NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Smiles for the Camera

[RejZoR]

That's an AMD gimmick.

Gimmick? It's an enthusiast grade feature sent from heavens. You can flash Radeons pretty much absolutely carelessly and you can't go wrong unless if you fry them. But other than that, that switch does wonders...

 

[Vayra86]

512 GB/s, not 128 GB/s. Funny how 4 GB wasn't a problem during "high-end" GTX 980 launch, just a few months ago.

We all knew that was GM204 and not the big chip, right?

This is a big chip, and 6GB is on the low end for this price/performance range. Consider the SLI options as well. For now 6GB may be enough, but you can go a long way with this card especially in SLI, and I can imagine the VRAM won't cut it then anymore.

 

[rtwjunkie]

@HTC I live in a very extreme climate, which here is 8 months of the year. Very hot, very humid. We have two seasons: Super Hot, which severely affects ambient indoor temps (air conditioning cant keep up), and "Almost Fall/Spring" (which would be a summer day up North.

Thats why I responded originally, since i definately am not in a mild climate. I do agree though, any cooler should be able to work anywhere.

 

[L.ccd]

Regarding the reference cooler discussion: for what it's worth, not all recent nvidia reference blowers are the same. The 980 uses a downgraded version (no vapor chamber) of the high-end blower used on the 780, 780ti, Titan and Titan X. Probably good enough for the gm204, but I'm curious to see if they'll go back to the better variant on the 980ti.

 

[rtwjunkie]

It certainly looks like a vapor.chamber heatsink in there What are they using? I see no heatpipes.

 

[L.ccd]

This is what is used on the reference 980: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/928-5/specifications-geforce-gtx-980-reference.html (also noted in TPU's own 980 review).

Given the fact that the 980ti will use the gm200 and not be cheap, one can expect nvidia to go back to the vapor chamber version.

 

[newtekie1]

Gimmick? It's an enthusiast grade feature sent from heavens. You can flash Radeons pretty much absolutely carelessly and you can't go wrong unless if you fry them. But other than that, that switch does wonders...

You make it sound like it is a game changing feature. It's not. And almost no one flashes the BIOS on the video cards. Sure, enthusiasts do it more often, but like I said a fraction of a percent of the overall market.

And heck, a lot of the aftermarket cards omit the dual-bios.

 

[radrok]

You make it sound like it is a game changing feature. It's not. And almost no one flashes the BIOS on the video cards. Sure, enthusiasts do it more often, but like I said a fraction of a percent of the overall market.

And heck, a lot of the aftermarket cards omit the dual-bios.

Completely agree on this.

I also flashed my current GPUs like 10+ times and it's always been a success, if you know what you are flashing and HOW you have to do it then there's like 0.001% risk.

 

[ensabrenoir]

seems like a cut down card.. so lets say for $200 i could be persuaded to buy.. otherwise let me climb the fiji hill..

.........you must be george's cousin. If you got your wish though.....this level of performance for $200 would make Amd's (and most of Nvidia's) entire line up irrelevant and hasten their demise.

 

[HTC]

@HTC I live in a very extreme climate, which here is 8 months of the year. Very hot, very humid. We have two seasons: Super Hot, which severely affects ambient indoor temps (air conditioning cant keep up), and "Almost Fall/Spring" (which would be a summer day up North.

Thats why I responded originally, since i definately am not in a mild climate. I do agree though, any cooler should be able to work anywhere.

Exactly. Now: enough of the side topic (reference cooler). I'm to blame for part of that, anyways ...


This is a 980 Ti card topic: we should be discussing that instead!

 

[FrustratedGarrett]

Reference cards always look boring.

And we really don't know how much HBM will help the 390X, AMD has had double the memory bandwidth of nVidia in the last generation and couldn't manage to outperform nVidia. So obviously just piling on more memory bandwidth isn't the solution to their problems.

HBM improves read/write access latencies dramatically which is a key factor to improve performance of GPUs. I think that is the reason why AMD decided to use HBM in its Fiji based cards and go through this long delay.

I'm also not quite sure why people expect it to offer a better value. If it really does outperform nVidia you can bet it won't offer a better value in any way, AMD will price it just as high as the Titans(they've done it in the past). If it doesn't outperform nVidia, then AMD will price the 390X right in line with what it matches from nVidia, just like they currently do.

Nah, AMD will probably price around $550. Their dual GPU 295x2 is selling for less than $800.

 

[the54thvoid]

Nah, AMD will probably price around $550. Their dual GPU 295x2 is selling for less than $800.

The 295X2 is priced that way because of poor sales. The wealth of internet rumours (and they are but rumours) has pretty much stated a higher price than you anticipate. You have to remember that the 7970 came out at a surprisingly high price for AMD. This Fiji card carried new technology that has cost a lot to pursue. Fiji will not be cheap.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Exactly. Now: enough of the side topic (reference cooler). I'm to blame for part of that, anyways ...


This is a 980 Ti card topic: we should be discussing that instead!

Absolutely! Onward.

 

[BiggieShady]

Leaked benches claim that at stock it's on par with Titan X, factory boost clocks could get it up by 20%, soon it will be a time to read about all those Strix, G1 and Gaming model announcements again. I kinda know what to expect on the green side and for once I'm interested in what AMD will show memory, heat and power consumption wise.

