylake 6th Generation CPU
RAM: 8GB SODIM
Storage: 64GB M.2, Provision for an extra 2.5" Drive in it.
GPU: nVidia GeForce GTX 970M (MXM, Maybe upgradable in future)
I/O: 2 x USB 2.0, 4 x USB x 3.0, 4 x HDMI?! (That's a lot of HDMI!) , Audio Jacks: Mic In and Speaker/Headphone out, SD Card (always nice to have), WIFI: 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0
OS: Steam OS, Optional Windows OS.

By the way, has anyone thought of using Steam Machines as a Hackintosh Mac Mini?

Front I/O: Power Button, Dedicated Audio Jacks, two USB 3.0 ports and the good ol' SD Card slot.

Very nice: Dual Ethernet, Wireless Antenna, And a crapload of HDMI.
2 USB 2.0s and another pair of USB 3.0s.

Graphics Cards of 2014: My Top 5 Choice!

NVIDIA SUMMARY

Well, nVidia have been pretty damn busy with their graphics cards especially with the new Maxwell Architecture. We had a first taste with the GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti, the latter being the base for the GTX 860M. They later released their flagship GTX 980 and their 2nd Highest tiered but very good Value-for-money GTX 970. They only did 2 GTX 900 series cards this year, their GTX 700 series lineup was establishing a stable foothold already in the GPU game. These 2 cards rocked the GPU Wars by storm when they were released in September 22. Before that they launched 2 CUDA Developer cards, the Titan Black and the freaking (and still) expensive GTX Titan Z, which I wasn't surprised to say that it wasn't popular due to cost to fulfill niche operations when heavy CUDA was needed.

AMD SUMMARY

That's not to say that AMD has been quiet either. Just to battle the GTX 700 series lineup, AMD released quite a craptonne. AMD was soft launching budget cards like the R7 250X, 265. AMD unleashed the AMD R9 295X2. This was the only card whose reference cooler is based off a Liquid AIO unit. Initially it was expensive at 1500 USD but now dropping prices drastically to combat the price of 2 GTX 970s in SLI, citing power comparisons. At least now this dual GPU Card has way much better value for money than it had way before. Now in between the high end and the budget end are the R9 280 and 285. The 280 was based off the old Tahiti 7950 which is still good today despite being almost 3 years old now. The 285 is based off the new Tonga core which is sorta the AMD counterpart to Maxwell.

MY TOP 5 CHOICES OF THE NEW 2014 GPUs

5. GTX 750 Ti
Highly Power Efficient and Budget friendly.

This was initially a taste of what is to come for later part of the year. This card was extremely power efficient for how much performance it could do. Most models do not come with a PCI-E 6 Pin connector but some do have it for overclocking Headroom. Older computers with a small wattage power Supply can breathe a new lease of life without taking out that dinky little PSU. The line of GTX 750 Tis cards are pretty small in general so these are ideal in small form factor HTPC / LAN Party / Low-budget gaming builds. For their size and performance per watt, gets the Number 5 spot from me. The only drawback is the lack of SLI connectors for Multi Way Configurations, which anyway, personally, is not the aim of any budget card.

4. R9 285
AMD's First Tonga Based GPU.

This was to supplement the 280 Series of R9 GPUs. Unlike the older 280 and 280 which were based off the 7900 series Tahiti cores, this was a power optimized Tonga GPU which is AMD's counter to Maxwell, sorta. Priced at a mainstream market, this GPU fulfills the mainstream enthusiast, whose performance is in league with the 280X but at a more power optimized envelope. Sapphire makes some of the best 285s with the mITX version being the most powerful of the mITX cards that Sapphire has made. However the cheaper models aren't any slouch either. The 285 makes a good 1080p gaming and to a strong extent 1440p too however with lack of VRAM being the bottleneck. However for a gamer who wants a strong affordable GPU, the 285 is a solid choice at Number 4.

3. R9 295X2
Enthusiast Level, power-hogging Performer

The king of AMD GPUs was an upgrade from the 7990. Now this is the first reference GPU that is has a hybrid Liquid / Fan cooling system, probably inspired by the ASUS ARES 7990 Card. Now the liquid cooling is needed for the Hawaii GPUs as these get really toasty. Their crap air blowers couldn't handle the 290Xs and 290s and they throttle down very heavily when they operate at 95 degrees all the time. So the Liquid cooling addressed the problem for this card for a more consistent core clock. Initially expensive at 1500 USD. However with the prices of the newer GPUs like the 980 and especially the 970, they had to cut it dramatically, citing power hogging requirements compared to 2 GTX 970s in SLI even though they perform at the same level. They offer the same new features like Mantle from the new GCN Architecture.

