GTX 980Ti finally launched - MSRP $649 - Reviews

[Pariah]

Exactly what I am running with this 780 Ti, plus HBAO. Enough for more or less solid 60FPS with few dips. I could upgrade sure, but to play what? If there was a new Skyrim or ME4, I'd buy one as soon as its out here. Looks like I'll see what AMD cranks out.

If you're gaming at 4k or higher (multi-monitor) than anything less than a 980Ti/Titan X is going force you to make sacrifices if you're not interested in multi-card setups. If you're still stuck at 1080, then no, you don't need to upgrade a 780Ti.

 

[Alatar]

Gonna post here too for comic relief reasons. Charlie Demerjian's take on the 980Ti:

The GTX980Ti is nothing more than the high bin 980, this time it is clocked at an even 1GHz.

Everything else should be the same as the non-Ti 980s, it isn’t the big Maxwell the BS rumor sites listed a while ago, it is just what we said it was last year.S|A

https://archive.is/ngMyR

(archive link because I doubt the article will stay as is for long)

I mean yeah... His views on maxwell late last year were that we were going to see 4 GM204 SKUs, and then early this year see those same 4 SKUs shrinked to 16nm. Now his views are apparently that this higher binned GM204 SKU called the 980Ti is finally here.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Gonna post here too for comic relief reasons. Charlie Demerjian's take on the 980Ti:



https://archive.is/ngMyR

(archive link because I doubt the article will stay as is for long)

I mean yeah... His views on maxwell late last year were that we were going to see 4 GM204 SKUs, and then early this year see those same 4 SKUs shrinked to 16nm. Now his views are apparently that this higher binned GM204 SKU called the 980Ti is finally here.

Why anyone even read his "tech" site is beyond understanding

And its funny how many of these sites cleanup their mess after release like they never wrote it.

 

[Carnage1986]

GTX 980 Ti has 96 ROPs. Are all of them active or there's a problem like 970?

 

[imaheadcase]

It's not worth the upgrade if you play at 1080P or you are willing to lower settings. Nothing wrong with that. However, your statement cannot be viewed objectively because:

(1) 780Ti's lead over HD7970Ghz/280X is less than 980Ti has over the 780Ti at high resolutions.

780Ti leads 280X by 40% at 1080p, 34% at 1440p and 32% at 4K.
vs.
980Ti leads 780Ti by 35% at 1080p, 41% at 1440p and 43% at 4K.

Don't assume people play at 4k, most don't..majority of gamers, even high end gamers don't play for monitor specs, they play for graphics. Its a objective view because i play at 2560x1440 which is plenty for a 780Ti, even in the latest games. a %30 average is not worth a $650 "upgrade" no matter how you spin it.

Unless you love a certain game, and play it every day, that gives you a huge advantage with a certain card, its not worth it to upgrade anymore unless it gives a %50+ in every game.

Games cater to much to certain GPUs more than ever now to upgrade since a you can see games perform hardly better than the next card in certain titles.

 

[badb0y]

Just wanted to let you guys the know that Newegg threw the cards online.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Just wanted to let you guys the know that Newegg threw the cards online.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&Description=gtx+980ti&N=600565061&isNodeId=1

Prices goes from from..649$ to 99999 with another 99999$ in shipping. Thats a bit steep

 

[at80eighty]

Curious about one thing. The Verge (not the greatest tech site, yes) says Nvidia claims the 980ti to be a VR capable card. when i look at AMD bringing out Fury with a VR edition which is ultra bleeding edge w/ 8x2 HBM (no clue on TFlops yet, but safe to assume it's going to be top of the heap) - Will the 980Ti be "low" end VR specs?

 

[Cloudfire777]

$749

http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=06G-P4-1996-KR

 

[sontin]

GTX 980 Ti has 96 ROPs. Are all of them active or there's a problem like 970?

All of them are "active"...
Pixel fillrate is limited by the numbers of active SMM. So the GTX980TI can use 88 ROPs of the 96 ROPs provided by the memory controllers.

 

[Enigmoid]

GTX 980 Ti has 96 ROPs. Are all of them active or there's a problem like 970?

All of them are "active"...
Pixel fillrate is limited by the numbers of active SMM. So the GTX980TI can use 88 ROPs of the 96 ROPs provided by the memory controllers.

Note that the other ROPs are still active and can be used for other tasks. They cannot be used for pixel fill tasks.

 

[dave1029]

I have a Titan X... two of them actually, and I'm not upset. As time passes, things are going to get more affordable. I paid to have the best of the best, and I got it. Still do for now. I'll pay again when Pascal comes out. The only people who are saying crap like "Titan owners tears" are just the ones still stuck with a 2GB 680.

 

[tential]

I have a Titan X... two of them actually, and I'm not upset. As time passes, things are going to get more affordable. I paid to have the best of the best, and I got it. Still do for now. I'll pay again when Pascal comes out. The only people who are saying crap like "Titan owners tears" are just the ones still stuck with a 2GB 680.

Meh, the 980Ti will be faster than the Titan X once you OC and custom models come out more.
The "Oh I have the best card still so I don't care" doesn't really work. Worked last gen maybe, but this one Titan cards don't have the same advantages they used to and 12 GB of VRAM isn't really an advantage.

 

[Silverforce11]

Custom 980Ti OC battle vs reference Titan X, I would prefer the cooler & quieter custom 980Ti to be frank, both will end up around similar performance, but one will need to sound like a jet engine (or R290X uber) to prevent thermal throttling.

