NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4 GB

[BigMack70]

Wow.....some people. ... The fact that Nvidia released something this great and didn't price it ridiculously is a win for every one. this is just progress. Next amd will answer and the cycle will continue

Because the performance increase of the 980 is so small relative to the 780 ti, this release is not a win for:
1) Anyone who owns a 290/780 or better
2) Anyone wanting 4K gaming to become more viable

#2 is the big disappointment for me... it looks like we'll have to wait for big Maxwell to get any meaningful improvements to the 4k experience as far as performance goes.

It's a big win for those with GTX 6xx/HD 7xxx or older cards who are looking for an upgrade, though.

 

[Katanai]

"Oh, and AMD seems fucked."


To read this on techpowerup was sooooooooooo good. Ahahahahahahahaha!

 

[ensabrenoir]

Because the performance increase of the 980 is so small relative to the 780 ti, this release is not a win for:
1) Anyone who owns a 290/780 or better
2) Anyone wanting 4K gaming to become more viable

#2 is the big disappointment for me... it looks like we'll have to wait for big Maxwell to get any meaningful improvements to the 4k experience as far as performance goes.

It's a big win for those with GTX 6xx/HD 7xxx or older cards who are looking for an upgrade, though.

The skip a generation rule will never go away for top tier products. Everyone on mid to low will love this though. The best feature of all is the PRICE...coming from Nvidia of all people ..

 

[hippogriff]

I didn't expect anything phenomenal, so I am not disappointed. I will wait for Titan II or whatever will be a 20% improvement over my 780Ti Classified....

 

[BigMack70]

The best feature of all is the PRICE...coming from Nvidia of all people ..

I wholeheartedly agree with this if we're talking about the 970. $330 for what is basically a 780 ti is absolutely insane. It's almost equivalent to a 50% price cut on their flagship card. That's just freaking nuts and I never expected that from Nvidia given their recent pricing trends.

I don't really agree with the impressiveness of the price on the 980 though. It's basically a 10% price cut and 10% performance boost compared to the 780 ti. That's nice and certainly nothing to complain about, but it's a very ordinary setup for a new GPU release, nothing special.

IMO I don't see why anyone would buy a 980 outside of forum signature e-peen. The 970 is a vastly better value proposal, and if you have the spare cash, 970 SLI is just a measly $100 more expensive than the 980 for WAY more performance.

 

[ensabrenoir]

I wholeheartedly agree with this if we're talking about the 970. $330 for what is basically a 780 ti is absolutely insane. It's almost equivalent to a 50% price cut on their flagship card. That's just freaking nuts and I never expected that from Nvidia given their recent pricing trends.

I don't really agree with the impressiveness of the price on the 980 though. It's basically a 10% price cut and 10% performance boost compared to the 780 ti. That's nice and certainly nothing to complain about, but it's a very ordinary setup for a new GPU release, nothing special.

Yeah. ..this is still Nvidia were talking about here....Im sure they've got a ti with the performance you want and a price we both hate up their sleeves just waiting

 

[BigMack70]

Yeah. ..this is still Nvidia were talking about here....Im sure they've got a ti with the performance you want and a price we both hate up their sleeves just waiting

Yup GM210/GM200 or whatever the big maxwell chip winds up being called when it's released. That's what I'm interested in... I want to see 4k 60 fps achievable with two top cards in SLI, and we're not there yet. Fingers crossed that big maxwell will get us there.

 

[the54thvoid]

" Oh, and AMD seems fucked "

Real professional. Looks like someone is in bed with Nvidia.

Why? for stating the obvious. W1zzard has a personality. And TPU isn't a highbrow, etiquette driven formal government body. If it was, there would be no profanity allowed on any post, in fact there'd probably not even be forum.

NV have dropped a bomb smack in AMD's performance product line up. They have nothing to answer with for now and what is troubling for AMD is that we know GM210 will be coming too. GTX 970 is a very sweet price/perf card. The AIB versions are even better.

The fact that our esteemed leader speaks his mind is a fucking breath of fresh air. If you don't like it GTFO, it's his website.

What matters in the end, ...<all the things you said>...Call me when the real high end Maxwell gets here.

