EVGA's second fastest GeForce GTX 980 Ti
EVGA just added yet another graphics card to its GeForce GTX 980 Ti line. It's the GeForce GTX 980 Ti FTW featuring the company's ACX 2.0+ cooling technology and is billed as the company's second fastest GTX 980 Ti solution next to the K|NGP|N.
That brings the total number of GTX 980 Ti cards in EVGA's stable to ten. With so many cards based on the same core model, things can get confusing in a hurry, especially with EVGA's "second fastest" claim.
That's technically true -- the new card boasts a base clockspeed of 1,190MHz and boost clockspeed of 1,291MHz, up from Nvidia's reference 1,000MHz/1,076MHz clocks. However, EVGA's existing GTX 980 Ti Classified features the same clockspeeds and also uses the company's ACX 2.0+ cooling setup.
So, what's the difference? The Classified is actually a peg higher on the totem pole with a 14+3 power phase design compared to the FTW's 8+2 configuration, both of which are upgrades over the 6+2 design found on EVGA's lower tier GTX 980 Ti cards (including the Superclocked SKUs). According to EVGA, the 8+2 design gives the GTX 980 FTW edition an additional 25W of power headroom for overclocking.
Speaking of power, they also differ in their rated maximum power draw -- 300W for the Classified and 275W for the FTW. Otherwise, they're fairly similar parts.
The GTX 980 Ti FTW draws power from dual 8-pin PCI-E power inputs. It also has 6GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 7,010MHz on a 384-bit bus.
Cooling is handled by a pair of double ball bearing fans with a tri-phase, six-slot motor, three 8mm straight heat pipes with a contact plate, and a memory MOSFET cooling plate. EVGA also includes a pre-installed backlate and two BIOSes to play with.
The GTX 980 Ti FTW is available to purchase now direct from EVGA for $690. For the sake of comparison, the asking price for the Classified card is $700, though it's not yet available to purchase (there's an "Auto-Notify" button on EVGA's website).
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