Is maxwell different enough for you? Please rate it if you own it: )

[SperglordActual]

1. 970M and 980M are really impressive. Basically 30-40% increase on average and 45-50% in most demanding games like Metro Last Light over 870M and 880M. Battery Boost and the option of 6GB 970M and 8GB 980M. Slam dunk.

2. 970 is the sweet spot at $330 and with overclocking I would pick it over $270 R9 290. Looking at 970 SLI OC, I'd get about 50% more performance over my cards. Not bad but really waiting for 75-100% or 980 performance at $350.

3. 980 leaves a sour taste in my mouth because of price. It's way too overpriced relative to the 970, without extra VRAM like 480/580 had over 470/570. The 2 after-market versions I would consider now are MSI Gaming and Windforce but in Canada after tax they are $750-800. I find it ridiculous to pay $700 CDN for a midrange Maxwell. Performance wise an overclocked 980 is about 80% faster than each of my cards but that's still barely faster than 7970 OC CF. That means I would be paying $1500 or so for dual 980s and still get just 4GB of VRAM and midrange Maxwell. At that point might as well get $2000 dual-GM200s with 6-8GB of vram and way more performance I bet.

4. I want to see the performance in Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age Inquisition to see how 970/980 stack up against R9 290/X.

Overall, I would have bit at 2X 980 if they were $350 a pop, but at $580 for MSI Gaming and $620 for Windforce, I feel like even if GM200 is $800, it would beat the 980 by at least 40%, thus making it better value.

For now I will probably wait to 2015 to see how 390X turns out and of course GM200. Maybe those 2 cards will force 980/980 refresh to drop to $399. After seeing 680--> 780/780Ti, I am not falling for this same trick of paying flagship price for a midrange next gen product since Bitcoin mining won't offset the high entry price.

I am hoping we get a GM200 release by the end of the year... Or at least an announcement. If the 390x does come with HBM, that will definately be a game changer.

 

[ChuckFx]

I could get enough for my GTX 780 but nvidia seems anti-competitive (the patents may result in more me-too products perhaps mixed with higher prices and less satisfaction to the engineers). Anyway, I don't believe that maxwell is very different and their drivers haven't been very good with Kepler.

So isn't maxwell just like Kepler except the former is more efficient? the DSR stuff doesn't sound that interesting given it lacks properly rotated grid sampling. the double precision performance at stock clocks is about the same as my GTX 780 although better 32 bit integer performance and clever programming can boost maxwell's limited DP performance. they didn't defy microsoft a lot (pre-render zero frames ahead was taken away).

i know that nvidia has made the most efficient products but their marketing has helped get the me-too products sold (but 3dfx's marketing was still better at least in terms of ads). and i hate how intel accidentally pushed back software rasterization; doesn't matter how many cores (in fact we need radically parallel gen purpose processors) or how many extensions are added to x86 if they are incomplete (or if x86 simply can't be good for graphics). as for AMD, they're in bed with microsoft and Windows 10 looks TERRIBLE.

Maybe if nvidia moved their HQ out of california they could sell their products for less and run more happily. Futurity depends on new companies started out of homes to de-bloat the big corporations and to make the big corporations do better (exception is that Whole Foods Market is huge yet excellent).

Your fatal mistake is to use those GAMING cards as working units. You just don't do that, they were not built for workload.