GTX 980Ti finally launched - MSRP $649 - Reviews

[Azix]

Are any of those sites recommending waiting for AMDs launch? If not, nvidia done good launching early because it seems a lot of people aren't planning to wait at all. Plus the price drops on the other cards can thin the market for AMD.

Some people might end up regretting in a fews days to couple weeks.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Some people might end up regretting in a fews days to couple weeks.

Some will, but mostly people that are loyal to Nvidia won't buy anything AMD no matter what the perf/$ is they only care about the lowered prices of NV cards.

 

[Azix]

So like $700 after 'Murican taxes?


So it's gonna be 700€, I guess.


Not sure how AMD can respond to that. Their Fury would have to be faster and the same price or significantly cheaper and close in performance....

I expected the 980 to be much more expensive...that might be an Nvidia last minute move to try their best not even giving the Fury a chance?


Either way...I'm tempted xD

if it is a last minute move I think thats reason t be optimistic about the AMD cards. The price drops on the 980 and 970 as well. When the smoke clears we shall see.

Someone said the efficiency is good but it seems when nvidia goes for fuller chips the power consumption shoots up hard. Its 290x levels almost so if the fiji chips maintain a reasonable power consumption (similar to 290x) we're looking at an even playing field at the high end in that regard.

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

Things are looking interesting.

 

[Rvenger]

All I wanna see is the headgear gourmet

Fair enough.... :whiste:

 

[Silverforce11]

There seems to be a mood of shock & awe at the performance & price.

I posted during Titan X's launch, a cut down GM200 with 6gb vram will come very close due to more TDP room (less vram!) to reach a higher average boost.

Pricing at $649-699 (custom models ~$699) also fits in nicely for a higher volume. Also, expecting custom 980Ti models to hit 1.3ghz+ boost in games out of box, giving it faster than Titan X performance.

So indeed NV has effectively neutered prospects of Titan X sales, 6GB vram is not a bottleneck even at 4K. Titan X now only makes sense for one type of gamer: 3x 4K setups Quad SLI where the vram matters.

Also called the price drops on the 980 and a tiny drop on the 970.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37438428&postcount=100

This is due to 980Ti pricing forcing from the top, but also AMD's refresh stack from below.

 

[ocre]

AMDs refresh stack from below has nothing to do with the 980 dropping in price.

AMD hasnt made a move yet.

Nvidia lowered prices to pick up more sales. They were bundling two hit games with the 980, to push sales.

They need to sale their products, regardless of what AMD does. I figure that the gm204 had eventually slowed, only so many are gonna upgrade. Nvidia is very dependent on their GPU sales. Unless you think the game bundles were because AMDs yet to be released rehashes had forced nvidia to bundle 2 huge AAA pc titles......

 

[AnandThenMan]

AMDs refresh stack from below has nothing to do with the 980 dropping in price.

AMD hasnt made a move yet.

It's called a preemptive strike.

 

[2is]

Are any of those sites recommending waiting for AMDs launch? If not, nvidia done good launching early because it seems a lot of people aren't planning to wait at all. Plus the price drops on the other cards can thin the market for AMD.

Some people might end up regretting in a fews days to couple weeks.

I doubt there will be much regret. For a lot of people like myself the all but confirmed 4GB of VRAM for 390x already made it a no-go. I suppose you could wait it out and see if it causes more price drops but that is HIGHLY unlikely. 980Ti is already cheaper than a lot of people expected and matches Titan X performance. Combine that with rumored 390x pricing falling between 980Ti and Titan X and odds that any price drop would occur on a 980Ti are virtually nil.

Who knows, maybe this announcement will cause AMD to rethink it's pricing, but even then, the 390x would have to be something very special to lure away potential 980Ti buyers. It's also not always purely about the hardware. The recent bad press in two highly anticipated titles in close succession isn't doing AMD any favors.

 

[2is]

AMDs refresh stack from below has nothing to do with the 980 dropping in price.

AMD hasnt made a move yet.

Nvidia lowered prices to pick up more sales. They were bundling two hit games with the 980, to push sales.

They need to sale their products, regardless of what AMD does. I figure that the gm204 had eventually slowed, only so many are gonna upgrade. Nvidia is very dependent on their GPU sales. Unless you think the game bundles were because AMDs yet to be released rehashes had forced nvidia to bundle 2 huge AAA pc titles......

