Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Review

[anonyboy]

I'm shopping for a high end GPU in 2015 and I'm not considering 4K. Is that wrong?

 

[anonyboy]

I'm shopping for a high end GPU in 2015 and I'm not considering 4K. Is that wrong?

 

[rcald2000]

Miss the old days, when we can buy top gpu for $300~ ish....

for the card, can only said it somewhat expected...

Agreed. I'm waiting for a 3rd company to come on the market and bitch slap the hell outta Nvidia and AMD.

 

[rdc85]

... why do they "disable" part of the GPU? ...

either it's defective parts... or they clearing stock...
we all know that titanx is overpriced chip, huge margin so they still afford to sells the chip cheaper in 980ti..

 

[Paul_Lee]

How important is gaming to you if you spend $500 on GPU and $500 on a monitor?

I guess i am the only one paying for rent out there.

In the wise words of George Thorogood - "Get a haircut and get a real job".

 

[cats_Paw]

I personally Play at 1080p (i use a tv) with a Panasonic plasma.
I like that FAR better than 4K LCD/LED TVs (No I did not make a direct comparison, but even in the store I can see how unrealistic the colors actually are).

I do have to say burn is is an issue a bit, but apart from that, The color fidelity flat out beats resolution/AA.

Ive never bought the high end gpus due to diminishing returns. It just does not make sense mathematically, and math does not lie.

 

[uglyduckling81]

I have a rather stupid question... why do they "disable" part of the GPU?
Does taht mean that those parts are there but you dont get to use them?

Sometimes it's a part of the binning process. Some chips just can't make the grade. Other times they just disable parts to make them meet a certain spec and price mark.
When they are manually restricting the chips most of the time they disable the chips via the hardware but occasionally it's actually just been a firmware restriction. Clever individuals have identified those products and unlocked the chips full potential.
That was the case with the majority of the AMD 6950's, they had just been limited via firmware in most cases and with a simple firmware flash they became a 6970.
It's a fairly dodgy way of fleecing people for a premium product. The day a company comes along and just releases the best available chip and absolute best price will be the day the GPU sector becomes a one horse town. Imagine if Nvidia said we are releasing the Titan X for $200. We aren't making any other chips for the next year. AMD would just withdraw from the GPU market.

 

[rdc85]

.. Imagine if Nvidia said we are releasing the Titan X for $200. We aren't making any other chips for the next year. AMD would just withdraw from the GPU market.

Some people speculate that nvi release 980ti is to control amd new chip pricing.....
rumored the chip will be sold at $800ish price point. now with 980ti at $650...
the price amd ask will only portrayed bad ..

we will just have to see (usually amd equal to best price/performance or budged one..)

 

[Darkbreeze]

Non-reference models should be coming soon.

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-aib-partners-prepare-huge-geforce-gtx-980-ti-nonreference-lineup-hybrid-triple-fan-cards-unveiled/

 

[DbD2]

I'm writing this as seriously as I can, not being a fanboy: What is the purpose of the Titan X at this point?

I suspect there is a top end of the market for which money doesn't really matter - they will happily blow $10K on the best PC money can buy, and they will still end up with 4*TitanX.

 

[scrote]

I personally Play at 1080p (i use a tv) with a Panasonic plasma.
I like that FAR better than 4K LCD/LED TVs (No I did not make a direct comparison, but even in the store I can see how unrealistic the colors actually are).

I do have to say burn is is an issue a bit, but apart from that, The color fidelity flat out beats resolution/AA.

Ive never bought the high end gpus due to diminishing returns. It just does not make sense mathematically, and math does not lie.

Input lag, shitty pixel density and response time are reasons why people don't many play games on televisions.

Comparing televisions with in-store calibrations is often a waste of time, they are not usually set up optimally.

I get where you are headed with your maths line of thought, but it's flawed logic. By that reasoning we should all game on a Radeon HD 6970, as it offers a far better benchmark/$ return than any of the top-end current generation cards. It also has only about 30% of the performance.

If you play modern titles and want all they eye candy, than you need to fork out the extra dollars.

If you're like me (and also you it sounds like) and you can live with turning some of your settings down to get playable frame rates, why not save yourself a few hundred dollars.

