GTX 980Ti finally launched - MSRP $649 - Reviews

[AnandThenMan]

Has an awesome backplate!

That looks downright sexy.

 

[xthetenth]

I'm loving how water cooling is becoming a major thing now. About time.

On the Ti I have a strong feeling Nvidia has been sitting on this card for awhile now waiting for the right time to release it.

Considering it seems to have been released for the express purpose of spoiling Fiji sales, I think it's pretty obvious. They might have gotten more aggressive with binning over time though.

WHy wait? I mean do you really think AMD is gonna have a card that's not at least close to the performance / price of the gtx980ti? There is a much better chance of a 390x/Fury or whatever they call it being very close in price and performance than not. WHy wait? What are you gonna lose 50$ or 5% performance? ON the other hand AMD's card might flop,then you made the right choice anyway.

edit:side note ,:Nice to see you Blastingcap.

Why not? If you hold onto these cards for even two years, you're valuing whichever one you pick at less than a dollar per day of having one. So the loss from waiting to be sure you get the right one is maybe ten bucks. So if you get even 2% more performance out of it it's worth it. It's a very cheap trade to come out ahead on if you make it consistently, and how many times do you have to win to come out ahead of getting burned?

 

[Larnz]

The EVGA Hybrid closed water loop 980TI is very tempting to me I would love one. I am a big fan of the likes of the corsair Hydro CPU coolers I really like the idea of doing this for GPUS, makes life easy for people not wanting to implement proper water cooling.

I shall however wait to see what FIJI is like but yeah great looking cards, keen to get off my SLI-680's into a single GPU that can do the same job if not hopefully better.

The one REALLY big thing that this next GPU purchase will do is that it concretes my GPU brand for potentially years to come, I have been jumping back and fourth between red and green over the last 10+ years however I want to buy a new monitor in the next 3-6 months. The card choice now will determine which monitor I go for G-sync/FreeSync, once I have committed to a monitor the likely hood in changing brands again in the next 5 years is very low.

 

[happy medium]

Or it could be a good bit faster than the 980Ti. No one knows which is why it makes sense to wait three weeks.

SO whats gonna be released in a month? the 390x or the Fury, the mysterious fury pro, or both or all three.?
Does anyone even know that? wait for what?
I guess AMD's is sitting on some killer 8gb HBM cards while the gtx980ti is selling out?
It don't make sense.

 

[JDG1980]

Buying flagship cards and keeping them long-term is one of the worst strategies in PC building. In fact, this strategy has always failed. Always, no exceptions.

Really? It seems to me that if you bought a 7970 back in early 2012 when it was AMD's new flagship, it would have held up pretty well in the long term. The 680 beat it by a few percent, but it wasn't until the Titan in Feb. 2013 that anything opened up a double-digit lead. Even then, the 7970 was still a viable enough card that AMD rebranded it as the R9 280X in mid-2013 with little criticism. It is still easily a playable card today. That's without taking into account the fact that you could have sold it during the cryptomining craze for almost as much as the original ($549) purchase price.

 

[poofyhairguy]

(3) Zotac GTX980Ti AMP! Extreme

#1 - 1253mhz Base (massive 25% overclock) and 1355mhz Boost clocks out of the box!

Woah

 

[boozzer]

competition is a wonderful thing.

 

[escrow4]

Unless the 390X is a failure I'm not touching Nvidia until they stop screwing gamers over. Gameworks is a joke and they deliberately murdered Kepler to sell Maxwell. Not staying. My $1K a year to GPUs if required is going to AMD. 390X here I come.

 

[amenx]

Unless the 390X is a failure I'm not touching Nvidia until they stop screwing gamers over. Gameworks is a joke and they deliberately murdered Kepler to sell Maxwell. Not staying. My $1K a year to GPUs if required is going to AMD. 390X here I come.

Kepler wasnt "murdered", it was neglected and just fixed with new driver (353.06).

 

[2is]

So you are saying you'll keep your 980Tis for 4-5 years now?

Is there a reason you decided to partially quote me? Here's what I said, i'll highlight the part you decided to quote/respond to and bold the part you missed.