AMD hasn't made a move, but if we are aware there's a new AMD card coming, nVidia is surely aware of it as well. I'm sure there are a lot of factors at play here, i'm also pretty sure AMD is one of them.

 

[DEW73]

Long time lurker, first time poster, I could use some suggestions/help. I'm thinking about grabbing a new GPU in the next few months for my main rig, mostly for gaming @ 1600p. This one looks pretty powerful, and it looks to be the same as the TitanX for those resolutions if I read the charts correctly (but for a significantly lesser cost)? How would that compare to any upcoming release from AMD?

 

[2is]

Long time lurker, first time poster, I could use some suggestions/help. I'm thinking about grabbing a new GPU in the next few months for my main rig, mostly for gaming @ 1600p. This one looks pretty powerful, and it looks to be the same as the TitanX for those resolutions if I read the charts correctly (but for a significantly lesser cost)? How would that compare to any upcoming release from AMD?

Welcome to the forums. No one can answer that until AMD's upcoming releases get reviewed and compared.

 

[Serandur]

Hm, saw this and got worried about the 980Ti having the VRAM issue like the 970. From Anandtech's review:

"As for texel and pixel fillrates, the results are both as-expected and a bit surprising. On the expected side, we see the GTX 980 Ti trail GTX Titan X by a bit, again taking a hit from the SMM loss. On the other hand we’re seeing a larger than expected drop in the pixel fill rates. GTX 980 Ti loses some rasterization throughput from the SMM loss, but a 15% drop in this test is much larger than 2 SMMs. Just to be sure we checked to make sure the ROP/MC configuration of GTX 980 Ti was unchanged at 96 ROPs, so we’re at a bit of a loss to explain the difference at this time."




This is the same disparity noticed between the 980 and the 970 at launch that ultimately hinted towards the segmented VRAM. What's up with that?

 

[96Firebird]

Looks like the 980 Ti is sold out at Nvidia's store, gonna have to wait for the rest of the retail channels to start selling if you want one...

 

[DEW73]

Thanks for the reply 2is. For 1600p gaming, would there be any significant difference between 980Ti and the TitanX?

 

[cbrunny]

Out of stock on the Nvidia site. When will it be in stores? This week I assume?

 

[RussianSensation]

The best game is only 30fps more than the 780TI, the worse case its around 10fps.
Totally not worth upgrading from a expensive TI when released, to another expensive TI.

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.

Source

That means 980TI is a bigger upgrade over the 780Ti than 780Ti was over the HD7970Ghz/R9 280X. Not to mention 980Ti doubles the VRAM of a 780Ti but 780Ti only matched 7970Ghz/R9 280X's VRAM. Overall 980Ti is also a way better product than 780Ti this generation because it came out just 9 months after the mid-range 980 but it took a whopping more than 1.5 years for 780Ti to come out after GTX680 launched. That makes the 980Ti's $649 price and its relative performance more impressive than 780Ti's.

Once 980Ti is overclocked, it leaves cards like 290X and 780Ti for dead, beating them by about 75%. Even if you overclocked the 780TI by 25%, the 980Ti OC would still be leading by 40%.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9306/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/17

Of course waiting for Pascal will produce yet another 60-100% gain in performance over a 980Ti in the Big Daddy GP100/200 but 980Ti is still a good card. Sweclockers has it beating 780Ti by 45% at stock speeds and beating 980 by 30% at 4K for just $100 more.

Since 980Ti has 50% more ROPs, 50% higher memory bandwidth and 37.5% more shaders/TMUs vs. the 980, once both are overclocked to 1.45-1.5Ghz, the 980Ti could easily be 37-40% faster on average against a similarly clocked 980.

Who knows, maybe this announcement will cause AMD to rethink it's pricing, but even then, the 390x would have to be something very special to lure away potential 980Ti buyers. It's also not always purely about the hardware. The recent bad press in two highly anticipated titles in close succession isn't doing AMD any favors.

TPU has 980Ti beating 290X by 37% at 4K.
Sweclockers has 980Ti beating 290X by 38% at 4K.
Computerbase has a stock 980Ti beating 290X by 34% at 4K, and by 40% once they raise the temperature limit to 91C and power limit to the max.

