KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent Infin8 Black Edition Graphics Card Review
Overview
KFA have been producing some pretty impressive looking Graphics Cards for sometime and for that matter so has Galax. But as the two divisions decide on they’re new brand name, we’ll take a look at one of their most impressive cards to date under the new KFA2 brand. Enter the card with possibly the longest name ever, this is the KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent “Infin8 Black Edition”. This card is exclusively sold via Overclockers UK and is obviously based around Nvidia’s latest 9 Series Maxwell GPU.
This particular example features a Core Clock of 1178MHz, a Boost Clock of 1329MHz and its 4GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 7010MHz. The card also (rather unusually) features OcUK’s Zero Coil Whine guarantee*.
*If your card emits any coilwhine when used on a decent power supply that is 80+ Gold rated or higher then OcUK will refund or exchange the card. These cards incorporate our exclusive Coil Whine Reduction technology to help reduce and eliminate any whine.
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‘The GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent “Infin8 Black Edition” is a collaboration of one of the largest Nvidia board partners worldwide, Overclockers UK Graphics Specialist: Andrew Gibson and Overclockers UK Technical Specialist & Overclocking World Champion, Ian ‘8Pack’ Parry.
Originally the Galax 970 EX OC Black Edition was intended as a high performance option for customers looking for the ultimate gaming experience with class leading performance. Our close partnership with Galax allowed us to specify a list of important modifications that would make the GALAX GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent “Infin8 Black Edition” a real show stopper.’ |
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Looking at the front of the KFA2 box we see a blacked out face/head with KFA2’s logo of ‘WHAT’S YOUR GAME?’, a strange design for the front of a box, but striking nonetheless! We can also see from the Infinity 8 logo that the card was inspired by Ian ‘8Pack’ Parry, we can also see that the card is pre-overclocked (as defined above), features 4GB of GDDR5 memory, requires x1 6-pin and x1 8-pin power connections and supports PCI-E 3.0. Over on the right we can see the main Nvidia GTX 970 panel, along with the fact that the card supports Nvidia GameStream, GameWorks, G-Sync and DirectX 12.
On the back of the box there’s a fair bit of blurb, the first of which describes the 970 GPU, then there’s a set of images promoting Assassins Creed Unity, Far Cry 4 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. Over on the right there’s even more blurb, but in the bottom left there’s some more useful information that actually tells you what’s in the box. 😉
At the time of review the KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent Infin8 Black Edition is exclusively on sale at Overclockers UK for £300 and comes with a 2 year warranty.
Specifications/Features
courtesy of Overclockers UK
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FEATURES:- – OcUK Zero Coil Whine guarantee* – Samsung memory guarantee – All Black Design! – Nickel plated I/O Plate – Nickel plated heatsink and heatpipe – All black shroud/cooling design – Black PCB – Black Backplate with Inspired by 8 Pack logo – Inductors placed in higher quality containers and glued to PCB to reduce coil whine – Extreme factory overclock with huge OC potential – Anodized aluminum backplate protects components and reinforces the PCB – All new Silence Extreme cooler reduces temps by up to 10C – Silence Extreme technology switches to single fan cooling at idle for almost noiseless operation Quad mixed-gauge heat pipes ensure maximum heat dissipation – Copper base with solid aluminum cover – 5 + 2 Phase enhanced power system with 8 + 6-pin inputs delivers up to 50% more power for overclocking – Voxel Global Illumination Technology (VXGI) – NVIDIA® Super Resolution technology – NVIDIA® GameWorks technology – NVIDIA® GameStream technology – NVIDIA® TXAA Technology – NVIDIA GPU Boost 2.0 – NVIDIA PhysX® Technology – NVIDIA FXAA Technology – NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync – NVIDIA Surround – Support for four concurrent displays including: Two dual-link DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort 1.2 – Microsoft DirectX 12 – NVIDIA® 3D Vision® Ready – NVIDIA SLI® Ready Technology – NVIDIA CUDA® technology – PCI Express 3.0 support – OpenGL 4.4 support – OpenCL support – NVIDIA SHIELD Ready – NVIDIA G-Sync Ready |
SPECIFCATION:- – GeForce GTX 970 – GPU: GeForce GTX 970 (GM204) – Core Base Clock: 1178MHz – Core Boost Clock: 1329MHz – Memory Clock: 7010MHz – Memory Size: 4096MB GDDR5 – Bus Type: PCI Express 3.0 – Memory Bus: 256-bit – CUDA Cores: 1664 – DirectX 12: Yes – DVI Port: 2x Dual-Link DVI, 1x DisplayPort & 1x HDMI – DisplayPort: Yes – HDCP: Yes – HDMI: Yes – Power: 1x 8-Pin & 1x 6-Pin – 450W PSU Required – 150W TDP – Dimensions: 260mm (L) x 120mm (H) x 40mm (W) – Zero coil whine guarantee – Warranty: 2yr |
* Additional details available here
First Impressions
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First impressions of the KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent Infin8 Black Edition are pretty good, its all black design (including PCB) is sure to fit in well with any Gaming Rig regardless of your chosen colours. The overall look of the card seems to favour the Stealth look, no flashy colours or flashy LEDs here. On the one hand I’m a little disappointed but on the other it still looks pretty cool…
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Looking at the front of the KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent Infin8 Black Edition (ok that’s it I’ve had enough of this, from this point on I’m going to call it the KFA2 970 OC!) 😉 . Looking at the front of the KFA2 970 OC we can see that it’s dominated by its black vented shroud and the two 90mm fans. Also note the rather odd Galax logo on the fans! Each fan actually spins independently of one another, a low loads just one fan spins up and as the load increases the second fan is brought into play. A good way to keep noise down while you’re just browsing the net…
Looking at the back of the card we find a smart looking backplate, which is always good to see as it lends the card an extra bit of rigidity. Again we find a reference to Galax over on the left and at the bottom there’s a (somewhat tongue in cheek) Caution Hot Surface warning. The centrally located GPU is (as you can see from the four screws) attached to the cooler from the back, but surprisingly the backplate is attached to the card from the front.
