Nvidia’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) latest generation Maxwell-based cards by themselves offer a lot of features for the price, and today the vendor is sweetening the deal further by bundling free games. The card manufacturer is collaborating with Ubisoft (EPA:UBI) in providing free title with every purchase of a new video card.

The “Pick Your Path” promotion, which is valid until the end of the year, entitles customers purchasing a GeForce GTX 980, 970, 780 Ti, or 780 to one free recent title from Ubisoft.  Options include highly anticipated games such as Assassin’s Creed Unity, Far Cry 4, or The Crew.

Nvidia has selected the aforementioned games as they highlight its GameWorks technology. The vendor mentions that each games features “HBAO+ for realistic shadows and TXAA for cinema quality smoothness and enhanced 4K support.”

Nvidia is also detailing the in-game enhancements that the vendor was able to carry out through its partnership with Ubisoft, which in Far Cry 4 sees the introduction of Nvidia’s updated GodRays technology along with HairWorks.

As for the games themselves, Assassin’s Creed Unity is set to launch on November 11, with Far Cry 4 set to follow a week later. The Crew is launching on December 2. Each game retails for $59.99, so if you were looking to pick up a new Nvidia card, the above promotion is a great chance to get a game for free as well.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) also offers similar bundles with its video cards, which have seen a series of price cuts following the announcement of the GTX 980 and 970. The most recent battle between the two vendors involves AMD accusing Nvidia’s GameWorks technology as being a “clear and present threat to gamers.” The issue arose when AMD realized that it was not able to optimize games that featured the technology on its video cards. It should be interesting to see how this current battle plays out.

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Gold is not limited to the mobile and tablet segments anymore, as MSI (TPE: 2377) has launched a limited edition GTX 970 with a gold paint job. The folks over at KitGuru managed to get a look at the card over the weekend at Beat IT 2014, with MSI set to formally announce the video card sometime later this year.

MSI’s Twin Frozr design is one of the most efficient cooling systems around, and in its latest iteration — Twon Frozr V — the manufacturer has decided to go with two 100mm fans over the heat sink. The GTX 970 is available in several variants: there’s the Gaming edition which features a red and black color scheme and a core clock of 1076 MHz in gaming mode, a 4GD5 version that is aimed at overclockers which features a base clock of 1051 MHz, and a 4GD5T variant which comes with an enhanced fan design. All three models feature 4 GB GDDR5 video memory, and are also available in factory OC versions. 

With the gold edition, MSI is able to push the clocks higher by fusing the solid backplate with a copper heatsink instead of aluminum. The cooler shroud also gets a gold color treatment, and the copper heat pipes surrounding the heat sink are exposed to accentuate the golden look. At the back, the MSI logo gets a gold paint job too, and the vent around backplate features a vent design that is different from other cards offered by the vendor.

There is no word on the clocks, but it is likely that MSI will be looking to offer the card as a factory overclocked edition. The added heat dissipation should give users sufficient headroom to overclock the card further. No details on availability yet, or the regions MSI is looking to offer the card in. Pricing is similarly an unknown at this stage. 

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Since the September launch of Maxwell for high-end, we’ve seen Nvidia launch the GeForce GTX 980 as well as the GTX 970 and their accompanying mobile bretheren, the GeForce GTX 980M and GTX 970M. Now that Nvidia’s high-end GPU has had roughly a month of sales, we want to take a look at how well they’re doing and exactly why they are doing so well or so poorly. The GTX 980 is going for anywhere between $549 and $599 and the GTX 970 is selling for anywhere between $329 and $409.

We first decided to talk to some retailers, specifically some etailers across the globe. From our conversations with them they had indicated that they are essentially selling as many GTX 980s and GTX 970s as they possibly can and that when the cards had initially launched, they had difficulty keeping them in stock. Now, if we look at the stock situation for the GTX 980 and GTX 970 now, it appears to be better. A quick stock check of GTX 980 and GTX 970s on Newegg shows a fairly good amount of cards in stock, while some others are still out of stock or on order. If you look on Amazon, you can actually see that other than the ‘budget’ cards like the GTX 750 Ti, 8400GS and HD5450, the rest of the top 10 cards on Amazon are all GTX 980s and 970s, mostly being 970s. Do keep in mind that Amazon’s numbers are a rolling total, rather than a weekly or monthly figure meaning that the relatively new GTX 970s are already selling like crazy.

