Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 And 980 Review: Maximum Maxwell

[vertexx]

Guys - a little constructive criticism on the article. First, dedicating 4 pages of the article to Power consumption is overkill. That is more than what was dedicated to frame-rates of Games. Second, Price/Performance analysis was missed. This is arguably more important to most people than efficiency, and it's an easy addition to what you already have. Third, overclocking is important. Sure, one press sample is just that, but gathering data points across the net gives users a good feel for general headroom. Finally, the meat of the article, the game tests, are just lacking. You tested fewer games at fewer resolutions than most other sites providing coverage for these cards. Sure, you are showing a bunch of different representations of the same data, but I would argue that most users are primarily looking at frame rates and then perhaps frame time variance. The new chart representation doesn't allow you to scan through the article looking at frame rates for resolutions you are interested in, you have to click through to the right picture to get what you want. Plus, those arrows hide some of the Y axis labels.

If you want to know who actually killed it today with the 980 and 970 coverage, it is Techpowerup. Those guys (or primarily, that one guy) really knocked it out of the park with their coverage of this release today.

 

[Chris Droste]

SLI 970s suddenly looks like a screaming good time for the money

 

[azzazel_99]

Yea the 970 is awesome! I mean I have no doubt they can be pushed faster than a 780ti. Ugh makes my sli setup look less badass.

 

[bollwerk]

What happened to the 880/870?

 

[azzazel_99]

Laptop cards are the 800 series.

 

[SkyBill40]

Looks like it might be time to invest in a new card seeing as spending money on a slightly used MSI 660Ti OC 2GB Power Edition (if I could find one) to complement the one I already have would be a colossal waste.

Meh. I either sell this one, give it to my mom, or hold onto it for a HTPC build. Decisions, decisions.

 

[IInuyasha74]

So would it be worth me upgrading to the 970 if I have 2 R9 280xs in Crossfire right now? Would it be worth the performance boost?

Actually you would be killing yourself and wasting money, R9 280x in CF vs single 970? no question there.

He already owns the R9 280x cards in CF.
Since you already own these cards, 28% is quite a boost, however in games that make good use of CF you already would be outperforming the GTX 970. I wouldn't recommend you upgrade to it.

The GTX 980 or the later GTX 980 Ti which I am sure is in the works, probably worth the upgrade. The GTX 970 though I don't think so.

 

[ubercake]

Got a EVGA GTX 980 SC to run with my PG278Q.

780s anyone?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Disappointing with just 4GB of VRAM. Modded skyrim using 4.5GB @1080p, this make the titan still the faster card for 4K.

Most cards are shipping with between 1 and 4 GB. Using (and providing) more than 4 GB of VRAM is still
the exception more than the norm. Not to say that it will stay that way for long, but for this generation
adding more VRAM would just be unnecessary cost.

I still have yet to see any published documentation showing 4 GB does anything of significance over 2 GB. I am not talking about a game claiming to use it , but I am talking abut swapping out 4Gb cards for 2GB cards and actually being able to measure it.

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/3/

Metro: 2033 is completely unplayable on either card at our highest resolution [5760 x 1080], and even GTX 770 4GB SLI wouldn’t be playable either. Sleeping Dogs has a problem actually displaying on the outer LCDs although the performance is cut, so this benchmark has to be discounted. This leaves five games out of 30 where a 4GB GTX 770 gives more than a 1 frame per second difference over the 2GB-equipped GTX 770. And one of them, Metro: Last Light still isn’t even quite a single frame difference.

Of those five games, two of them are unplayable at 5760×1080 although in these cases, 4GB GTX 770 SLI would finally make some sense over 2GB GTX 770 SLI. That only leaves Lost Planet 2 and two racing games that gain some advantage by choosing a single GTX 770 4GB card over the single GTX 770 2GB. And in Lost Planet 2, we were able to add even higher anti-aliasing – from 8xAA to CSAA8XQ and to CSAA32X – but the performance difference was greatest with 8xAA.

There is one last thing to note with Max Payne 3: It would not normally allow one to set 4xAA at 5760×1080 with any 2GB card as it claims to require 2750MB. However, when we replaced the 4GB GTX 770 with the 2GB version, the game allowed the setting. And there were no slowdowns, stuttering, nor any performance differences that we could find between the two GTX 770s.

SLI 970s suddenly looks like a screaming good time for the money

Reminds me of the 560 Ti tho not quite as good..... two 560 Tis were $400 for two and outperformed the $500 580 by 40% while being $100 less.

 

[loki1944]

Wow, really NOT impressed, like 6-10fps better than my MSI GTX 780 T/F which cost $100 less. I was hoping for something impressive.

 

[Buffalufacus]

So would it be worth me upgrading to the 970 if I have 2 R9 280xs in Crossfire right now? Would it be worth the performance boost?

Actually you would be killing yourself and wasting money, R9 280x in CF vs single 970? no question there.

So I'm assuming you're saying stay with the R9s ? Couldn't really tell with your answer. If I could sell the cards yeah I'd lose money but it would be coming out even in that department.

 

[Hypernova_]

Wow, the performance of the GTX 970 & GTX 980 is amazing! How well does the GTX 900 series overclock?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Wow, really NOT impressed, like 6-10fps better than my MSI GTX 780 T/F which cost $100 less. I was hoping for something impressive.

Wait for the MSI version .... the MSI 780 comes with an 11% overclock outta the box.

 

[azzazel_99]

Evga will release their classified models which aside from the lightning models from msi will dominate the market in performance as usual.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Wow, the performance of the GTX 970 & GTX 980 is amazing! How well does the GTX 900 series overclock?