2. GTX 980
Maxwell Unleashed. Power Efficiency at its finest.

Palit Super Jetstream GTX 980
Owned by Darryl Leong after
swapping out his R9 290X.

The top of the line Maxwell GM204 at least till nVidia releasing Big Maxwell, it was released at the same time along with the GTX 970. This card was set to replace the GTX 780 and doubled the performance of a GTX 680. The GTX 980 brought about new changes to the table. And like the GTX 750 Ti, it is meant to be more power efficient without compromises. TinyTomLogan tested an i7 4960X with a GTX 780 Ti on a 450W and works fine, and Guru3D places 980's power consumption just under the R9 270X, which is SO down the freaking line!!! It was measured at 171W and 280W with another 6 core CPU. So when NVidia says you need to have a 500W PSU for a 980, you don't, really.

If you want to see the extent, take Gigabyte's new 3x Waterforce which is 3 Way SLI 980s on Steroids, even at factory overclocks, the Power Consumption is lower than 2 R9 290Xes (Could be a reference model) and very slightly more than one 295X2 (which is expected for 3 GPU vs 2 GPU but still a good show.)

The GTX 980 is the first new DirectX 12 Card from nVidia and supports Dynamic Super Resolution which brings the fidelity of 4K resolution to a small 1920 x 1080. Maxwells are also known for insane overclocking including the GTX 970s so for enthusiasts, overclocking is a dream. Darryl, who was using a R9 290X in last year's Top 5 GPU roundup upgraded to this card. He could get a stable 1.5GHz Core and a Full 8GHz on the memory. Now Value for money isn't the best, but it's fair for 500+ USD. My Number 2.

My Current Configuration of Palit
Vanilla GTX 970 and MSI Armor
GTX 970 in SLI.

1. GTX 970 / GTX 970 in SLI
High End Performance for Outstanding value.

All honesty, the best value for money in the high end range, with high performance per dollar value. It's not to say that the GTX 980s have bad money value but this line up generally cost as low as 5/8s the price of the GTX 980. You do have lesser Cuda Cores and Clock Speed than the 980 but these cards' insane overclocking headroom can bring these in line with GTX 980s. Power consumption is of course low. It uses 2 6-Pin PCI-E but actually this card could EASILY make do with just 1. But extra overclocking headroom, always nice to have. Back to value, if you can afford a GTX 980, splashing a bit of extra than that can give you 2 GTX 970s! In fact, this configuration is cheaper than some of the premium single GPU cards of the last generation including the GTX 780 Ti and the R9 290X. 2 Cards in SLI are possibly one of the cheapest gateways for playable 4K Experience. So for a well-rounded High End Card(s) without breaking much of a bank, GTX 970 and 2 of them in 2-way SLI earned a solid #1 Recommendation from me.

CoolerMaster Based LAN Party / Bedside Computer Endeavor Project - FINALLY

Finally I'm getting somewhere with my baby ITX Bedside / LAN Party Build with that Pentium G3258! I just need a storage drive then I'm good to go!

CPU: Pentium G3258,

I thought the Pentium K was something of a bit of a goof but for a LAN Party build, this is the perfect CPU to have as your heart. Overclocking will be the name of the game though for it's essential for an "acceptable or even a good gaming experience - LinusTechTips" on the freaking cheap. Once you crank speeds beyond 4.5 Ghz, most of the bottlenecks posed by the dual core processor will not be obvious anymore. And at that speed in terms of gaming, it can edge remarkably close to the even bigger Quad-Core / 8 Threaded Intel CPUs and the 8-core AMD CPUs.

Cooling: Intel Stock cooler.

This will be enough to cool it down but I may intend to replace with a good low profile CPU cooling since I plan to get it up to 4.5-4.6 GHz on this thing.

Case: CoolerMaster Elite 120

Nice CoolerMaster Case that I'm getting from a friend. Now I've been a big fan of the Elite 120 rather than the 130 because of its plain and IMO Flashier design for the front side of the case then the mesh grills on the 130. The only functional difference is the front USB Layout (1 x 3.0 and 2 x 2.0 on the 120, and 2 x 3.0 and 1 x 2.0 on the 130) which wouldn't mean too much jack. And of course the case being longer than the 110, I can fit a longer GPU should I wish to upgrade.