This lines up with what we’ve been hearing from our retailer friends who have all said that the GTX 970 is their best selling graphics card and that in many cases people are buying two of them at a time because of their relatively inexpensive price of $329. Two GTX 970s in SLI is going to be a lot more powerful than a single GTX 980 and only at a $100 price premium, if that. The retailers we spoke with also indicated that they had double digit SLI sales (dual 970) and it continues to be the best selling card that they have in their inventory. Some retailers even said, if they had more cards available to them, they’d probably sell even more.

In addition to retailers, we also polled a few system builders anonymously. In their case, we saw essentially the same behavior with the GTX 970 being the most popular card that they sold and the GTX 980 coming in second after it. Considering the $220 price difference, that doesn’t seem that far fetched. All system builders also indicated that the release of these cards, like many graphics card launches, helped boost sales significantly the the point where they could actually measure the difference in demand.

The really big factor here in all of this is that Nvidia has had an incredibly strong launch and has sold more cards than we’re actually able to count. What’s more interesting was that one of the retailers pointed us to a fairly thoughtful point, we haven’t officially broken into the holiday buying season yet and they believe that Nvidia’s graphics card sales are going to skyrocket during the holiday season. And considering how dominant the GTX 980 is in benchmarks, they suspect that many GTX 980 buyers are going to wait until the holiday season when they’ve been able to save up more money or get their holiday bonuses. The GTX 980 is a more expensive card, which is what’s partially keeping it from being as successful as the GTX 970. That’s primarily because the GTX 970 is 30% cheaper and only about 10-20% slower than the GTX 980, the more affordable card will always sell better than the highest end card if it delivers a good value, which the GTX 970 undeniably is.

So, we’ll be looking towards this holiday season to see exactly how well Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 do, but if early sales figures are any indication they are going to do extremely well and have a fantastic quarter.

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Now that the Maxwell-based Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) 9xx series is official, hardware vendors are starting to offer their custom variants. Zotac, known for its overclocked video cards, is catering to all segments of gamers by offering three video cards based on the GeForce GTX 970 — a reference design, an enthusiast overclocked model that features higher clocks, and an extreme edition that features three cooling fans.

Zotac GeForce GTX 970

The reference GTX 970, which Zotac is referring to as the Zotac GeForce GTX 970, has dimensions of 204 mm, which should allow it to fit in most mid-tower enclosures with ease. The rumors surrounding the GTX 9xx series and HDMI 2.0 turned out to be spot on, as Zotac’s card features a HDMI 2.0 that can output 4K at 60 Hz in addition to two dual-link DVI that can output a quad-HD resolution of 2560 x 1600, and a DisplayPort 1.2 that can also handle a 4K output.

The stock GTX 970 has a base clock of 1076 MHz, boost clock of 1216 MHz, 1664 CUDA cores and 4 GB GDDR5 video memory on a 256-bit memory interface. The card features two 80 mm fans, and is quite energy efficient, with a maximum power consumption figure quoted at 145W. As such, the card features two 6-pin power connectors.

Every manufacturer is looking to differentiate its offerings from other vendors in this space, and Zotac is doing so by offering something called Power+, which the vendor claims is a more efficient way of power delivery, which is achieved by using high-quality capacitors that are claimed to last times longer than what is the industry standard.

Zotac is also offering quick customization by way of a utility called FireStorm, through which you can monitor real-time statistics, set profiles and overclock the video card with ease. 

In addition to Zotac-exclusive features, the DirectX 12-enabled GTX 970 comes with Nvidia’s suite of technologies that include Nvidia G-Sync, GameStream and GameWorks among others.

Zotac GeForce GTX 970 AMP! Omega Edition

The Omega edition falls in between the standard variant and the extreme overclocked version. While the reference design is a dual-slot card, the omega and extreme editions take up three card slots. With a length of 268 mm, the omega edition should not have any issue fitting into cabinets. Both the omega and extreme editions have the same display connectors, which include one HDMI 2.0 and three DisplayPort 1.2, both with 4K output, as well as a dual-link DVI that can handle resolutions of 2560 x 1600.

Being a factory overclocked model, Zotac’s GTX 970 omega edition comes with base clocks of 1102 MHz and boost clocks of 1241 MHz, with other specs similar to that of the standard GTX 970. The overclocked model is not as power efficient with a maximum power consumption of 171W, but it is still far and beyond better than anything else we’ve seen in this category thus far. For instance, the R9 290 hits 300W with not much effort. To accommodate for the increased power draw, the omega edition comes with two 8-pin power connectors.