There is nothing nonsensical about buying high end GPU's, it's all relative to your standards.

 

[scrote]

How important is gaming to you if you spend $500 on GPU and $500 on a monitor?

I guess i am the only one paying for rent out there.

About as important as any other hobby. I could easily spend twice that on a new mountain bike, more on a motor bike. Skiing, surfing, gym membership, dance lessons, the lists goes on and on and on.

Music lessons at $20/week (good luck finding them that cheap) are over $1000/year. Hell, pet ownership costs more than that.

A lot of people would spend more than that a year on alcohol. Don't even start on cigarettes. A pack a day habit in Australia? $5-8000/year.

You're trying to sound outraged, but a close inspection of the facts shows that there is no substance.

 

[bentonsl_2010]

Your Witcher 3 bench are off. You didn't install the right 15.5 patch and used the leaked one.

My Crossfire setup with two 290x is averaging at 45FPS. with AA and Hair deactivated at 2160p. Of course, if you activate HairScam, then of course the AMD card crumble...

The worst is that it is not even good looking.

Quit your fanboy antic's AMD did the same thing in Tomb Raider with Tress FX this time they got caught with their pants down. HairWorks uses a ton of tessellation. It's less an issue of AMD not being able to optimize it for their hardware and more of an issue with AMD and tessellation in general as seen in several non-GameWorks and non-Nvidia sponsored games and tech demos that use tessellation heavily.

AMD has never had good tessellation performance on their hardware. One of things I'd been hoping they'd shore up for a while now along with more consistent full driver releases instead of this 5 month long beta driver spree we've been on.

That being said Hairworks has the similar amounts of GPU on most of nvidia cards as well. It was made for Nvidia and It even states that when activating it. You want nvidia features get an nvidia card.

 

[bentonsl_2010]

Now we wait for the GTX 960ti

 

[Cryio]

I was planning on building a Titan X SLI build for some opencl based rendering work in the upcoming months, this card just opened up room for a third card in the budget

As you could clearly see, Nvidia cards are a joke for OpenCL. A 290X is 3 times faster than a 980 Ti or Titan X.

 

[Cryio]

Except for the 980 Ti, 980 (and arguably 960), there is no point in buying other Nvidia cards today.

AMD has better priced cards with faster performance at every price point.

290X is faster than 780 Ti and 970.
290 is faster than 780
280X is faster than 770/960
270X is faster than 760
260X is faster than 750 Ti
250 is faster than 740.

295x2 faster than Titan X/980 Ti whatever and costs less than either of these cards. Hell, it occasionally costs less than a 980. And XFire drivers come eventually.

I'm not paying half a grand and not have some time to wait for a proper driver. I can deal.

 

[Cryio]

Also, I love this article because it kinda disproves the "monumental rift" between Nvidia and AMD GPU power usage.

60W difference in gaming doesn't seem that big of a deal to me. Especially if you only game some 24 hours per week.

 

[uglyduckling81]

Except for the 980 Ti, 980 (and arguably 960), there is no point in buying other Nvidia cards today.

AMD has better priced cards with faster performance at every price point.

290X is faster than 780 Ti and 970.
290 is faster than 780
280X is faster than 770/960
270X is faster than 760
260X is faster than 750 Ti
250 is faster than 740.

295x2 faster than Titan X/980 Ti whatever and costs less than either of these cards. Hell, it occasionally costs less than a 980. And XFire drivers come eventually.

I'm not paying half a grand and not have some time to wait for a proper driver. I can deal.

The 290x is a great card but it's unfair to say it's better than a 970. They each win various benchmarks and the 970 usually comes out on top at 1080p. It also draws about half the power, is quieter and produces less heat. I would get a 970 any day of the week over a 290x unless the price difference was around $100 which for a used one can be the case.
The cheapest I've seen a 970 go for in Australia is $400 but I saw a 290x go for less than $280.

 

[leejunfan]

So if I have a gtx 970 MSI, should I consider upgrading to 980 TI, provided that i can sell my 970 for 300 or 350 $ ?

Or should i wait till 2016 when nividia releases its new graphics technology

 

[DoDidDont]

The Titan X has more Cuda cores and similar clock speeds, so how is the 980ti faster? looking at it purely from the hardware, the Titan X should definitely be faster.