Motherboard: MSI Z87I LGA 1150 ITX

Overclocking ready motherboard, just needs a new BIOS, this I have ordered new from eBay. ITX LGA 1150 motherboard is what I need in this build. It has WiFi, which is nice which means I don't need to sacrifice a USB Port for a WiFi Adapter. It doesn't have eSATA compared to other competing Z87 ITX boards but that's one of the things which I never use at all.

It has been voted by TomsHardware as a Smart Choice for Z87I Board Options. So the link here is the article of the MSI Z87I.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z87-motherboard-roundup,3656-14.html

The entire board is black mostly, so it'll complement the external color of the case well and most of the stuff which I stuff in will also be black.

RAM: 8GB GSkill Ripjaws RAM DDR3 1600 PC 12800

I decided not to go with Corsair Vengeance as my primary RAM after so many failures with it. Of a grand total of 6 Sticks or 24GBs that I have, Half of the entire batch failed. 1 of the RAMs though did last for 3+ years so that RAM was decidedly lucky. So I ordered a pack of 16GB of GSkill Ripjaws RED RAM, and half of it will be reserved for this build. I won't require anything faster than 1600 since the Pentium G3258 is limiting bandwidth to 1333 anyways. It should be fine however either way since I've been switching between 1333 and 1600 in my Sandy Bridge build and performance difference seems negligible if any.

GPU: PENDING: ATI Radeon 5850 / Palit GTX 970

Now I'm in a bit of a dilemma on what should I use lol. I do have an ATI Radeon 5850 in store that was supposedly dead but it works while I was diagnosing my computer for that dead RAM last month. So that could be an option. Also, I thought that having 2 GTX 970s was a little on an overkill side so I thought of using the Palit GTX 970 to match the black build internally. However, the resolution that had been planned is for a 19" Inch Monitor at 1440 x 900 as a bedside computer so even a single GTX 970 will still be overkill for this build. But, the option's there should I feel like it.

POWER SUPPLY: 650W CoolerMaster PSU

This was the old Cooler Master Power Supply that I was using in one point, made quite a bit of a grinding sound which was why I swapped that to the Corsair RM1000 in my main machine. However, this PSU for a bedside rig should work regardless.

Peripherals: CM Storm Devastator Mouse and KB Combo bought from Lazada

Budget Combo of Keyboard and Mouse. And personally I didn't care whether it was mechanical keyboard or what. And since this is a bedside computer, and I'm gonna use it when it's pitch black, I need some lighting. The mouse that will come with it will replace the Battlefield 3 Mouse from Razer since it was spassing out double clicks whenever I try to click once which is ultra annoying. This will complement the general theme of Red and Black pretty well in the system.

GTX 970 SLI Review (Follow Up): Scores and Overclocking Journey

Now, I didn't post up scores in my last post. I had to redo it after an unfortunate thing happened to my RAM. One of my Corsair Vengeance Sticks Died so I'm down to 8 Gigs. In the process I swapped the card positions around and instead of MSI being the Top Card, the Palit returned its position as the top card for Temperature Control, as I found that with the MSI at the top, the temps become quite unbearable. As soon as I took it to the bottom, the Idle Temperatures of the MSI 4GD5T Armor Edition GTX 970 dropped Drastically by 25-30 Degrees C to around 31-34 Idle. I was able to get a much more thermal consistency which lead to more consistent overclocks and increased headroom.

Now I did quite a bit of overclocking tweaking and some of the legends you see are GTX 970 OC, GTX 970 SLI OC 1 and OC2

So how I tweaked them as follows:

GTX 970 OC: +222 Core Clock, 100 Memory.
GTX 970 SLI OC 1: 180 Core Clock, 294 MHz Memory, GDDR5 is at 7.6 GHz
GTX 970 SLI OC 2: 180 Core Clock, 394 MHz Memory, GDDR5 is at 7.8 GHz. - Final Stable Overclock

7.8GHz on the GDDR5! Fully Stable. That's very nice on SLI Cards!
I did have a GTX 780 in occasional scores, just to compare how much of a performance difference I get since that card.

