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?
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 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 | GF110 | GF110 | GK104 | GK104 | GK104 | GK110 | GK110 | GM204 | GM204 |
| Process | 40nm | 40nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm |
| GPU Core | Fermi | Fermi | Kepler | Kepler | Kepler | Kepler | Kepler | Maxwell | Maxwell |
| SM Units | 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 | 480 | 512 | 1344 | 1536 | 1536 | 2304 | 2880 | 1664 | 2048 |
| ROPS | 40 | 48 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 48 | 48 | TBC | 64 |
| TMUs | 60 | 64 | 112 | 128 | 128 | 192 | 240 | TBC | 128 |
| Core Clock | 732 MHz | 772 MHz | 915 MHz | 1006 MHz | 1046 MHz | 863 MHz | 875 MHz | 1051 MHz | 1126 MHz |
| Boost 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 | 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 | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 384-Bit | 384-Bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Clock | 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 | 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 | 43.92 | 49.41 | 102.5 | 128.8 | 134 | 166 | 210 | 145.0 | TBC |
| TDP | 219W | 244W | 170W | 192W | 220W | 250W | 250W | 148W | 175W |
| Power Connectors | 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 |
| Launch | 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 | $699 US | $299 Reference $329+ Custom |
$549 Reference $549+ Custom |