Better than i expected..... I thought they would follow AMD's lead and push the stock clocks way up like the R9 series. But still reviewers getting bit under 20 so far .... I ahven't had a chnace to run around and read all the other reviews

980 Test Results

Guru 3D Reference / Sample / Overclocked / % OC
Core Clock: 1126 / 1126 / 1326 / 117.8%
Boost Clock: 1216 / 1216 / 1452 / 119.4%
Memory Clock: 7000 / 7000 / 8002 / 114.3%
Performance Gain BF4 114.6 %


TechPowerUp Reference / Sample / Overclocked / % OC
Core Clock: 1126 / 1126 / 1350 / 119.9%
Boost Clock: 1216 / 1216 / Not Listed / NA
Memory Clock: 7000 / 7000 / 8002 / 114.3%
Performance Gain Firestrike 115.5 %

Evga will release their classified models which aside from the lightning models from msi will dominate the market in performance as usual.

I see that the reference card uses Samsung memory .... I wonder if the Classy will have Hynix, Samsung or the dreaded Elpida as we saw on the 780 Classified..... that one didn't deserve the Classy label. But vwith Samsung on the reference, i think we can expect at least that on the Classy

 

[azzazel_99]

i love my classy 780ti's. Once i loaded up the custom bios they oc like a boss. Im partial to evga product though.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

EVGA Classy is great .... have nothing good to say about the SC tho.

 

[Hypernova_]

Is it worth upgrading from a R9 280X to a GTX 970 or GTX 980?

 

[IInuyasha74]

So would it be worth me upgrading to the 970 if I have 2 R9 280xs in Crossfire right now? Would it be worth the performance boost?

Actually you would be killing yourself and wasting money, R9 280x in CF vs single 970? no question there.

So I'm assuming you're saying stay with the R9s ? Couldn't really tell with your answer. If I could sell the cards yeah I'd lose money but it would be coming out even in that department.

Hello, I'm guessing you are missing my post in response to yours in the forum about the GTX 970. Unlike the other guy, who thought you were buying either the GTX 970 or buying two new R9 280x cards, I highly recommend you stay with the R9 280x cards.

In games that work well with crossfire you will have higher performance than the GTX 970. In games that work worse with it obviously you will have less, but the performance difference is too small to warrant an upgrade to the GTX 970. It would waste more money than it would help to improve performance.

If you look at the GTX 980, that might be a worth while upgrade, or the upcoming GTX 980Ti, but the 970 is just too small of an upgrade to warrant the cost.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Better than i expected..... I thought they would follow AMD's lead and push the stock clocks way up like the R9 series. But still reviewers getting bit under 20 so far .... I ahven't had a chnace to run around and read all the other reviews

980 Test Results

Guru 3D Reference / Sample / Overclocked / % OC
Core Clock: 1126 / 1126 / 1326 / 117.8%
Boost Clock: 1216 / 1216 / 1452 / 119.4%
Memory Clock: 7000 / 7000 / 8002 / 114.3%
Performance Gain BF4 114.6 %


TechPowerUp Reference / Sample / Overclocked / % OC
Core Clock: 1126 / 1126 / 1350 / 119.9%
Boost Clock: 1216 / 1216 / Not Listed / NA
Memory Clock: 7000 / 7000 / 8002 / 114.3%
Performance Gain Firestrike 115.5 %

I see that the reference card uses Samsung memory .... I wonder if the Classy will have Hynix, Samsung or the dreaded Elpida as we saw on the 780 Classified..... that one didn't deserve the Classy label. But vwith Samsung on the reference, i think we can expect at least that on the Classy

Thats some pretty good overclocking. Did you happen to notice how much they had to increase power to manager this? Though its probably not so bad regardless, these things are so efficient.

They put the Elpida on the 780 last time? Thats terrible. Elpida is pretty good for making a lot of GDDR5 and making it cheap, but they can't ever really make it past 1375Mhz (5500) or 1400Mhz (5600) if they are given passive cooling. Perfect for mid-range cards but not high end.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

yeah... would be nice if they mentioned that

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_980/29.html
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_970_and_980_reference_review,28.html

My Asus 780 DCIIs both came with Samsung, tho I read posts of peeps who opened their's to find Elpida in various production runs.. .... the EVGA Classy came with Elpida (as did the Lightning) which is why i didn't consider it. The MSI Gaming cards also had Samsung .... again, at least in initial production runs.

What's weird is that the Classy and Lightning came out just before the fires that eliminated much of nVidia's supply of DDR5 .... so why they both chose to put crappy memory in a performance card is puzzling.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/memory/faith/hynix-fabs-on-fire-after-chemical-explosion/

 

[IInuyasha74]

Yea they didn't really show that did they. Guru 3D has it maxed out in Afterburner, but no idea what the default was. Techpowerup did a graph on the next page, but it just shows the voltage at that GPU speed, doesn't go up to the OC clocks.

I think they are just being greedy trying to save an extra 3 dollars on a high end part for no reason. Kind of like Intel and putting silicon thermal paste under the IHS instead of solder for absolutely no reason.

 

[azzazel_99]

my 2 classifieds dont have the elpida ram in them. I believe its samsung.....i believe so.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I think Intel's reason was .... make it hotter so peeps don't fry their CPUs by trying 1.55 volts

 

[itisravi]

Wow! Really impressed with the new cards, especially 970. Both Performance/Price and Performance/ratio are simply amazing.

I guess the next generation of cards will also be based on Maxwell, maybe with some tweaks and a 20nm process providing even lower consumption. Or will it be 16nm, as it should also be ready by this time?

So could we see a super-Maxwell card with, say, 4096 CUDA cores? 16nm will certainly make it possible, though with a bit lower clocks than 980 perhaps.