Configuration of my Test System:

Core i7 2600K at 4432MHz
8GB RAM at 1648 MHz
128GB OCZ Vertex 4
2TB Western Digital Caviar Green
500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue
Corsair P8P67M-Pro
Corsair H70
1000W Corsair RM1000
Fractal Design Define R3
GPU 1: Palit GTX 970 "Vanilla"
GPU 2: MSI GTX 970 4GD5T "Armor Edition"

Swapped my GPU Positions around. Now Palit is the Top Card, and MSI is the Bottom Card

SOFTWARE BENCHMARK SCORES
3D Mark Firestrike: Standard, Extreme, Ultra
Catzilla ALL Benchmark

Seeing about 50-65% increase scaling all around. Not a good proportion but you can't get everything. It does however respond extremely well once I start tweaking. I am real chuffed to get 16,000 on FS Standard after overclocking to its current speeds.  I only had tested Ultra on SLI GTX 970s as prior to installing the SLI Config, the Ultra Benchmark mode hasn't been released yet. Still the scores would suck if I were to test FireStrike Ultra on a single card so I didn't bother. The 4788 score which I did post previously came as a surprise, after the first overclock I hit, but since then even with all the tweaks I can't get to beat that score.

*Update! I hit a stable 4896 after dialling my OC Memory back a bit! It was a good score nonetheless, thought you should know!

METRO LAST LIGHT

1080 HD Maxed, No SSAA

1080 HD Maxed with SSAA

A Very demanding benchmark indeed. I was initially having problems benching Super Sampling a single Palit Card, it crashed if I applied an OC. When I did OC the SLI setup, I could launch this without a hitch, so yeah no OC Single Card results. The score gap widens as I tune my GPUs. Notice at stock, the GTX 970 already beats the already OC-ed Zotac 780 I used to have. There wasn't good scaling from stock GTX 970 to GTX 970 SLI,  Very likely due to drivers. But tweaking to OC 2 Clocks nets some noticeable performance gains, especially Minimum Framerates.

BIOSHOCK INFINITE:
Ultra DX11, DOF

I didn't have stock GTX 970 SLIs as I completely forgot about them. However, that said, adding a second card really bumps Maximum framerates through the roof. It does respond well to the hefty overclocks I added in any case.

VALLEY BENCHMARK

I did show scores on 5760 x 1080 on Valley and I did say that having that on 3 screens looks absolutely stunning. However I didn't have scores for a single card config. On 1920 x 1080p, the GTX 970 OC had been benchmarked way before. So for a more apples to apples comparison. Apologies, no stock scores!

CONCLUSION

Now Overclocking was an absolute dream, a score of 16,143 on Firestrike Standard and 22,211 on Catzilla 1080p is the sort of results that I really should have! Again, 2 GTX 970s really is a sweet configuration for its price. So if you have the time, spend 2-3 days tweaking here and there. Now the scores will be better if I had a better CPU as it's currently the bottleneck atm. 1080p overkill? Depending on the game, no. Not so much, I thought this will be overkill, but I pulled my statement.

I did try 8GHz on the Memory but it started to artifact by then. So for now I dialled my clocks a bit back to 7.6GHZ on Memory and +175MHz on the Core just to get more stability.

We're talking in total 3328 Maxwell CUDA Cores, whose shader performance is equivalent to 5293 Cuda Cores according to Game-Debate, and near 500GB/s of Memory bandwidth. The bandwidth though is not optimal, seeing that this is on a PCI-E 2.0 based board. That said, hopefully I don't have to upgrade my Video Cards for at least another 3-4 years down the road, when that happens I won't sell it but I'll delegate it to something else once the future architectures are worth diving into.

That said, one 970 is good. Two is even better for the price. A quick update when the GTX 960 was released, I made a point why the 970s are so successful at LinusTechTip's Facebook post of the GTX 960 SLI video. The 970 has been an ideal value for 1440p gaming thanks to double bus width and double memory buffer and 2 970s in SLI are the cheapest gate to playable 4K gaming at near Maximum settings. Gaming currently at 1080p is overkill but that's all I got for now.

GTX 970 SLI Build! DESKTOP UPDATES DONE! MSI GTX 970 4GD5T / 'Armor Edition' First Look, SLI Testing.

Well, Earlier this week, I have bought this card here.

MSI GTX 970 4GD5T Armor Edition

Very Simple Unboxing, but comes with the following stuff:

- GTX 970 MSI Armor 4GD5T

- DVI / VGA Adapter - Usual stuff

- Instruction Manual - A LOT of languages.

