swimsphinx

Because my current 120gb ssd just died (started throwing write and read errors everywhere) to the point where I had to move my windows on to my hard drive *shudders* i need my speed back

Are you going to be using another G10 on the 2nd card, putting them both in a custom loop, what are your plans here one air cooled on water cooled? Remember that cards in SLI can only go as fast as the slowest card so if your current 980ti isnt a great overclocker then your 2nd 980ti's overclocking ability doesnt matter past the point of the 1st card.

That power supply should be fine for the card (assuming it is functioning properly). If you tested the card in your build and it was perfectly fine then it is unlikely that it is the card that is the problem. It could very well be bad RAM or some other part in his build. Since it is an entirely new build we can't rule out any of the parts for being bad until we test for their instabilities individually. (hence the graphics card has already went through this and is unlikely to be the problem). See if you can get ahold of his computer again and run some memory tests along with swapping out your ram to see if that clears anything up. If you are convinced it is a hardware issue test each part individually until you can isolate the defective part and then come up with a solution. Without more detail about the crashes (display driver crashes, blue screen, full shutdown[this could point towards a power supply problem]) I can't give immediate advice or personal experience. Anyways good luck I hope you can find the problem .

Thats a very good ASIC score for a G1 gaming. Mine is 72.0%. However it does not necessarily mean that you will have a great overclocking card as the relation between ASIC quality and Overclocking is still very unclear and not fully understood by the community. All i can say is its a good indicator but the only way to find out the real ability of your card is to overclock it.

Ok well then yes I would definitely look over the specs of your PSU and full wattage tests and others experiences to make sure either that your powersupply will handle it or how much wattage you will need. The HX1000i might be able to do it, im not the greatest with wattage numbers and such (I have a 850w for 1 graphics card ) but I would definitely look into it before flashing and going all out with the cards

Theres no way you need a 1000W psu for a single graphics card regardless of what bios its running unless the thing has 4 8pin power connectors on it.

Just wanted to point out that to my knowledge the Gigabyte Xtreme gaming comes with samsung memory. There are even G1 gaming batches coming out with Samsung memory now.

for synthetic as people have said above Valley/Heaven and 3dmark are the general community favorites. But to really prove the stability of overclocks make sure to simply test them out in real games, real games can sometimes find instabilities that the synthetic benchmarks can't.

Gigabyte G1 gaming 1562mhz Get the one that you like the look of the most, costs the least by a good margin (for those outside the US where prices very greatly), or by your favorite brand, comes with the best features (rgb lighting, etc) the one that has the best warranty. Due to the silicon lottery any of these cards have the chance to outperform and outclock each other so don't factor in theoretical performance if you are looking to overclock. Go by the other benefits that the cards come with. I would recommend the classified most people generally like the ACX 2.0 cooler look, it comes with great EVGA warranty, and its power phases 14+3 and custom PCB mean in general the card will not be the thing holding back performance rather the chip (silicon lottery). But ultimately the decision is yours to weigh all these variables and make your own choice. Regardless any of the above you chose while they may not overclock to 1550mhz they will tear up current games and perform great.

From what im reading here it sounds like you already have the latest OC Guru II down loaded but cant get it to run?? The program opens and automatically minimizes itself to the system tray, find it there right click it and choose open to actually have the UI show up. If thats not the problem then I would suggest uninstalling and reinstalling in hopes that it was just a bad download

running a 1440p 144hz and never experienced this problem in the first place. But if you just recently updated your drivers and the problem went away it seems very likely it was a driver specific problem or a corrupted driver problem

Probably one of the most insightful things i've seen on this forum

Gigabyte doesn't have the customer support of EVGA or MSI but their build quality is just as good as the others and as for performance everything really comes down to the silicon lottery... ex say hello to my 1562mhz 980ti from Gigabyte, that doesnt sound like bad performance... because it really comes down to luck of rolling the dice to see if you get a good chip. To OP: Performance wise any of these GPUs can out clock / outpeform each other purely due to the silicon lottery. All of their build qualities are good. MSI and EVGA typically do have better customer support but unless you get really unlucky or misuse your card you likely should never have to use the customer support. Also the G1 gaming is White with Silver stripes in the white border, it does have 7 LED color options (I use red) but the white seems to be slightly off color compared to pure white (just a consideration if you are really stuck on the all white theme and something I noticed with my card I can't speak for every G1 Gaming). Other than that I would add the GALAX HoF (all white card, even the PCB) would work well with your build and offers just as good performance as any other aftermarket 980ti.

Hybrid will run the coolest but is only a reference board so in theory its OC ability is less than the others (also its very expensive for its relative performance). The G1 Gaming is a nice mix of custom PCB with decent thermals and in theory better OC ability. Also it has a generally modest theme with 7 color LEDs to match most cases (costs the least of the 3 anyways best price to performance) The matrix comes with all the goodies for extreme overclocking will run pretty cool (about the levels of a G1 maybe a bit better) has the best custom PCB. And comes with the most sensors. In theory it has the best OC potential. This all disregards the silicon lottery as any of these cards could out perform the others given luck (ie my G1 gaming can get up to 1562mhz something any model of the 980ti would struggle to attain without luck. Choose the one that you like the most has the best warranty, is the cheapest, has the most features you like, or matches your case best as the silicon lottery will be the main deciding factor in the end performance of your GPU. -pls forgive any typos or confusing sentences.. Im on my phone will edit for grammar and such later when im at my computer

You didn't overclock it at all yet? because im pretty sure(99%) 1544mhz is outside of the boost table of 980tis without manual overclocking. If you did manual overclock then congrats you can probably push 1550+ easily.