10/27/2014 07:13:00 PM
dannzfay
We've written about plenty of products from NVIDIA's OEM partners, but not all the brands in that set are as well known as the others. Elsa is one of the less known companies that have a contract with NVIDIA for the making of custom graphics cards.
That doesn't mean that the outfit is any less capable of customizing the reference graphics cards until they're unrecognizable though. Not that making them unrecognizable is ever the goal. Since NVIDIA's brand is ultimately the strongest, all OEMs know better than to remove it. Not that contractual obligations would ever allow them to do such a thing, but we digress. Basically, Elsa has formally released a GeForce-series graphics adapter. A GeForce GTX 980, to be precise.
The Elsa GeForce GTX 980 SAC
Normally, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980 video board has a base GPU frequency of 1,126 MHz and a GPU Boost maximum speed of 1,216 MHz. The new one from Elsa, however, has base / boost clocks of 1,152 MHz and 1,253 MHz, respectively. Not a massive increase, but factory overclocks never are. What stands out more is the dual-fan cooler, although the black shroud doesn't really inspire awe, aesthetics-wise. The six big screws could have been somewhat less obtrusive too. Then again, unless you have a large side window and LEDs inside your case, no one's going to actually see the card anyway, so that's no big deal. For those who want more details, the cooler has an aluminum fin stack and copper heatpipes that directly pull heat from the GPU. The otherwise ugly screws are thumb-movable, so you can easily detach the shroud if you wish. Good for cleaning the dust that will gather underneath over time.
Other than the overclocking and the cooling, the newcomer doesn't have anything different from the reference card: 256-bit GDDR5 VRAM memory interface (4GB memory in total), 2,048 CUDA cores, 128 TMUs (texture mapping units), 64 ROPs (raster operating units), and five video outputs: three DisplayPorts, one HDMI 2.0, and one dual-link DVI.
Availability and pricing
The Elsa GeForce GTX 980 SAC should go up for sale soon, if it hasn't already, for a price not too far beyond the $549 / €549 of the original. Alas, with how many overpriced video cards there are on the market, we wouldn't be surprised if the OEM or retailers demanded more, as depressing as it sounds. There are models selling for $620 / €620 if you can believe it, assuming they're in stock at all.
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| Elsa GeForce GTX 980 SAC Image credits to 4Gamer |
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