- Driver Disc with MSI Afterburner

Now again the bad thing is the lack of Molex Power adapters. Frankly speaking though, if you're powering such a rig, then you should have a decent power supply for this. 

The Good: MSI encourages you to download the latest stuff, as printed on the CD. There's MSI Afterburner, but I use EVGA Precision X16.

Now taking a look at the card, the fan propeller designs remind me a lot of the MSI GTX 680 Lightning Edition card and some of the older Twin Frozr III Edition Cards. It'll still be better than a reference blower style cooler and since the Maxwell Architecture is heavily concentrated on Efficiency and power more than Kepler GK 104 and 110, this will be fine for what it's needed.

The Good: The GPU can take the heat better than the Palit Card can, and it's pretty quiet.

The Bad: It takes a LONG while to cool down itself on SLI, so airflow is needed.

But once it cools down, the MSI Armor Edition Card idles itself at as low as 28 Degrees Celsius, impressive still.

Inputs and Outputs: 

Now from the picture below, THIS is the IDEAL I/O that should remain standard for foreseeable years to come. It has two DVI (DVI-D and DVI-I), HDMI and Display Port. These same four ports were present on my last card the Zotac GTX 780 AMP! Edition GPU. Many people still are not using mini Display Ports as their main ports for their monitor. However if you're going 4K, then you'll utilize the Display Port later.

Below the MSI Card is the I/O for the Palit Card which has a mini HDMI Port, another DVI Port that supports Analog, and 3 mini Display Ports. They left completely the bottom slot blank as a way to ventilate air.

The MSI GTX 970 MSI Armor Edition's DVIs being populated.

GTX 970 SLI TESTING:

Palit and MSI GTX 970s in SLI. Quite a weird combination.

Core i7 2600K @ 4.5 GHZ
Corsair H70
Corsair Vengeance 12 GB RAM
Corsair RM1000
ASUS P8P67M-PRO
Fractal Design Define R3
GTX 970 #1: MSI GTX 970 4GD5T Armor Edition
GTX 970 #2: Palit GTX 970 Blower Card
128 GB SSD OCZ Vertex 4, 500 GB Western Digital Caviar Blue, 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green

Now this rig is powered by this. Now I have to tell you right off the bat, I didn't experience too ideal the scaling. Now the biggest possibility is that I'm being held back by the PCI-E 2.0 Based Sandy Bridge System and motherboard, and maybe using Windows 7 rather than 8.1 which will limit the memory bandwidth. And of course the board being micro ATX, I'm cramping both cards in that limits the amount of air flow that I can get to the top card. Ideally the bottom card should be at the bottom. However, there was a reason why I put the top card as my primary driver.

Now initially, with the Palit Card, after fitting in my new power supply, I found I was facing some glitches in some applications, such as Metro Last Light Benchmark (especially in Super Sampling added benchmarks) while I try to benchmark, as well as freezing after idling for 20 minutes. Now as soon as I put my MSI card in as my primary card, all these problems disappear, Could be a card problem for all I know. After SLI, the Palit could still be utilized.

In the system, the MSI Card does sag quite a fair bit at the Power connector side, so if you look closely, I place a large trouser button at the bottom right edge between the two GPUs to increase a bit of air flow since it's installed so close together with the ASUS P8P67M-Pro slot layout posing a problem to allow fresh air on the top card.

That said, the performance rates has dramatically improved nonetheless. But I definitely need a Christmas gift of an Core i7 5820K and a full ATX X99 platform after spending 950 SGD on a pair of Graphics cards. Because I am really gonna need it for ProTools which is FINALLY supported on Windows.

Scores to follow later......

CALL OF DUTY: Advance Warfare

The game has received a few patches, and it does seem to work well with SLI now. With it, I was actually able to turn everything to the Maximum, and added a serious 4 times Super Sampling, it's a bit choppy, probably because the 2 cards doesn't have enough memory to utilize it. However it was still able to maintain 50-60 average.

OVERCLOCKING AND TUNING

Playing around with clocks is as always quite a bit of fun to mess with as an experienced Overclocker. EVGA PrecisionX 16 is my tool of choice. You can tweak the cards individually to get the optimal setting you want; simply by unlinking their tweaks on EVGA's precision. It's also allows to get both cards to the same clocks but I don't need that. Here's what I come up with.

 

Every Card was given a +180 to the Core and +100 to the GDDR5, 100% stable.