Heck, reference 980Ti OC vs Titan X OC I think it may end up similar due to the 6GB vram using less power, freeing up the TDP limit for higher boost clocks.

 

[Stuka87]

Gonna post here too for comic relief reasons. Charlie Demerjian's take on the 980Ti:



https://archive.is/ngMyR

(archive link because I doubt the article will stay as is for long)

I mean yeah... His views on maxwell late last year were that we were going to see 4 GM204 SKUs, and then early this year see those same 4 SKUs shrinked to 16nm. Now his views are apparently that this higher binned GM204 SKU called the 980Ti is finally here.

He is just living up to the sites name.

 

[YBS1]

I would love to know the theory behind the Hydrocoppers being fifty dollars more than the new style hybrid cards. The hybrids would have to be more expensive to manufacture, as they include a waterblock, pump, radiator, heat pipe, shroud, and two fans....I don't get it.

 

[exar333]

I would love to know the theory behind the Hydrocoppers being fifty dollars more than the new style hybrid cards. The hybrids would have to be more expensive to manufacturer, as they include a waterblock, pump, radiator, heat pipe, shroud, and two fans....I don't get it.

Isn't the block for the Hydrocopper made by a third-party? Traditionally, the HC has been pretty expensive BUT is pretty much the only plug-n-play WC GPU you can just connect to an existing custom loop AND have a warranty. For some, that is worth it...

As an aside, the Hydrocopper 980Ti clocks look low...I wonder if a better version will be released when more custom 980Tis are available?

 

[thilanliyan]

4GB is 4GB. When you hear of HBM efficiency they are referring to power, not how well it's used. A game that needs 4GB of GDDR5 is going to need 4GB of HBM, is going to need 4GB of GDDR3 etc etc. HBM doesn't make a game that needs 4GB of GDDR5 suddenly need only 3GB of HBM.

I never said HBM's efficiency. I said Tonga's memory efficiency:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8460/amd-radeon-r9-285-review/3

"AMD’s own metrics call for a 40% gain in memory bandwidth efficiency, and if that is the average case it would more than make up for the loss of memory bandwidth from working on a narrower memory bus. We’ll see how this plays out over our individual games over the coming pages, but it’s worth noting that even our most memory bandwidth-sensitive games hold up well compared to the R9 280, never losing anywhere near the amount of performance that such a memory bandwidth reduction would imply (if they lose performance at all)."

AMD (and nVidia for that matter) COULD improve memory efficiency but from what I understand, it's been cheaper for them to just slap on more vram rather than optimize for a smaller memory pool. IIRC, AMD stated that since HBM is more expensive, it actually makes financial sense (dedicating man hours) to optimize a smaller memory pool. I wouldn't discount 4GB of HBM so easily, especially on an unreleased card.

 

[thehotsung8701A]

Curious about one thing. The Verge (not the greatest tech site, yes) says Nvidia claims the 980ti to be a VR capable card. when i look at AMD bringing out Fury with a VR edition which is ultra bleeding edge w/ 8x2 HBM (no clue on TFlops yet, but safe to assume it's going to be top of the heap) - Will the 980Ti be "low" end VR specs?

Does VR refer to Virtual Reality?

 

[Gikaseixas]

Beast of a card but needed to be at $550 to make me bite. This thing will cause a couple of sleepless nights to some folks at AMD headquarters

 

[moonbogg]

Purchased two from Nvidia. Tax, shipping, expensive! Oh well, I got a big green chubby going on right now. Can't wait.

 

[exar333]

Purchased two from Nvidia. Tax, shipping, expensive! Oh well, I got a big green chubby going on right now. Can't wait.

Nice upgrade. Should see at least 2x performance and maybe even closer to 3x? 3x VRAM too.

 

[dave1029]

Custom 980Ti OC battle vs reference Titan X, I would prefer the cooler & quieter custom 980Ti to be frank, both will end up around similar performance, but one will need to sound like a jet engine (or R290X uber) to prevent thermal throttling.

Heck, reference 980Ti OC vs Titan X OC I think it may end up similar due to the 6GB vram using less power, freeing up the TDP limit for higher boost clocks.

What I would like to know, is what would be faster if both were water-cooled and OC'd to the max without increasing voltage.

 

[x3sphere]

So the 980TI 5+1GB card?And also is not full 384bit?
Just like GTX970?
980Ti have 18% less pixel fillrate vs TITANX...

It also seems NV made changes to the boost profile according to Tech Report. Newer TX cards have the same tweak. Don't know if they were used for the review (doesn't seem so, judging from the disparity in clocks in Anandtech's review).

Well, kinda. You see, Nvidia has further tuned the GM200 GPU on the 980 Ti, and it expects slighty higher operating clock speeds (~20Hz out of ~1000MHz) as a result. So the difference between the first run of Titan X cards and this newcomer is even smaller in practice than the specs sheet suggests.

My guess is NV will make sure the TX will be ran at these higher clocks when it going up against Fiji, but for now it's better for the PR narrative if 980 Ti is basically matching TX.

http://techreport.com/review/28356/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-graphics-card-reviewed

 

[exar333]

What I would like to know, is what would be faster if both were water-cooled and OC'd to the max without increasing voltage.

That will be down to the silicon lottery. BUT better VRM and components certainly can help...