Also, that last line in the review is hilarious (and almost certainly accurate), but quite unprofessional. Are we back in grade school here? Disappointing, W1zzard.

What matters IS power/watt performance. If you think that you and the folk that say MORE POWAH are all spot on, then wow, the tech industry must ALL be going in the wrong direction. I won't argue with you as it's your point of view but frankly, what NV have done is spot on from a business and tech point of view. I see you have 2 x 780's so I don't know what your beef is. This upgrade isn't for you, as it isn't for me. Although TBH, if I can move sideways to a better performing product that consumes less energy then hey, that's a positive to me.

And it's not about the money on electricity, it's the requirement of a growing population to be more frugal with finite resources. But I'm not here to lecture anyone.

EDIT: and I'm not having a go at you BigMack, you're a decent forumer

 

[64K]

I wholeheartedly agree with this if we're talking about the 970. $330

I agree. I made my mind up early this morning after reading the reviews to go with the EVGA GTX 970 SC with ACX cooler. W1zzard says it's only 8% slower than a reference GTX 980 and it's $210 cheaper. It can be had at Newegg for $330 including the $10 EVGA rebate. It's a very nice upgrade from my GTX 680.

 

[BigMack70]

And it's not about the money on electricity, it's the requirement of a growing population to be more frugal with finite resources.

Then why aren't we marking these midrange/high-end cards down a lot and encouraging everyone to buy a 750 ti or use integrated graphics? Better yet, stop playing video games altogether and change your hobby to hiking.

Seems to me that using this as a philosophical standard to evaluate GPUs is fundamentally hypocritical.

Performance/watt matters in the sense that if you can improve that metric, it will ultimately enable you to achieve much higher performance. But performance/watt is a means to an end, not an end in itself, and so we shouldn't be praising cards solely on the basis of performance/watt, as I'm seeing done so much around the 980 reviews.

 

[the54thvoid]

Then why aren't we marking these midrange/high-end cards down a lot and encouraging everyone to buy a 750 ti or use integrated graphics? Better yet, stop playing video games altogether and change your hobby to hiking.

Thought someone would say that. The resort to 'give up' technology is pretty much what the Taliban seek, so I'm not going to align myself with crazy fundamentalists. No, while we work with technology that requires power, we will always strive to reign in that power. I'm sorry you don't see it that way but that is how technology develops. If you think that's wrong, argue with Intel, not me.

Seems to me that using this as a philosophical standard to evaluate GPUs is fundamentally hypocritical.

Performance/watt matters in the sense that if you can improve that metric, it will ultimately enable you to achieve much higher performance. But performance/watt is a means to an end, not an end in itself, and so we shouldn't be praising cards solely on the basis of performance/watt, as I'm seeing done so much around the 980 reviews.

Like someone has said and like i said earlier to another post, this is the GM204 chip. You should bloody well know that the 'big' Maxwell part is still coming. The stack is now aligned as 770->780 ->780ti, (GK104 ->GK110->GK110). This is the start process again, 970->980->980ti(we assume). It's still GM204->GM210->GM210(we assume).

Don't worry, the more powerful part will appear. You'll have your performance beast.

 

[ensabrenoir]

" Oh, and AMD seems fucked "

Real professional. Looks like someone is in bed with Nvidia.

No.... if he was Amd would have listened to him and never tried to release that 285 nonsense to compete with the 760s in the face of these the true competition

 

[GhostRyder]

No.... if he was Amd would have listened to him and never tried to release that 285 nonsense in the face of these the true competition

At what point do you think the R9 285 was at all competition for the GTX 970 or 980? Its like saying the GTX 750ti was competition for the R9 290X, it was not even in the same category and was intended to fit into the area of mid range and replace the old mid range cards which a new architecture introduction. Which is exactly what it did, lower power consumption and more performance than the card it replaces...

The GTX 980 price point is not that bad but it seems horrid because the GTX 970 is at such a low spot. The GTX 970 is the real winner card here and seems to be the choice card right now. Its seated right where its expected to be considering its better overall than the GTX 780ti which costs more while using less power and containing more ram. Its an overall excellent launch.