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Looking at the bottom edge of the KFA2 970 OC there’s very little to see, other than the fan connector on the left and the four heatpipe tails centrally located in the heatsink, just above the GPU.
Looking at the other side, as I already mentioned there’s no illuminating Geforce logo which is a bit of a shame, but what you can see is the four heatpipes (x2 large & x2 small) and the main power connectors. The power connector consists of one 8-pin and one 6-pin.
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Looking at the outputs we can see the KFA2 970 OC features four (clearly marked) outputs: 1x DVI-D, x1 DVI-I, 1x HDMI and 1x DisplayPort. Other than that we see the large cooling vents just above the DisplayPort and HDMI ports.
The opposite end of the card doesn’t really show us a lot, other than showing off the heatsink, although what is a little surprising is that all of the available space has not been used!?
Hardware Installation
Installation into our Test Rig‘s motherboard was as simple as you would expect helped not only by the KFA2 970 OC’s short length of 260mm, but also by the fact that KFA2 have given you plenty of room to plug and unplug those power cables.
| Case |
Cooler Master HAF XB
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Power Supply |
Corsair Professional Series AX 760i
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| Motherboard |
ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer
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CPU |
Intel Core i5-4690K
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| CPU Cooler |
Raijintek Themis
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RAM |
HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB Kit
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| Graphics Card | KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent “Infin8 Black Edition” | SSD |
HyperX FURY 120GB
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Testing Methodology/Setup
Our Test Rig was treated to a fresh install of Windows 7 Professional N 64Bit (Service Pack 1) with all associated drivers also installed. Nvidia’s 347.52 Driver was installed and used throughout testing.
For testing purposes we use MSI Afterburner (here), to help us with our testing and overclocking.
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Nvidia’s Boost clock (Nvidia Boost 2.0) is a bit of a difficult thing to explain, but the bottom line is that it runs at whatever the best speed it can while trying to remain within its TDP of 150W (READ: whilst staying cool!). With the card at stock this saw it Boosting up and beyond its Stock Boost Clock (1329MHz) to 1405MHz. But obviously we wanted more…
Via MSI Afterburner I raised the Power Limit to 125% (the maximum supported) overclocked the Core (Boost) Clock by a further 125MHz and overclocked the Memory Clock by a further 350MHz. While also turning the fan speed to manual and setting it to 100%, in an attempt to keep the thermal throttling at bay. The end result is a card with a theoretical Core Boost Clock of 1454MHz and a Memory Clock of 7710MHz. Of course (due to Nvidia GPU Boost 2.0) what shows on screen at any time is anyone’s guess (I saw 1530MHz, which is impressive), as the card it constantly balancing within its TDP. BUT of course the final net result is that the card does run quicker, woohoo! 😉 |
Hardware Performance
| Benchmark | Ambient Temperature | Max GPU Temp | Delta Temp | Result |
| Batman Arkham Origins | 23.00 | 70.00 | 47.00 | 203.00 FPS (average) |
| Tomb Raider | 23.00 | 70.00 | 47.00 | 96.7 FPS (average) |
| Metro Last Light | 23.00 | 72.00 | 48.00 | 83.0 (average) |
| UNiGiNE Heaven | 23.00 | 73.00 | 50.00 | 1446 |
| 3DMark (Fire Strike) | 23.00 | 65.00 | 42.00 | 9736 |
| Benchmark | Ambient Temperature | Max GPU Temp | Delta Temp | Result |
| Batman Arkham Origins | 23.00 | 72.00 | 49.00 | 225.00 FPS (average) |
| Tomb Raider | 23.00 | 68.00 | 45.00 | 107.8 FPS (average) |
| Metro Last Light | 23.00 | 74.00 | 51.00 | 90.00 (average) |
| UNiGiNE Heaven | 23.00 | 70.00 | 47.00 | 1602 |
| 3DMark (Fire Strike) | 23.00 | 64.00 | 41.50 | 10522 |
Comparative Test Results (at stock):
NOTE: Please note that all of these benchmarks are valid and correct at the time of review and we do not use historical data. Each benchmark is re-run every time (against our Test Cards) for each new GPU review using the latest Drivers at that time. Therefore the scores may fluctuate between reviews as Driver optimizations come into play…
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| Results measured in FPS (average) |
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| Results measured in FPS (average) |
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| Results measured in FPS (average) |
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| Benchmark Results |
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| Benchmark Results |
Well those results seem pretty decisive as the KFA2 970 OC comes in just below its bigger brother (the GTX 980) in every test, making it the second fastest card to all of our test cards, but consistently slower than any 980 we have tested thus far. And that, for card costing around £300 is pretty impressive to say the least…
Overclocking the KFA2 also revealed some pretty impressive results, in not only did the card gain another 10% in performance (in the Unigine test) but also it remained at less that 75 degrees Celsius. This was done by increasing the allowed power output to 125%, adding an additional 125MHz to the Core/Boost Clock and adding a further 350MHz to the Memory Clock, all done whilst running the fans at 100%.
