NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4 GB

[W1zzard]

Today, NVIDIA releases their new GeForce GTX 980, which brings the Maxwell architecture to the high-end. It features massive power efficiency improvements and reduced noise, but also beats the GTX 780 Ti in raw performance. Pricing is quite acceptable, too, with an MSRP of $549.

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[newtekie1]

Wow! This card is so bad ass.

 

[utengineer]

"Oh, and AMD seems fucked." That should have been the title of the article, ha!

 

[Mistral]

Have to say, I'm freaking genuinely impressed by every single aspect of this card except the price. It's amazing how much nV has managed to suck out of the 28nm process, mad props to them.

While it doesn't seem like any game really demanding an upgrade are coming in the near future, I can't wait to see what kind of performance 20nm will bring next year.

 

[v12dock]

Oh god bring on the wave of "AMD is screwed" comments...

 

[Athlon2K15]

Oh god bring on the wave of "AMD is screwed" comments...

Truth is the truth, they have been shafted for years by Nvidia and Intel.

 

[silapakorn]

The performance is not a big wow for me. Still waiting for the 980ti.

 

[v12dock]

Truth is the truth, they have been getting shafted for years by Nvidia and Intel.

Lets forget the fact that they have been training blows with Nvidia for so long now...

 

[bim27142]

THAT power consumption at THIS performance level... just picked up my jaw on the floor!

 

[PatoRodrigues]

What an amazing card. I'm selling my R9 290 CFX ASAP. I mean, A.S.A.P.

Maxwell came along kicking the s**t out of everybody. But i wonder, just like with Kepler... Isn't the GTX 970 (220$ cheaper) a friendly fire?

 

[Nihilus]

Not even the most rabid of AMD fanboys (me included) can deny the 970 and 980 are spectacular cards. This reminds me of when Nvidia released the 8800 GTS that blew the socks off of Ati in every measure - until they released the equally impressive HD 4800. AMD better go all in with the R9 390 series.

 

[Steevo]

Only a 9.6? Seriously, I think I just became a Nvidia fan. I wonder what it would do with a larger memory bus and liquid cooling.
I feel bad for ATI/AMD for the shit that was the 285 even more now, they are making them look like monkeys throwing poo at the circus with that fuckup.

 

[PatoRodrigues]

Man, AMD needs jaw-dropping performance from the R9 3xx series. Immediately.

The 295x2 looks utterly pathetic now. I'm beyond impressed.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Interesting they chose power consumption over big performance gains yet again. Given AMDs usual approach to closing performance gap, "overclock it till it competes" at the expense of everything else, I fear the power efficiency and noise gap will never close. It things like that which are why nvidia is considered the premium card brand.

 

[badtaylorx]

Man, AMD needs jaw-dropping performance from the R9 3xx series. Immediately.

The 295x2 looks utterly pathetic now. I'm beyond impressed.

did you read the review???

 

[HalfAHertz]

This is the new GTX8800!

 

[HumanSmoke]

I feel bad for ATI/AMD for the shit that was the 285 even more now, they are making them look like monkeys throwing poo at the circus with that fuckup.

OK, that's an image I didn't need in my head

How weird is the turnaround? Four years ago AMD were putting out an awesome Cypress GPU that killed on both performance and power usage metrics, and Nvidia were relegated to the sidelines and couldn't get a fully enabled GF 100 out the door. Now we have Nvidia going for dial-you-own performance/power and AMD debut a GPU for the first time in recent memory with a salvage part.

 

[GhostRyder]

The funny thing I look back on is all the people saying the GTX 980 was not going to compete with the GTX 780ti and yet it seems to be a winner all around.

One heck of a card in all honesty even at that price since the performance matches. The 4k power of this card is what makes it so appealing to me on top of the overclocking performance!

Truth is the truth, they have been getting fucked ass and mouth for years by Nvidia and Intel.

I would not say that, AMD has had the Dual GPU crown continuously for quite some time with the only exception being the 690 vs 7990. As for single GPU the 7970 and GTX 680 were neck and neck with the 7970 being a better card for high resolution as with the same argument when comparing the GTX 780ti to the R9 290X. Its a newer generation card, of course its going to be better...

I see some major price cuts in my crystal ball !

But out of all that, the real winner here is the GTX 970.

 

[hippogriff]

Bah, nothing special besides consumption (that is not very important to the majority of people). It is a OCed 780Ti with 4GB of RAM and $50 cheaper.

The 970 is really good for the price.

 

[Sempron Guy]

yeah, classifying these two cards I'd take the GTX 970 for more performance on my buck while the GTX 980 for performance per watt. And I guess this is common amongst some type of people in every card launch. Praise the card on how good it is through other card's disadvantage.

 

[fullinfusion]

Nice card for sure, and I love the big ass cooler, and the back plate! but IMO Even though AMD is a few months behind I believe this card is going to drop an easy $100 in price once AMD bring out it's 3 series cards.

 

[Jstn7477]

At least I got my R9 290 from Xazax for $225, but damn, I want one (or two) for my 5820K/X99 setup arriving next week.

 

[15th Warlock]

Thanks for the review W1zz.

I'm amazed at the efficiency of this architecture, can't wait for big Maxwell at 20nm, Nvidia seems to have found the same secret sauce recipe Intel found years ago when they abandoned the Netburst architecture. Compared to Fermi, Maxwell truly is an outstanding feat of thermal and power efficiency engineering.

 

[Shou Miko]

could look like i found my new card for my 27inch 2560x1440@120hz and it don't use much power either compared to my GTX 780

 

[Steevo]

OK, that's an image I didn't need in my head

How weird is the turnaround? Four years ago AMD were putting out an awesome Cypress GPU that killed on both performance and power usage metrics, and Nvidia were relegated to the sidelines and couldn't get a fully enabled GF 100 out the door. Now we have Nvidia going for dial-you-own performance/power and AMD debut a GPU for the first time in recent memory with a salvage part.

I am really excited to see what this would do on a mature 20nm process, 165W now, and with a shrink perhaps 25-35W less and generally you get a frequency bump from it as well, at this rate we could see 2Ghz GPU cores with 14nm.

AMD has been suffering from their poor management, and what seems to be an unsure direction and forced melding of ATI into the ranks. I really hope they get something better and more reasonable than the broken card they tried to pass off in the next 6 months.

I think the 970 is the card I am going to buy for GTA5.