 

[RazrLeaf]

Because the performance increase of the 980 is so small relative to the 780 ti, this release is not a win for:
1) Anyone who owns a 290/780 or better
2) Anyone wanting 4K gaming to become more viable

#2 is the big disappointment for me... it looks like we'll have to wait for big Maxwell to get any meaningful improvements to the 4k experience as far as performance goes.

It's a big win for those with GTX 6xx/HD 7xxx or older cards who are looking for an upgrade, though.

Honestly, with the sheer amount of power required for 4K, I don't think you could pack enough transistors on the die at a process larger than 20nm.
You could expect to get double the performance (of 1440p @ 60fps) in a generation, but it will never happen at this point. =/ It's not physically possible, and it wouldn't make business sense either.

 

[BigMack70]

Thought someone would say that. The resort to 'give up' technology is pretty much what the Taliban seek, so I'm not going to align myself with crazy fundamentalists. No, while we work with technology that requires power, we will always strive to reign in that power. I'm sorry you don't see it that way but that is how technology develops. If you think that's wrong, argue with Intel, not me.

This doesn't at all answer my objection that performance/watt is a means to an end and not an end in itself, and thus we should not be heaping praise on a high end GPU for reason of that metric alone. Performance/watt is meaningless in and of itself - the reason it's meaningful is because it enables either higher performance OR lower power consumption. It's the same thing with regard to how technology develops... technology doesn't push forward in an arbitrary quest for more performance/watt. It pushes forward toward the goal (depending on the application) of either more performance or lower power, and performance/watt improvements are the MEANS by which technology gets there.

Honestly, with the sheer amount of power required for 4K, I don't think you could pack enough transistors on the die at a process larger than 20nm. You could expect to get double the performance (of 1440p @ 60fps) in a generation, but it will never happen at this point. =/

Given that Maxwell approaches 2x the efficiency of Kepler, I think it's reasonable to expect a pair of GM210/200 to hit 4k 60 Hz. That's just speculation of course, but I think reasonable. We're close as it is - only the most demanding games require you to turn settings down on a pair of GK110/GM204/Hawaii cards.

 

[buggalugs]

980 is nice card but wow some people have short memories.

AMD is already building a competitor for the 980X. When the 7970 came out, it was much better than the 580 "Oh no Nvidia is fucked" Then Nvidia release 680 a few months later 10% faster than 7970. Then AMD release the 7970 Ghz, same or better than 680Then Nvidia release 780 "oh no AMD is fucked" Then AMD release 290X matching 780 performance. Now Nvidia release the new generation 980 and "AMD is fucked again" even though AMD is already manufacturing a competitor.

You cant compare old gen to new gen. AMD and NVidia never release new generations at the same time, usually a few months apart.

4870 vs 280,same gen 4890 vs GTX285
5870 vs 480
6970 vs 580
7970 vs 680 same gen 7970 Ghz edition
290X vs 780 same gen 780Ti
390X vs 980 Hasn't happened yet

If there is some inside knowledge about the 390X, not being able to compete with 980 please let us know, otherwise its too early to write off AMD.

 

[v12dock]

980 is nice card but wow some people have short memories.

AMD is already building a competitor for the 980X. When the 7970 came out, it was much better than the 580 "Oh no Nvidia is fucked" Then Nvidia release 680 a few months later 10% faster than 7970. Then AMD release the 7970 Ghz, same or better than 680Then Nvidia release 780 "oh no AMD is fucked" Then AMD release 290X matching 780 performance. Now Nvidia release the new generation 980 and "AMD is fucked again" even though AMD is already manufacturing a competitor.

You cant compare old gen to new gen. AMD and NVidia never release new generations at the same time, usually a few months apart.

4870 vs 280,same gen 4890 vs GTX285
5870 vs 480
6970 vs 580
7970 vs 680 same gen 7970 Ghz edition
290X vs 780 same gen 780Ti
390X vs 980 Hasn't happened yet

If there is some inside knowledge about the 390X, not being able to compete with 980 please let us know, otherwise its too early to write off AMD.

Thank You.

 

[GhostRyder]

980 is nice card but wow some people have short memories.

