Power, Temperature and Noise
We're often surprised at the increase in system-wide power consumption when overclocked cards are in use. But the numbers don't lie - switching from a reference GTX 980 to MSI's Gaming 4G sees power draw increase by up to 26 per cent. The 250-watt reading is still low compared to rival GPUs, but it does take away some of the lustre of the efficient Maxwell architecture.
We've yet to see a GTX 980 that runs hot. Strap a Twin Frozr V on top and it's no surprise that cooling performance is excellent - the GPU barely tickled 67ºC when gaming. The idle temperatures are perhaps more interesting. Gigabyte's card runs cooler when there's no load, but has fans that are always active. MSI's Gaming 4G, like Asus's Strix, runs a touch warmer but it is silent when temperatures are low.
And silent at low-load is only telling half the story. MSI's GTX 980 Gaming 4G remains nicely subdued under load, and it's this attribute that makes custom GTX 980s so appetising. Truth be told, the performance gains over previous-gen cards are nothing revolutionary. What's clever is that these modern enthusiast cards consumer less power, run much cooler and make far less noise. Win, win, win.