While the stock Zotac GTX 970 featured standard 80 mm fans, the omega edition comes with two 90 mm fans that feature grooved fan blades, which Zotac claims assists in better air flow. In addition, the GTX 970 Omega edition comes with a more durable frame surrounding the card, which Zotac is calling ExoArmor. The card also comes with the Power+ and FireStorm utilities, and in addition features a dedicated power controller that communicates with the video card via an internal bus. This bus has a micro-USB out, which when connected to an internal USB header on the motherboard allows you to access a wealth of settings that can be changed in real-time using FireStorm. Brands like Corsair have been doing this since last year with power delivery systems and coolers, so it should be interesting to see how this feature works in real world conditions.

The new cooling fans and the overclocking potential means that the Zotac GTX 970 is a worthy contender for gamers looking to invest in a mid-range card that offers the most bang for the buck.

Zotac GeForce GTX 970 AMP! Extreme Edition

As the name indicates, the extreme edition is designed with enthusiast gamers in mind, and comes with a host of features that are not present in the first two cards. Let’s first delve on the design: the GTX 970 extreme edition is aptly named, as the card looks beastly with the three cooling fins and the gunmetal color scheme. When it comes to dimensions, the GTX 970 extreme edition has a length of 300 mm, which means that you have to check your enclosure (or invest in a new one) to accommodate the card.

The GTX 970 extreme edition is clocked at 1203 MHz base/ 1355 MHz boost, and has 1664 CUDA cores, 4 GB GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit interface, with a memory clock of 7200 MHz. All this with a power consumption of 176W, which is delivered through two 8-pin connectors.

The three cooling fan solution, dubbed IceStorm, features three anti-rotational 90 mm fans that are designed to maximize air flow. Although the card is factory overclocked, the design allows for a lot of overhead when it comes to even further overclocking, which we’re sure enthusiast gamers would take full advantage of.

A unique feature in the GTX 970 is the LED lighting scheme, which is called LIGHT.id. If you’ve got a windowed side panel and are inclined to show off your hardware, the red color scheme is ideal for you. The card also has a green color scheme when in 2D mode. If you want to, you can disable the feature via the FireStorm utility.

The extreme edition also comes with a dedicated OC+ button that allows you to fine-tune your card settings, and all the other features available in the omega and the standard versions.

All three cards come with a five year warranty, with US and Canadian customers getting an addition two year extended warranty. Pricing information will be available closer to launch.

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MSI Germany has teased a render of a card running the hardware vendor’s new TwinFrozr V cooling solution. While the card in question has not been confirmed to be the GTX 970, it is believed that the TwinFrozr design will launch alongside Nvidia’s upcoming video card. The render reveals a two-tone design featuring a red and black color scheme for the cooler.

In the Facebook post, MSI mentioned that the new TwinFrozr V enabled cards will come with “fantastic new features”, not elaborating on what features the manufacturer will offer. From what’s known thus far, the GTX 970 will be based on the 28 nm GM204 silicon, and will feature 1,664 CUDA cores138 TMUs and 32 ROPs across a 256-bit wide memory interface along with 4 GB video memory. The card is said to be based on the Maxwell architecture, with leaks referencing core clocks of 1051 MHz and boost clocks of 1178 MHz. While the image shared by MSI is a render, the folks over at VideoCardz have managed to snag an image of what appears to be the actual card: 

As for pricing, a retailer has revealed that the GTX 980 will likely be available for around $730, with the GTX 970 estimated to be in the vicinity of $450. The GTX 970 is said to take on the likes of AMD’s R9 290, while the GTX 980 is said to be the successor to the GTX 780 Ti, and will be the fastest single-card solution from Nvidia. Earlier rumors suggested a $400 retail tag for the GTX 970, and $500 for the GTX 980, so the prices quoted by the retailer do seem inflated. There is no way to confirm the prices, so we advise you take the information with a grain of salt. 

The spate of GTX 970 leaks are the clearest indication yet that we’re close to an official announcement. While a launch date has not been confirmed by Nvidia, it is believed that the chip vendor will leverage its 24-hour gaming event, Game24, to unveil the GTX 970 and the GTX 980. Nvidia’s gaming event is scheduled to kick off September 18, which is when we should know more about the upcoming cards.

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