AMD is already building a competitor for the 980X. When the 7970 came out, it was much better than the 580 "Oh no Nvidia is fucked" Then Nvidia release 680 a few months later 10% faster than 7970. Then AMD release the 7970 Ghz, same or better than 680Then Nvidia release 780 "oh no AMD is fucked" Then AMD release 290X matching 780 performance. Now Nvidia release the new generation 980 and "AMD is fucked again" even though AMD is already manufacturing a competitor.

You cant compare old gen to new gen. AMD and NVidia never release new generations at the same time, usually a few months apart.

4870 vs 280,same gen 4890 vs GTX285
5870 vs 480
6970 vs 580
7970 vs 680 same gen 7970 Ghz edition
290X vs 780 same gen 780Ti
390X vs 980 Hasn't happened yet

If there is some inside knowledge about the 390X, not being able to compete with 980 please let us know, otherwise its too early to write off AMD.

^^^This guy! Great response!

 

[W1zzard]

There are only three times performance/watt matters:

1) You pay through the nose for electricity and see a meaningful difference in your monthly electricity bill by saving 100W or so of electricity (99.9% of people don't pay electricity rates this high)
or
2) Performance/watt is so bad that the card can't cope (too hot/loud... think GTX 480 / R9 290X)
or
3) You want to use multiple GPUs but have a small/midrange PSU and don't want to upgrade it

Performance/Watt matters everywhere nowadays, I agree that cost for electricity is not significant for most people and saving the environment nobody really cares about.

You can not put just copy and paste more and more transistors/shaders/units into a GPU to make it more powerful. You always have to cool it somehow. And you need the voltage regulation circuitry to do so, too.

So let's assume AMD doubles their Hawaii chip, this means twice the power consumption=heat generated inside a 2-slot graphics card. Any ideas how to cool? Alright, water. What about a few years down when people are asking for another performance doubling? Can't cool. Not even with water.

Also the voltage regulation circuitry for such a card would be big, how do you plan on powering such a card? 3x 8-pin ? 4x 8-pin? Maybe its own wall powered PSU ? You also need to feed these insane currents into the GPU through the little pins/solder balls. 400 W = 400 Amps at 1 V GPU.

Option 1) Wait for TSMC to come out with 20 nm, and then wait another few years for 16/14/12 nm. And beg they'll take your chip manufacturing order before Apple's.
Option 2) Improve power efficiency from the ground up. Think about stuff that happens inside the chip and ask your smartest engineers how to do it differently with less power, even if it might cost you more transistors or die area.

NVIDIA did that and, boom, twice as efficient. If you need faster you can just copy and paste more units onto the chip, without having to worry about power consumption.

Now take that efficiency and build a notebook gaming chip with it. Most important for laptop: battery life + heat. Win! -> $$
Then start building smartphone and tablet processors with awesome GeForce tech and better power consumption than everybody else: more $$

 

[Max Mojo]

Didn't I swear yesterday I will not upgrade until my GTA V PC delay pain will be finito at January 27th 2015?
Luckily I haven't stick to my words. Obviously a super card at first glance.

Now I'm waiting for the EVGA card reviews. Interesting model for me is the EVGA GTX 980 Superclocked ACX 2.0. Though I'd prefer the vanilla stock version which looks so stunning cool. By the way the I/O connectors positions look strange. Why not 3 Displayports in a row one after the other?
Definitely I will upgrade from GTX 680 SLI to single GTX 980.

 

[BigMack70]

Performance/Watt matters everywhere nowadays, I agree that cost for electricity is not significant for most people and saving the environment nobody really cares about.

You can not put just copy and paste more and more transistors/shaders/units into a GPU to make it more powerful. You always have to cool it somehow. And you need the voltage regulation circuitry to do so, too.

So let's assume AMD doubles their Hawaii chip, this means twice the power consumption=heat generated inside a 2-slot graphics card. Any ideas how to cool? Alright, water. What about a few years down when people are asking for another performance doubling? Can't cool. Not even with water.

