KFA2 GTX980Ti HOF Hall of Fame Edition Review

Conclusion

Whenever we are reviewing something it is vital that we remain impartial and neutral. Clear our minds of any preconceptions and focus upon what is in front of us and how it performs. Expectations are, after all, largely at the root of all disappointments.

With the KFA2 GTX980 HOF we had no ideas of what it might achieve. We knew that the KFA2 GTX580 had been great, but that was a long time ago. So we were blown away with the manner in which it turned up and spanked the competition to end up as our favourite model of all the GTX980s. That card is still fresh enough in the mind that when we saw the GTX980Ti Hall Of Fame arrive in our office we couldn't help but get excited about it. The bar had been set punishingly high by its predecessor and, despite having recently reviewed some monster cards, we still expected it to be capable of destroying the competition once again. 

Don't be in any doubt, this is still a blisteringly fast card. It's able to run anything you care to throw at it at barely believable levels of detail and put out high enough frame rates to make any purchaser happy. That is, however, true of any GTX980Ti. The GM200 GPU is ridiculously capable and it would take someone wilfully trying to make a bad one to do so. The chances of any normal person having tried all of the GTX980Ti's on the market is extremely small, so we know that we're in an almost unique position whereby we can nitpick at something which 99% of people would crawl across broken glass to own. Maybe coming hot on the heels of the EVGA Classified hasn't helped. What also hasn't helped is the looks of the card. It's fine enough and the cooler certainly ticks the two main boxes of being quiet and giving you plenty of headroom to overclock to your hearts content. It, the cooler, doesn't really fit on the card well though. It's offset quite a bit both towards the window of your case and away from the outputs.

All of this, though, is akin to complaining that the Ferrari 458 isn't quite as fast as the Ferrari 488. The KFA2 GTX980Ti HOF will put a smile on anyone's face. It might only be a mid-pack GTX980Ti, but a midpack GTX980Ti is still better than any other GPU you care to bring to the party. Just because we were slightly disappointed it didn't change the game as much as the first GTX980 HOF in no way diminishes how capable this one is of gaming smoothly at the very highest resolutions, and thus is worthy of our OC3D Gold Award.

You can discuss your thoughts on the KFA2 GTX980Ti HOF Review in the OC3D Forums