 

[the54thvoid]

Leaked benches claim that at stock it's on par with Titan X, factory boost clocks could get it up by 20%, soon it will be a time to read about all those Strix, G1 and Gaming model announcements again. I kinda know what to expect on the green side and for once I'm interested in what AMD will show memory, heat and power consumption wise.

Do share!

 

[BiggieShady]

Do share!

LOL it's firestrike benches you originally shared http://www.overclock3d.net/articles/gpu_displays/nvidia_gtx_980ti_specs_and_performance_leaked/1
What goes around...

 

[radrok]

Like I said 1 or 2 SMMs do not make any noticeable difference unless you are benching.

What's gonna make the difference is the availability of higher voltage enabled SKUs for the 980Tis, that alone kills the Titan X which will be only reference. That's stupid from Nvidia but hey they do what they want.

The only advantage Titan X has is being a full fledged core which may appeal to some just for that reason, and the 12GB VRAM which is immensely oversized for now.

 

[net2007]

12 gb is not to much considering gamea in 4k are exceeding 6 gb. In my opinion the 980 ti should come with 8 gb.

 

[chinmi]

totally gonna upgrade my obsolete gtx 970. thank god i waited... getting tired with 3,5gb + 0.5gb vram.
and this card gonna answer my prayer..... thanks nvidia

 

[64K]

First of all, you have no idea what your talking about in regards to the reference cooler. I have 3 of them that had the reference cooler, you can keep the temps in a normal case below 95c on the 55% fan speed setting even under gaming load with normal airflow (Yes reviewers had some trouble keeping temps down, we are aware of that but a patch among other things helped out). You bump it to 60% and its in the mid 80's, I own these cards and ALL THREE of them acted the same with one of them being 1 degree (or roughly) higher.


Probably because they went to the next level to give people a quiet reference cooler. Not much more could easily be done to a fan cooler so what's next without making a cooler that dumps air into case.

To top it off, from what i've read the Titan X even now throttles a bit so its not the perfect cooler...

Anyways, the 980ti Titan cooler will be replaced by other aftermarket same as normal. The normal cooler does it job fine but its is getting a bit dated. Though it still looks nice to me!

From the review here the Titan X does down clock quickly under load. The cooler had trouble keeping the GPU under 84 degrees. That's the point when it cuts back on the boost. That was disappointing for 2 reasons imo. The down clocking obviously and setting it to do so at 84 degrees. You can run a higher temp on GPUs if performance is top priority. I don't know why Nvidia set it to down clock at 84 degrees.

It's just a guess on my part but I think a 980 Ti even though it will have less cores than the Titan X with a great non reference cooler will possibly outperform the Titan X.

If it comes in at $650 or less then it will sell very well. That was the price for the GTX 780 at release.

 

[Prima.Vera]

12 gb is not to much considering gamea in 4k are exceeding 6 gb. In my opinion the 980 ti should come with 8 gb.

Show me the proof for only 1 game that exceeds 6GB. Just one!

 

[radrok]

Show me the proof for only 1 game that exceeds 6GB. Just one!

It's COD:AW and it's because it's poorly coded, it leaves loaded memory in the frame buffer even if it doesn't utilize it anymore, it has been shown that 3GB cards play it without an issue.

 

[64K]

It's COD:AW and it's because it's poorly coded, it leaves loaded memory in the frame buffer even if it doesn't utilize it anymore, it has been shown that 3GB cards play it without an issue.

That's the thing that I wonder about when I see VRAM usage going ridiculously high. Is the game loading up VRAM just because it's there or does it really improve performance? The only way to know is to have 2 identical cards except more VRAM in one and test the same part of the game on both to see if performance is better on the card with the greater VRAM. I'm leaning towards the side that it doesn't improve performance in most cases because developers are notorious for wasting resources on the PC version of the game.

 

[GhostRyder]

From the review here the Titan X does down clock quickly under load. The cooler had trouble keeping the GPU under 84 degrees. That's the point when it cuts back on the boost. That was disappointing for 2 reasons imo. The down clocking obviously and setting it to do so at 84 degrees. You can run a higher temp on GPUs if performance is top priority. I don't know why Nvidia set it to down clock at 84 degrees.

It's just a guess on my part but I think a 980 Ti even though it will have less cores than the Titan X with a great non reference cooler will possibly outperform the Titan X.

If it comes in at $650 or less then it will sell very well. That was the price for the GTX 780 at release.

I agree, its kinda a low point for the throttle but its what they chose. The 980ti might just outperform it by a good amount depending as well if they allow for higher clocking especially on classified or lightning versions of the card.

As far as the price goes, I am better its going to be $750 area based on its performance point. For $150 more than the 980 it would have such a hike in performance it would possibly overshadow the 980 at its price point (IMHO).

It's COD:AW and it's because it's poorly coded, it leaves loaded memory in the frame buffer even if it doesn't utilize it anymore, it has been shown that 3GB cards play it without an issue.

Or they did it to pretend their game needs that much

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

It's COD:AW and it's because it's poorly coded, it leaves loaded memory in the frame buffer even if it doesn't utilize it anymore, it has been shown that 3GB cards play it without an issue.

interestingly, COD AW, DR3, and SoM all go past 4GB. SoM is getting close to 6GB, and watch dogs, ryse, FC4, and AC unity are close to 4GB. Given another year, 4GB probably isnt going to be enough. even 6GB may not be enough, if SoM is any indication.