Based on the rumoured specs of Fiji XT = 1050mhz with 4096 shaders, 256 TMUs, 64 Tonga ROPs and 512GB/sec memory bandwidht with Tonga's 40% memory bandwidth compression, that puts Fiji XT about 52% faster than a 290X at 4K.

That means Fiji XT has a legitimate shot at beating 980Ti stock at 1440P and 4K. However, 980Ti can overclock another 20% which means we need to wait until Fiji XT OC vs. 980Ti OC comparison review.

I am actually amazed how many people are going to order the 980TI without even waiting 3 more weeks to see if Fiji XT is a better product. I guess as many predicted on this forum, most people who buy NV just keep buying NV.

I am pretty happy about $650 980Ti because it ends the absurd milking of the 980 which was always a card that should have been priced at $429-449 instead of $549. With 980Ti at $649, even at $499, the 980 is still irrelevant and overpriced. Good to see the order restored at the high end since even without being fully unlocked the 980Ti at $649 is WAY more justifiable than the marketing driven 980 was at $549.

All that's left now is pricing, but with the rumors at $649, anyone who waited two months will save $350 and get the same performance as the Titan-X.

There was some bickering from Titan X owners in the beginning how no way would NV launch a card nearly as fast for only $699 because they have no competition or something along those lines. The reality is NV just uses the Titan brand as a halo brand to make flagship cards priced at $650-699 seem more "reasonable." I kept saying how after-market 980Ti cards will make the Titan X irrelevant for almost anyone but a 5K gamer with 3-4 of those TX cards where where 6GB of VRAM might be a limit and glad to see 980Ti lived up to its promise of being a Titan X killer! :thumbsup:

 

[x3sphere]

This is the same disparity noticed between the 980 and the 970 at launch that ultimately hinted towards the segmented VRAM. What's up with that?

That is weird. I don't trust NV that much after their 970 shenanigans, guess we'll see if anything comes of this later. No cause for concern right now if it doesn't affect game performance though I suppose.

 

[Silverforce11]

Hm, saw this and got worried about the 980Ti having the VRAM issue like the 970. From Anandtech's review:

"As for texel and pixel fillrates, the results are both as-expected and a bit surprising. On the expected side, we see the GTX 980 Ti trail GTX Titan X by a bit, again taking a hit from the SMM loss. On the other hand we’re seeing a larger than expected drop in the pixel fill rates. GTX 980 Ti loses some rasterization throughput from the SMM loss, but a 15% drop in this test is much larger than 2 SMMs. Just to be sure we checked to make sure the ROP/MC configuration of GTX 980 Ti was unchanged at 96 ROPs, so we’re at a bit of a loss to explain the difference at this time."

This is the same disparity noticed between the 980 and the 970 at launch that ultimately hinted towards the segmented VRAM. What's up with that?

If the ROP count are unchanged but that test sees such a drop, then yes, its most likely a 970 setup with two vram segment, fast & slow.

But it wont matter since the 970 got away with false advertisement, I doubt people care anymore what NV puts on the box as its specs, as long as performance is good and price is not a major rip off, it'll sell out.

 

[tential]

For a person who has never spent over $400 for a GPU, I wanted the Fiji card badly. However, reading through that review I didn't get a sense that the GTX 980Ti was a great value at $650.
Instead I walked away from those charts realizing that the R9 295x2 was just ~$500 a couple of weeks ago and that there will be no single card in the $500 price bracket that will come CLOSE to that level of performance. It's the PERFECT stopgap card for a person like me who hasn't played the majority of the games in this review where crossfire actually works.
Currently this card is at $556.39:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

It's not enough for 4K, but it's as close as you can possibly get currently. I acknowledge this choice obviously isn't great for the majority of you gamers who play games when they're released, but for people like me who o nly play a few games a year all that iwll have good crossfire support, I think this might still be the best play to make before they're sold out.

 

[maddie]

Long time lurker, first time poster, I could use some suggestions/help. I'm thinking about grabbing a new GPU in the next few months for my main rig, mostly for gaming @ 1600p. This one looks pretty powerful, and it looks to be the same as the TitanX for those resolutions if I read the charts correctly (but for a significantly lesser cost)? How would that compare to any upcoming release from AMD?