At the moment, 4GB is fine. I personally buy at the high end and keep my cards around for a while, which is why I'm looking beyond 4GB. I do a complete system build about every 5 years. Start off with whatever is the high end card at the time and do a GPU upgrade about half way through the cycle, then build a new box. I'm right at that mid-life GPU upgrade schedule now.

You see how the rest of what I said changes the landscape considerably? If you still think I'm saying that I'm going to keep a 980Ti for 5 years, bust out your calculator. I'll even help you out with the equation. I do a system build about every 5 years and a GPU upgrade half way through. So take 5 and divide by 2. The answer you get is how long I plan on keeping it. The answer won't be 4 and it sure as heck won't be 5. Now you might be wondering where the number 2 came from, well it came from me saying half way through and 2 halves equal a whole.

What is it that you think you're accomplishing with your consistent quote manipulation? I specifically said half way through the life cycle, and mentioned again in the very next sentence when I said "mid-life GPU upgrade" How did you manage to miss it twice?

 

[MrTeal]

That Arctic Storm and Posiden look like interesting cards. I look forward to a review, the cooling method is definitely strange and it will be interesting to see how it compares to a traditional full coverage block.

ROG Poseidon GTX 980 Ti incorporates the DirectCU H2O hybrid cooling solution with a combined vapor chamber and water channels to give users cooler temperatures along with improved noise reduction for 3x quieter performance. ASUS graphics cards are produced via exclusive Auto-Extreme technology, an industry-first 100% automated process, and feature aerospace-grade Super Alloy Power II components for unsurpassed quality and reliability. ROG Poseidon GTX 980Ti also features GPU Tweak II with XSplit Gamecaster for intuitive performance tweaks and gameplay streaming.

 

[yacoub]

Really? It seems to me that if you bought a 7970 back in early 2012 when it was AMD's new flagship, it would have held up pretty well in the long term. The 680 beat it by a few percent, but it wasn't until the Titan in Feb. 2013 that anything opened up a double-digit lead. Even then, the 7970 was still a viable enough card that AMD rebranded it as the R9 280X in mid-2013 with little criticism. It is still easily a playable card today. That's without taking into account the fact that you could have sold it during the cryptomining craze for almost as much as the original ($549) purchase price.

No doubt. I picked up the 7970 when they went on sale after 200 series was announced (late 2013?) and still run it today. If I'd picked it up a year earlier it probably would still have been a solid choice.

 

[RussianSensation]

Really? It seems to me that if you bought a 7970 back in early 2012 when it was AMD's new flagship, it would have held up pretty well in the long term. The 680 beat it by a few percent, but it wasn't until the Titan in Feb. 2013 that anything opened up a double-digit lead. Even then, the 7970 was still a viable enough card that AMD rebranded it as the R9 280X in mid-2013 with little criticism. It is still easily a playable card today. That's without taking into account the fact that you could have sold it during the cryptomining craze for almost as much as the original ($549) purchase price.

Nope. The better strategy would have been to buy dual HD7950s for $280-300, or even GTX670s, sell those earlier and with the $ saved from not buying 680s/7970Ghz upgrade to R9 290s/GTX970s, etc. HD7970 OC CF in no way shape or form outlasted HD7950 OC CF. You can check any benchmark you want. The same story with 680s vs. 670s, or 580s vs. 570s.

You can easily imagine a case where a gamer could have bought HD7950 for $280 and then an R9 290 for $375 in the last 3.5 years. That's way better than buying a $550 HD7970 and holding on to it. If we consider resale of 7950, it makes investing into the HD7970 even worse. You know how long it took before HD7950 was $280? By summer 2012.

Kepler wasnt "murdered", it was neglected and just fixed with new driver (353.06).

Proof that Kepler's performance was fixed? All I see are minor 10-12% gains in TW3. That doesn't even make a dent considering how far behind Kepler started in that GW game:

Reference thermal throttling R9 290X is 25% faster than 780Ti
Reference thermal throttling R9 290 is 32% faster than GTX780
GTX780 is 1 fps faster than R9 280X

Things are worse at 1600P.