Also the voltage regulation circuitry for such a card would be big, how do you plan on powering such a card? 3x 8-pin ? 4x 8-pin? Maybe it's own wall powered PSU ? You also need to feed these insane currents into the GPU through the little pins/solder balls. 400 W = 400 Amps at 1 V GPU.

Option 1) Wait for TSMC to come out with 20 nm, and then wait another few years for 16/14/12 nm. And beg they'll take your chip manufacturing order before Apple's.
Option 2) Improve power efficiency from the ground up. Think about stuff that happens inside the chip and ask your smartest engineers how to do it differently with less power, even if it might cost you more transistors or die area.

NVIDIA did that and, boom, twice as efficient. If you need faster you can just copy and paste more units onto the chip, without having to worry about power consumption.

Now take that efficiency and build a notebook gaming chip with it. Most important for laptop: battery life + heat. Win! -> $$
Then start building smartphone and tablet processors with awesome GeForce tech and better power consumption than everybody else: more $$

I agree 100% that performance/watt matters in the sense that you must get performance/watt improvements to achieve either lower power consumption or higher performance.

I do not agree that performance/watt matters in abstraction from those other metrics (power use or overall performance).

On a high end GPU, I do not think you can make a plausible argument that low power consumption is the desired metric by itself (if low power is the only concern, why are you buying a high end GPU at all?). I suppose you could make an argument that a balance between power consumption and raw performance is important (something which GM204 excels at), but I personally don't agree with this unless the performance/watt balance is so out of whack as to upset one of those criteria I mentioned earlier (your electric bill, noise/heat of the card, PSU requirements).

I still think that unless perf/watt is at offensive levels, it is an irrelevant metric on a high end GPU and only the performance itself matters.

 

[ensabrenoir]

[QUOTE="GhostRyder, post: 3166638, member: 149328"]At what point do you think the R9 285 was at all competition for the GTX 970 or 980? .[/QUOTE]

aaahhh......NONE......thats why i said 760.... The point of my statement was that they're efforts and resources should have placed else where.... The 760 should not have been the benchmark to beat. After the 750ti.... everyone knew where Nvidia was headed. What amd did is essentially like Ford building a New(2014) car to compete against a 2012 Honda when Honda is about to release the 2015 model. I feel that in order for Amd to truly right itself, it must think beyond the "just good enough" mentality. Unless they're moving tremendous volume, they will never grow, just maintain. I honestly believe.......honestly Hope... Amd has better ideas and products than what were seeing now. And yeah i have Nvidia now but i started with ati and went amd for the most part of my enthusiast life.

 

[W1zzard]

that low power consumption is the desired metric by itself

I agree, at least not for our subset of users. But low power consumption is the gateway to success these days, and as I mentioned, it trickles down into your other products. Intel's x86 isn't so good for mobile devices right now, but what if they save another 20% on power due to design changes and another 50% due to new process (Intel has their own fabs, has the best and most advanced process tech and the money for r&d and construction).

 

[Nabarun]

Performance/Watt matters everywhere nowadays, I agree that cost for electricity is not significant for most people and saving the environment nobody really cares about.
...

I care... And the cost for electricity is un-freakin-believable in this neighbourhood. May be in the US/Europe the prices are much lower, because of many nuclear reactors. In developing countries the situation is nightmarish. The cost per unit of current burnt rises exponentially over here. My PC runs 24x7 mostly, so the power efficiency is a huge factor. From what I've gathered courtesy of your 980/970 reviews, it looks like the 970 will be my new card after all. Thanks for such extensive coverage of game-specific performance and with so many different cards.

 

[W1zzard]

I care... And the cost for electricity is un-freakin-believable in this neighbourhood. May be in the US/Europe the prices are much lower, because of many nuclear reactors. In developing countries the situation is nightmarish. The cost per unit of current burnt rises exponentially over here. My PC runs 24x7 mostly, so the power efficiency is a huge factor. From what I've gathered courtesy of your 980/970 reviews, it looks like the 970 will be my new card after all. Thanks for such extensive coverage of game-specific performance and with so many different cards.

Why don't you turn off your PC as often as possible if you care so much?

edit: Personally one of the reasons I use a NV graphics card in my work PC is because I have multi-monitor, where AMD has very high power consumption, so I get you