Before and After Adding Overclocks. Initially the Overclock was set at each card + 163 MHz on Core and 50 at clock, And
after some tweaks, this new 180 MHz Core and 100 on Memory was what it took to consistently give me this.

That said, even with 10+% on additional overclock, net me a whopping 21% score increase, which was considered incredible.

5760 x 1080 TESTING:
Heaven Benchmark 4.0

This was a heavy, I mean a VERY Heavy stress test for the GPUs even when overclocked. It was basically Extreme HD Preset at 5760 x 1080 rather than 1600 x 900 (which those GPUs can sweep this resolution without breaking a sweat). As the frame rate tanks VERY heavily, the 2nd change was turning down Anti Aliasing to 4x from 8x. The result was:

Average FPS: 42.6
Minimum FPS: 7.6
Maximum FPS: 119.7
Score: 1072

Valley Benchmark

I have to say, Valley Benchmark really does look beautiful on 5760 x 1080. The Benchmark was run at the maximum settings possible. Nothing was turned down in any way. Still, we still get pretty playable frame rates

FPS: 33.8
Score 1415
Minimum: 11.1
Maximum: 86.3

EFFICIENCY: 

May I also like to point out, despite this heavy stress test, if you can look closely at the Heaven Benchmark Photograph, that even with the increased load, it was STILL not enough to turn the PSU fan on! I tried with FurMark, Same story. Bear in mind, it takes the PSU 40% load to turn on its fan, with that said, I could safely deduce that OC 970s and an OC Core i7 2600K are pulling less than 400 Watts from the wall, which is crazy! In all honesty, I wasn't even expecting that low of a consumption on these Maxwells. Some reviews I checked, the Power Consumption calculated, match the power consumption of a SINGLE R9 290X/290. I know I said this before so many times, but I always loved to re-iterate this fact as AMD better do something with this!

PRICE to PERFORMANCE:

I know I did spend almost 950 SGD (Almost a Grand) on Graphics Cards, (Actually 600 after deducting from the sale of GTX 780). Having said that though, safe to say, the cost of a single card is very nice; the price and what you get for two is even sweeter. It's only about 100 bucks more than a standard GTX 980 and with many of the higher end models, even including the higher tiered of GTX 780 Tis and the R9 290Xes (Especially those from ASUS and Gigabyte) costing more than the 2 GTX 970s I spent for. The GTX 980 is still priced fairly, at least still better than the GTX 780 Ti, taking into consideration power and heat efficiency. And for the performance matching the Titan Z, and beats handily a 295 X2, those cost considerably more. Gotta applaud nVidia's Maxwell for this one!

CONCLUSION:

This configuration is 4K ready, even at least in surround 5760 x 1080. 1920 x 1080p is overkill unless you're running on extreme super sampling tweaks on it. I didn't really get the ideal scaling that I wanted but this will have to do and it works otherwise pretty well. The only thing that will give me the best memory bandwidth utilization is going to a more updated platform and on a full size ATX Board.

My Christmas wish - a Core i7 5820K with a good ATX X-99 based motherboard and a better cooling rad! My two cards are really cramped especially the MSI Armor GTX 970 like a can of sardines in em'!

DESKTOP UPGRADES TIME! QUICKIE!

Couple of Quick Images! Then I'll elaborate more in the near future!

You may notice a different GPU and an clunky old CPU that has been in my system for a while.

Then I bought this baby. Man I was lugging this around after class to St. Ignatius
Church. If you wanna lose weight, haul these bad boys all day, they're heavy lol.

After Tonight's Upgrades.

SLI Endeavor / Main Computer: Palit GeForce GTX 970 (No Reference) Unboxing and Overview

Now this week I placed an order for the new GTX 970 which arrived at my doorstep. This is the base reference model of the card. This card is currently being sold at 329 USD which is converted 420 Singaporean Dollars. However, mark up and shipping costs will bump the cheapest model available at 509 SGD, 410 USD also from Palit. I did manage to get one at 459 (Including 7% Goods and Service Tax, so without it was 420SGD). This is the start of an SLI endeavor. This will require a bit more money and it will require me to sell my GTX 780. I was hoping that I didn't need to do this as with 2 new cards I could potentially setup a 2nd machine as a bedside computer.

I'm needing some divine intervention to win parts from Various Giveaways that I've been participating over and over and over. And this is an important project!

