EVGA has teased their next generation GeForce GTX 980 and GeForce GTX 970 graphics card which will make use of their latest ACX 2.0 cooler with ball bearing design. The GeForce GTX 980 and GeForce GTX 970 will be the first true high-performance Maxwell graphics card which will feature one of the most efficient GPU in the history of the graphics industry.
EVGA GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 To Feature ACX 2.0 Cooler
One year ago, EVGA who are one of the major and most recognized board partner of NVIDIA released their ACX cooler for the GeForce GTX 780 and GeForce GTX 770 graphics cards. Those were the first NVIDIA GeForce 700 series cards to hit the market at that point of time and now that Maxwell GeForce 900 series is arriving, EVGA is yet again preparing a new variant of their ACX cooler known as the ACX 2.0. EVGA hasn’t gone with any fancy name for the card and just kept things simple by calling it ACX2 (Active Cooling Xtreme 2.0). EVGA has uploaded a teaser video of the ACX 2.0 cooler on their YouTube page which can be seen below:
EVGA is calling their cooler “The World’s Most Efficient Air Cooler”. Those numbers show that EVGA is pretty confident that they’ll be able to tackle some non-reference and custom coolers such as the Twin Frozr V from MSI, STRIX DirectCU II from ASUS, Phantom from Gainward and WindForce from Gigabyte. EVGA specifically claims the most efficient which means that the cooler will adopt a new design scheme such as the ball bearing fans which will help regulate air flow much better than most cooling solutions out in the market at little to no noise output. We have already seen some good designs from other AIB partners but NVIDIA has to be thanked for this since their NVTTM cooler is a formidable cooling solution which pushes the AIB partners to release new and better cooling products of their own. I personally love the reference design NVIDIA has adopted since Titan but the cooler has been overused and to see it being featured on the GTX 980 once again makes things little exciting. The specifications of the card themselves might be good but I wish we would have seen an improved reference design from NVIDIA. But why change something that does the job well and performs good?
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Alright so back to ACX 2.0, the card teases by NVIDIA is basically a render so its not the real GTX 980 or the GTX 970. What you can tell is that the cooler makes use of a dense aluminum fin array with unusually large, denser heatpipes. There are two cooling fans (100mm) on the shroud and from the looks of it, the shroud is almost as same as the older ACX 1.0 cooler so the changes mostly lie underneath the shroud. There are some facial and design changes here and there but the scheme is similar. Under the hood, we can find the specifications listed in the following chart.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980 Specifications:
GeForce GTX 470
GeForce GTX 480
GeForce GTX 570
GeForce GTX 580
GeForce GTX 670
GeForce GTX 680
GeForce GTX 770
GeForce GTX 780
GeForce GTX 780 Ti
GeForce GTX 970
GeForce GTX 980
Codename
GF100
GF100
GF110
GF110
GK104
GK104
GK104
GK110
GK110
GM204
GM204
Process
40nm
40nm
40nm
40nm
28nm
28nm
28nm
28nm
28nm
28nm
28nm
GPU Core
Fermi
Fermi
Fermi
Fermi
Kepler
Kepler
Kepler
Kepler
Kepler
Maxwell
Maxwell
SM Units
14 x 32
15 x 32
15 x 32
16 x 32
7 x 192
8 x 192
8 x 192
12 x 192
14 x 192
13 x 128
16 x 128
CUDA Cores
448
480
480
512
1344
1536
1536
2304
2880
1664
2048
ROPS
40
48
40
48
32
32
32
48
48
TBC
64
TMUs
56
60
60
64
112
128
128
192
240
TBC
128
Core Clock
607 MHz
700 MHz
732 MHz
772 MHz
915 MHz
1006 MHz
1046 MHz
863 MHz
875 MHz
1051 MHz
1126 MHz
Boost Clock
1215 MHz
1401 MHz (Shader Clock)
1464 MHz
1544 MHz (Shader Clock)
980 MHz
1058 MHz
1085 MHz
900 MHz
928 MHz
1178 MHz
1216 MHz
Memory
1.2 GB GDDR5
1.5 GB GDDR5
1.2 GB GDDR5
1.5 GB GDDR5
2 GB GDDR5
2 GB GDDR5
2 GB GDDR5
3 GB GDDR5
3 GB GDDR5
4 GB GDDR5
4 GB GDDR5
Memory Bus
320-Bit
384-Bit
320-Bit
384-Bit
256-bit
256-bit
256-bit
384-Bit
384-Bit
256-bit
256-bit
Memory Clock
3.34 GB/s
3.69 GB/s
3.80 GB/s
4.0 GB/s
6.0 GHz
6.0 GHz
7.0 GHz
6.0 GHz
7.0 GHz
7.0 GHz
7.0 GHz
Memory Bandwidth
133.34 GB/s
177.4 GB/s
152.00 GB/s
192.4 GB/s
192.0 GB/s
192.0 GB/s
224.5 GB/s
288.6 GB/s
336.0 GB/s
224.5 GB/s
224.5 GB/s
Texture Fill Rate GT/s
34
42
43.92
49.41
102.5
128.8
134
166
210
145.0
TBC
TDP
215W
250W
219W
244W
170W
192W
220W
250W
250W
148W
175W
Power Connectors
8+6 Pin
8+6 Pin
6+6 Pin
8+6 Pin
6+6 Pin
6+6 Pin
8+6 Pin
8+6 Pin
8+6 Pin
6+6 Pin
6+6 Pin
DirectX 12 Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Launch
March 26th 2010
March 26th 2010
December 7th 2010
November 09 2010
May 10th 2012
March 22nd 2012
May 30th 2013
May 23rd 2013
December 2013
18th September 2014
18th September 2014
Price
$349 US
$499 US
$349 US
$499 US
$349 US
$499 US
$349 US
$499 US
$699 US
$299-$329 US
$$449-499 US
EVGA ACX 2.0 Cooler:
The post EVGA GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 To Feature Next Generation ACX 2.0 Cooler With Ball Bearing Design by Hassan Mujtaba appeared first on WCCFtech.