None of us here knows the future, at least none are talking. Use the anandtech review as a guide.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9306/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/18

Final words page:

"That said however, today’s launch is just the first part of a larger battle between NVIDIA and AMD. With AMD scheduled to launch their next-generation high-end card in June, the launch of the GTX 980 Ti is in many ways NVIDIA striking first and striking hard. By pushing GTX Titan X-like performance down to $650, NVIDIA has set the bar for AMD, AMD needs to either beat GTX 980 Ti/Titan X if they want to take back the performance crown, or they need to deliver their card for less than $650. It goes without saying that NVIDIA has given AMD a very high bar to beat, but AMD has proven to be quite resourceful in the past, so it shall be interesting to see just what AMD’s response is to the GTX 980 Ti.

As for this moment, the high-end video card market is essentially in a holding pattern. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti is a fine card for the price – a GTX Titan X for $649 – however with AMD’s new flagship card on the horizon buyers are likely better off waiting to see what AMD delivers before making such a purchase, if only to see if it further pushes down video card prices."

 

[RussianSensation]

It's not enough for 4K, but it's as close as you can possibly get currently. I acknowledge this choice obviously isn't great for the majority of you gamers who play games when they're released, but for people like me who o nly play a few games a year all that iwll have good crossfire support, I think this might still be the best play to make before they're sold out.

R9 295X2 is held back by CPU limitations at 1080P-1440P and in cases where CF doesn't work, you'll have 75% less performance compared to a $650 980Ti OC (per 6 tests in AT's overclocking section the 980Ti OC is 75.8% faster than the 290X Uber). CF/SLI makes sense in rare cases where if SLI/CF doens't work, you still get 85% of the perfomrance of the flagship card (for example as is the case of 970 SLI / R9 290X CF vs. a single 980). In the case of a 980Ti OC vs. R9 295X2/970SLI/R9 290X CF, the loss in performance is equivalent to a full generational increase in performance. That makes all those dual-chip setups obsolete.

$100 less isn't enough to get 4GB of VRAM, 75% lower performance in cases where CF fails and a card that uses more power. Normally I don't care about power usage but in this case why end up with a card that uses 250W+ more power when it's not even faster by much?

You also didn't consider that cross-fire/SLI can produce stuttering. You can have smoother feeling of motion in games at lower FPS with a single GPU (i.e., 45 fps might feel smoother on a 980TI OC vs. 51 fps on an R9 295X2 OC).

There is no way that a $550 R9 295X2 makes any sense today against a 980TI. Also, it'll be far easier to resell the 980Ti and it does come with the Batman game which makes it a bit cheaper than the $650 MSRP.

980Ti makes 970SLI $600, R9 290X CF ($540), GTX980 $500, Titan X at $1000 all obsolete. It's a better buy than all of these unless you can afford a custom/hybrid TX.

Well, I am all for value for the money. But some people just want the best performance available at a given time no matter what the cost. I cant really imagine that a hundred or two hundred dollars either way is a big deal to someone who is willing to pay 500 to 1000 dollars for a gpu alone.

Then why is it every Titan X/Titan X SLI/Tri-SLI owner doesn't have a 5960X, Asus X99 Deluxe/ROG Extreme, Samsung 951 PCIe x4 SSDs/Samsung 850 Pro SSDs in Raid, etc.? If price was a non-factor, they would have top of the line components for every part of their rig. That's not what happens for many Titan X owners.

Take an i7 4790K or a 5820K @ 4.5Ghz and 980Ti SLI and this setup will beat Titan X SLI on an older SB/IVB or lower clocked Haswell chip. Plenty of Titan X owners are rocking older gen CPU. So gain, price/performance or price must matter or they would have a 5960X or at least a 5820K max OC.

That is why nVidia is killing AMD in the market even though AMD offers good value. If you are paying a few hundred dollars for a dgpu (1000 to 2000+ for a complete system), 60 bucks a pop for the latest games, maybe a hundred bucks a month for fast internet, etc, price is not really the determining factor for a lot of purchases.