REASON

The reason I bought this as you might have guessed to replace the 780 I have. However, why replace such a good card already at this point? Well, as I said, I want to go SLI setup. And this will be the first time in 2 and a half years where I use 2 Graphics Cards in the system, the last being 2 Radeon 6970s that was really really hot and use more power. However the GTX 780 OC was consuming a tonne of power. And if I use an SLI Setup of stock GTX 970s, there's a chance that the Power Draw can be less than a heavily OCed GTX 780. And once I replace my Crappy Coolermaster 650W RS-650 PCAR PSU with something finally having a 80+ Medal (Bronze, Silver or Gold) PSU, the power savings will be a lot evident. What's more I just found out today that the CM RS-650 PSU is only 70% Efficient (OUCH!!!!!!), so actually I'm pulling off a lot more watts off the wall than I should!

And knowing GK 110 Kepler Overclock + 70% Efficient PSU: It's not an ideal combi.
80%+ Bronze/Silver/Gold...etc Certification + Maxwell is the way to go!

Also, the bigger 1GB GDDR5 Buffer will help in higher resolutions in the long run, at least have some head room when I run my Triple screen setups.

THE CARD

Well, enough talk, this topic is well an unboxing and overview of the card. It's just a simple one, without fuss.

The package that arrived from Convergent Systems: It's a plain white box.

The back of the box.

Well here's the back of the box that contains the general info about the card.

The Maxwell architecture has been well received throughout for its Power to Wattage ratio and it meant nightmare for AMD, This card after several reviews could already battle the R9 290X head-on. This is causing AMD to lower pricing of their cards to compete with the GTX 970 and 980.

Very simple unboxing

For now it's a very Simple unboxing:

It contains the:
- Palit GTX 970
- A Driver Disc, This is a starting point to get your card running but I strongly recommend downloading the latest definitions from GeForce.com
- Manual
- DVI to VGA Adapter: As always very nice to have on hand as it does work for Surround. These cards do call for stuff like display port monitors and all this, but hey. Include an adapter, why not.

The Bad which is very unfortunate:
- No mini HDMI to HDMI adapter and Mini Display to (DVI / HDMI or whatever) adapter
- No included Dual Molex to PCI-E 6 Pin connector

IO at the back: DVI (support Analog) 3 mini Display
in its typical backside view.

This is how it looks like in a typical orientation.
No Flashing LED. But that's not a bother for me.
Included is 2 6-pin PCI-E. TDP is about 145-150 Watts.

This card does support nVidia Surround plus an additional Auxiliary monitor. But the I/O isn't something that I like. It just requires me to go through the trouble of getting adapters for mini HDMI to HDMI and mini Display to DVI. However, there's a huge PC DIY complex next to LaSalle College of the Arts where I study so I'm able to stock up what I need. I was able to get an SLI Bridge which was actually an even bigger problem because major shops didn't have them as the bridges should come with your motherboard but I don't have one. No worries, easy remedy.

Tipping the card to its typical orientation, you could see the Palit logo. The card does measure just under 10 inches long, 245mm to be exact. Like most cards though, it's advisable to leave some extra length in your chassis for extra airflow.

The Typical stock GTX 970s normally have the Silver reference cooler with the LEDs. This one doesn't have it. Looks are subjective. And in this case of the Palit's base card, I'm not fussy with appearance. This is just fine. This card meant to be a cost saving. And 2nd my case doesn't have a window on it. Also seen are the 2 six-pin PCI-E Connector which is the same as most Maxwell GTX 900 series cards.

The specs are the same as the reference GTX 970 so you can look this up yourself in nVidia's GeForce website or finding Palit's website that has the spec sheet of the base card.

The Base Palit GTX 970 measures in about 24.5cm or 245mm
which is just under 10 inches from its bracket to the end of the card.
It's not that large compared to stuff like ASUS Matrix, Sapphire TOXIC.

BOTTOMLINE

This card is meant to be a simple cost effective way to get a  GTX 970 in your system. No frills just the lack of the ideal IO put me off somewhat.

In the near future, once exams are over, I'll start giving this card a whirl. Apart from the lack of stuff in this unboxing, the GTX 970 looks to be an exciting value card that nVidia finally cranked into the High-End Tier.

So you can expect some benchmarks to compare single and Dual GPUs at the end of November! So stay tuned! But first I need more money or somebody to give me a free GPU and a larger Power Supply!