In FC4, 290X is 20% faster than 780Ti, 780 loses to a 280X.

In fact, we don't need to go far. The latest reviews of GTX980Ti all show Kepler still performs poorly in the very same games it bombed before. Today reference R9 290 > 780 and reference R9 290X > 780Ti, while R9 280X is encroaching on 780/Titan.

No doubt. I picked up the 7970 when they went on sale after 200 series was announced (late 2013?) and still run it today. If I'd picked it up a year earlier it probably would still have been a solid choice.

Right but that's the point. You might have gotten 7970 for $300-350 which means you theoretically had $200-250 savings from not buying it on launch date. That's precisely why buying flagship cards and keeping them for 5 years is a waste of money. It's been proven every generation over the years on this forum. A gamer who can't buy a flagship card nearly every gen is better off buying $275-350 cards and reselling them every 2.5 years and getting a new card for $275-350 rather than buying a flagship $550-700 card and keeping it for 5 years.

Case in point: $649 980Ti is 70-75% faster than a $649 GTX780 and today we can buy GTX780 beating performance in only a $240 R9 290. Both of these events (980Ti destroying 780 and R9 290 beating $650 780) only took 2 years for that to happen. In fact, last winter there were deals on R9 290 after-market cards for $200-230, so 6 months ago!!

What is it that you think you're accomplishing with your consistent quote manipulation? I specifically said half way through the life cycle, and mentioned again in the very next sentence when I said "mid-life GPU upgrade" How did you manage to miss it twice?

So you are betting that 4GB of VRAM will become a bottleneck in 2.5 years or less at 1080P-1440P?

No official info is known about Fiji XT because it hasn't been officially confirmed/announced. You still went ahead and bought 980Ti SLI despite trying to come off objective/impartial for months. Ya right. No one objective does that unless you are specifically tied to a GSync monitor or need some CUDA specific software or NVidia 3D Vision gaming or you have insider info that Fiji is worse for 100% fact. That's the whole point of the discussion that you seem to be evading at all costs. You never intended to buy Fiji even if it had 8 or 16GB of HBM because you didn't even bother waiting for reviews, its price, or a confirmation of its HBM capacity.

I guarantee it if Fiji beats 980Ti in performance at 1440P and 4K, you'll have some excuses lined up how in 2018 it might run into a VRAM bottleneck. If 980Ti OC beats Fiji XT OC and they cost similarly, of course 980Ti is a better choice due to 6GB of VRAM. But we don't know any of that until Fiji PROs and Fiji XT's launch. You didn't wait, which means you never even considered buying it; that's the point.

The card choice now will determine which monitor I go for G-sync/FreeSync, once I have committed to a monitor the likely hood in changing brands again in the next 5 years is very low.

I would think the monitor choice is way more important than the card choice. You'll probably upgrade at least 1 more time in the next 5 years as far as GPUs go but the monitor will stick around. If I were in your shoes I'd read reviews on various GSync vs. FreeSync monitors first.

 

[ShintaiDK]

That Fiji screenshot is fake. No need to keep spreading it.

 

[B-Riz]

But even if we go with your idea that waiting is pointless for AMD's cards, one major reason to wait is because the after-market 980Ti cards such as Gigabyte Windforce 3X, Zotac AMP! Extreme and MSI Gaming G6/Asus Strix DCUIII are way better than any reference turd blower card.

You realize not everyone wants a hot and loud reference blower single card? After-market open air cooled cards can often be far superior. That's why there is still incentive to wait.

Did you not read Titan X reviews or 980Ti reviews? The reference blower is a jet engine when it comes to achieving a balance of good noise levels and temps while overclocking.

In the AT review, there is an unreasonable level of excitement that the 980 Ti is still using the (not totally bad, but not good for this card) reference cooler.

This bothers me.

This card should have been launched with only aftermarket configs.

I'm sorry to say this reminds of 290 / 290x launch; amazing hardware that *needs* mega boss cooling to really unlock the full potential of the card.

I would want a way better card and cooler at $650+ than what the ref design is.

 

[svenge]

In the AT review, there is an unreasonable level of excitement that the 980 Ti is still using the (not totally bad, but not good for this card) reference cooler.