Most of the killing NV is doing happens in the mobile dGPU space and in the $350 and below range. Probably less than 10% of the entire GPU market buys products like the 980Ti and the Titan X. AMD's market share started eroding badly when 750/750Ti launched and then GM204 and other mobile chips followed. AMD has hardly any mobile dGPUs for sale. I wouldn't be surprised if NV has 85-90%+ market share in the laptop gaming segment.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

NV also announced:

-Gameworks VR
-Mobile / windowed g-sync
-980 Price drop
-slight 970 price drop
-kepler performance drivers

What's the price drop on the 970? I'm surprised to see even a slight drop since AMD is going to still be competing against it with Hawaii and since the 980 was so grossly overpriced even a big pricecut on it wouldn't exert too much downward pressure on 970 prices.

 

[2is]

I am actually amazed how many people are going to order the 980TI without even waiting 3 more weeks to see if Fiji XT is a better product. I guess as many predicted on this forum, most people who buy NV just keep buying NV.

I'm not. But then again, I don't ignore 4GB vs 6GB of ram and AMD's very recent performance history in games. I can see how it would seem amazing if you ignore all that though and adopt only your own thinking of why people are buying nVidia.. I suspect you will continue to be amazed for a very very long time and never actually be aware of why.

 

[2is]

If the ROP count are unchanged but that test sees such a drop, then yes, its most likely a 970 setup with two vram segment, fast & slow.

But it wont matter since the 970 got away with false advertisement, I doubt people care anymore what NV puts on the box as its specs, as long as performance is good and price is not a major rip off, it'll sell out.

970 got away with it because it was not known until well after it's release. I suspect a bigger backlash if the same is true with the 980Ti, but given the fact that nVidia has already came up with an excuse as to why the 970 was advertised in the fashion that it was, I doubt they'll pull the exact same stunt again. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough if they do though. The discrepancy could be something as simple as drivers.

Thanks for the reply 2is. For 1600p gaming, would there be any significant difference between 980Ti and the TitanX?

Based on all the reviews, no

 

[RussianSensation]

If its $650, I will eat my hat with pride and buy one. I am all for lower prices.

You can get a custom ordered cake with a hat and eat it while you wait 2-3 weeks to see if Fiji changes the landscape, then pick the best card.

I'm not. But then again, I don't ignore 4GB vs 6GB of ram and AMD's very recent performance history in games. I can see how it would seem amazing if you ignore all that though and adopt only your own thinking of why people are buying nVidia.. I suspect you will continue to be amazed for a very very long time and never actually be aware of why.

I am not ignoring anything. Seems like you aren't reading recent reviews and benchmarks though. AMD is closing the performance gap with NV.

290X > 780Ti in the TW3 and we can't really use GW in that game to indicate how much superior Maxwell might be over Fiji. Project CARS is a Shift 2 anomaly where the developer spent 0 time optimizing the game. In Shift 2 AMD cards received a magical 45% increase in performance with AMD doing 0 work. If a developer with a history of never caring for AMD products releases a fully broken game for a particular AIB, then why should it be counted into objective discussions? What other games are you talking about?

Let's look at many games, unlike cherry-picking which is what your post is insinuating.

At 1440P, 980 is just 11% faster than a 290X and at 4K it's 7% faster, a FAR cry from the lead it had at launch.

So in fact, I am not the one ignoring what's happening in the GPU sector. If anything, NV's lead is shrinking the more new games come out. 290X is now beating 970/780Ti. Considering how well every single GCN product has aged since HD7970 launched, I would actually bet on Fiji XT outlasting 980Ti, if anything given that 980 today is losing the lead it had over 290X and at 4K it gets wiped out to just 6-7%.

Secondly, you are the one who is ignoring the theoretical potential of a 4096SP/256TMU 1.05Ghz shader Fiji card. Considering 980Ti is only 37-40% faster than a 290X, as I said it's premature for anyone objective to order NV unless one only buys NV. Not sure why this statement is so controversial to you that you right away go on the defensive and start telling me how I won't understand why people only buy NV. I've never bought an ATI/AMD/NV card without seeing what the competition has in store so I guess no I don't understand people who buy based on brand.

I already acknowledged in the 390X thread that 980Ti looks extremely competitive due to its overclocking potential but seeing how 980Ti is sold out at some places already, before AMD launches its Maxwell competitors, it looks like what many gamers on this forum keep saying is 100% true - marketing and brand name rule for the majority of the PC gaming market.