During testing at stock settings the KFA2 970 OC kept noise output to a minimum with a maximum decibel reading of approximately 42dB. During testing (with the fans at 100%) this rose closer to 50dB. That upper dB limit is almost bearable while Gaming with a Headset, but I’m sure you’ll want to setup your own noise/performance ratio…
Final Thoughts
The KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent “Infin8 Black Edition” is the fastest Nvidia GTX 970 we have seen, not only that, it looks good, runs cool and is quiet, with a price of under £300 it would seem that OCUK has a winner on their hands…
The KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent “Infin8 Black Edition” came in an unusually designed box, that’s actually quite striking, the contents were well packaged and the Graphics Card well protected. Once out of the box, it was obvious that the KFA2 970 OC would go well with any rig build thanks to its all black design, even the PCB is black. It’s also nice to see a backplate included as not only does it enhance the look of the card but it also gives the card some rigidity. The KFA2 970 OC card features two 90mm fans (currently featuring a Galax logo!), each fan spins independently allowing only one to spin when the GPU is under low load, the net result being silence.
Of course the most important thing about any Graphics Cards is how fast is it, well the KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent “Infin8 Black Edition doesn’t disappoint. Currently the KFA2 970 OC is the fastest 970 we have seen, and in our benchmarks it was consistently quicker than the AMD 290X, which really is its closest rival. But its bigger brother the GTX 980 (as one would expect) was also consistently faster still. For 1080P Gaming Nvidia’s GTX 970 is the perfect partner but if you’re looking to Game any higher you might want to look towards its bigger brother the 980.
What’s also impressive about the KFA2 970 OC is its ability to keep those thermals under control, even when overclocked within an inch of its life the card still maintained a temperature of less than 75 degrees Celsius. Not only was it cool it was relatively quite too, with a stock noise reading of 42dB when under full load and 50dB with the fans set at 100%.
Overall the KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent “Infin8 Black Edition” may have the longest Graphics Card name ever, but as KFA2 proves here longer is often better! 😉
Verdict
Please Share, Like & Comment below, we really value your thoughts and opinions…
Overclockers UK KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent “Infin8 Black Edition”
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Many thanks to KFA2 for providing this sample for review
The Samsung memory guarantee is gone, so no idea in getting this card as you don’t know what you’re gonna get
Hi there,I got one of these bad boys 8 weeks back(Aug28th) and Im chuffed with it.I upgraded from a 7950 Vapor-X(yes I jumped ship and joined team green after 7yrs with AMD) and Ive noticed the difference straight off the bat.
I wasnt even going to bother o/clocking it as it destroys the Vapor-X in comparisson,but after reading this Im willing to go for it(why not squeeze more juice if its available).
I DO NOT want to get it wrong though(in anyway,she’s my new baby after-all).Id be very grateful for some advice on my safest route bud,could you get back to me with your suggestions pal..
Cheers…….
You wont do any damage as long as all you use is MSI Afterburner, just increase Core clock by 50Hz at a time (do some Testing/Gaming) and if ok increase again. Eventually you’ll hit a problem and the card will display funny marks on the monitor (called artifacts) or the card will just reset (screen go blank for a few seconds!), at this point just diall back 25-50Hz. Do the same with the memory too, just use 100Hz increments. Of course you could just dial in our settings from the review and see how you go!
Hope that helps…
ATB pcG James (Editor)
@James
Im familiar with o/clocking cards I was a bit worried being a new toy(lol).I tried your settings(all good),Ive upped -core@+130/mem@+355
GPU-Z showing-core@1310Mhz/mem@1930Mhz/boost@1461=Heaven bench score of 1509(thus far)I may try a little further but seeing as Ive got both core/mem clocks at rounded up(as in 1310 not 1309 say!) numbers Im happy
Good Stuff! ATB pcG James
😉