This bothers me.

This card should have been launched with only aftermarket configs.

I'm sorry to say this reminds of 290 / 290x launch; amazing hardware that *needs* mega boss cooling to really unlock the full potential of the card.

I would want a way better card and cooler at $650+ than what the ref design is.

Unlike the 290/X, the 980Ti got custom/aftermarket cards (e.g. EVGA's ACX 2.0+) released at launch instead of months later. There's nothing wrong with having the option of having a blower for those who want it...

By the way, I don't remember seeing an "uber" switch on the 980Ti like the 290/X had in order to handwave its way past terrible thermals and noise. Perhaps it's because the reference 980Ti cooler is actually competent?

 

[flopper]

Perhaps it's because the reference 980Ti cooler is actually competent?

No its
Hot
draw a load of power
trottles
is noisy

Funny you buy a card at 800 euro and then cant get a decent cooling/fan solution.

 

[ShintaiDK]

No its
Hot
draw a load of power
trottles
is noisy

Funny you buy a card at 800 euro and then cant get a decent cooling/fan solution.

Anandtech disagrees with you, not exactly surprising considering your statements.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9306/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/16

 

[showb1z]

Anandtech disagrees with you, not exactly surprising considering your statements.

Not sure what your point is, Nvidia's blower is adequate, but barely. Unless you really need a blower there's no reason to get a reference design.
At this price-point it's silly to cripple your card like that. Any half-decent aftermarket card is going to blow it out of the water with temperatures in the low 70's, 10dB lower noise levels and a 20% factory OC.

 

[SirCanealot]

Yeah, the Titan blower cooler is actually pretty good. Of course it's not as good as aftermarket, but for a reference cooler than thing is awesome.

And it feels great -- whenever I take my reference 980 out of my PC and hold it I'm like "OMG THIS THING IS SO COOL"

I guarantee it if Fiji beats 980Ti in performance at 1440P and 4K, you'll have some excuses lined up how in 2018 it might run into a VRAM bottleneck.

And I don't know why people talk about vram being the be-all and end-all. VRAM usage can be managed just like everything else. Dropping textures down from ultra to high rarely makes much difference at all in most games. Obviously it's always better to have more than less, but I've never messed my underwear worrying about my VRAM filling up :/ (but then I don't run crazy 3 screen 4k configurations either )

 

[SirPauly]

Kepler wasnt "murdered", it was neglected and just fixed with new driver (353.06).

No, a few bugs were discovered but the Kepler architecture continues to lose ground to GCN and Maxwell, imho.

 

[iiiankiii]

The reference blower is fine for stock clock. If you're okay with the performance being offered as is, then there's nothing wrong with the stock blower. The GTX 980TI, just like the Titan X, is a powerful card being held back by the reference blower. Basically, there is a good 15-20% in performance being held back by the stock blower. If you want those extra "free" performance, the stock blower is not good enough. In fact, it's pretty pathetic. The second you want any increase in performance, the noise shoots up. I guess if you're okay with 290x reference noise level, you can get those extra performance on the stock blower. The last time I check, that reference cooler on the 290x was consider loud and hot by many here.

 

[JoeRambo]

But stock cooler has a virtue of being a blower. Most 3rd party coolers dump heat in the case and that needs to be extracted as well. For a blower it is awesome.

 

[B-Riz]

But stock cooler has a virtue of being a blower. Most 3rd party coolers dump heat in the case and that needs to be extracted as well. For a blower it is awesome.

This feels like an easy but hollow argument.

There are some people that want a closed and quiet PC that the blower works fine for, but the majority of us here have awesome cases and fans to properly ventilate and cool the PC.

Again, this is a $650+ card, I am hard pressed to see how it is going in a budget case...

3rd party cards also usually come with a bit of an OC and upgraded PCB's / VRM's, etc.

 

[tential]

Anandtech disagrees with you, not exactly surprising considering your statements.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9306/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/16

Lol... the 290x was destroyed for its power consumption which is 20 more watts than the 980 Ti which is now a cool/quiet card?

goalposts...