The only difference I can see is that the cards were tested under different drivers, and I think these benchmarks need to be run again using the same driver. The Titan X was only launched recently and the newest drivers have been greatly improved, so using the Titan X launch drivers gives the Titan X the disadvantage.

Other websites are doing the same thing, running the titan X under an older driver and the 980Ti under the latest driver, but with varying excuses, so obviously under orders from Nvidia to make the 980ti card look better to boost sales, as they know the Titan X is out of the price range for many users, so Nvidia's marketing statisticians have done their homework. Hardware wise it just doesn't make sense.

I would still choose the Titan X over the 980Ti because I use the cards for production rendering so need the extra Cuda cores and on-board memory. But I will probably wait for Pascal this time around, as my current set up is more than enough for my needs, and its not worth the expense of changing my four cards for Titan X's only to get a 45% speed boost in iray rendering. Plus with stock shortages of the Titan X and the upcoming launch of AMD's new cards, prices are going to drop soon to compete.

Gaming wise, even if the 980ti turns out to be slightly slower than the Titan X using the same drivers, I think the majority of gamers wont need 12gb of on-board memory, and the 980ti is cheaper, so will be the one to go for, unless of course you are like me, and use the cards for both gaming and professional use.

 

[CaptainTom]

"But how were we to know that GeForce GTX 980 Ti would follow just two and a half months later?"

Uh because Nvidia has done this literally every time so far?

Step 1: Release overpriced Titan Card so the people with more money than sense give us tons of money.

Step 2: Release card within 10% of the performance for nearly half the price so its ridiculous $650 price tag looks reasonable for the performance.

Step 3: Profit

 

[CaptainTom]

Titan X is for development, no one should have bought it for gaming.

Haha yeah it's not like it has "GTX" in front of the name or anything /s

 

[CaptainTom]

I'm writing this as seriously as I can, not being a fanboy: What is the purpose of the Titan X at this point? It lost its DP performance that made it a fantastic workstation-gaming hybrid. Also, it really sucks for people who bought a Titan X just a little over a month ago? That's ~$350 down the drain pretty much. Yea the Titan X has all that extra VRAM, but for what? 3 4K displays maybe, at which point a 980ti SLI would probably lose by about ~5% due to a few less CUDA cores.

Again though, for most customers, the 980ti is the obvious choice. I just feel like nVidia totally screwed over most of their Titan X customers now. And why? Well, I really think the 980ti will be the cheaper answer to AMD's Fury or whatever Fiji will be called, Really interested to see how it will do. If Fiji beats the Titan X/980ti, it's rumored $800 price point would make the 980ti a somewhat compelling offer depending on how well it does.

In the end, I'm loving this competition!

Well, back in the 78ti and original titan, titan buyers also felt screwed....... but i agree with you that nvidia screwed the titan scything its fp64 performance, which was the absolutely only point of it. Now nVidia turned it to its most top end gaming card instead....... bs -_-

That was all it ever was to 95% of the buyers. When will people stop harping on about this BS that the Titan is for scientific work?! Anyone serious will buy a quadro or firepro.

 

[boju]

I personally Play at 1080p (i use a tv) with a Panasonic plasma.
I like that FAR better than 4K LCD/LED TVs (No I did not make a direct comparison, but even in the store I can see how unrealistic the colors actually are).

I do have to say burn is is an issue a bit, but apart from that, The color fidelity flat out beats resolution/AA.

Ive never bought the high end gpus due to diminishing returns. It just does not make sense mathematically, and math does not lie.

Input lag, shitty pixel density and response time are reasons why people don't many play games on televisions.

Comparing televisions with in-store calibrations is often a waste of time, they are not usually set up optimally.

I get where you are headed with your maths line of thought, but it's flawed logic. By that reasoning we should all game on a Radeon HD 6970, as it offers a far better benchmark/$ return than any of the top-end current generation cards. It also has only about 30% of the performance.

If you play modern titles and want all they eye candy, than you need to fork out the extra dollars.

If you're like me (and also you it sounds like) and you can live with turning some of your settings down to get playable frame rates, why not save yourself a few hundred dollars.

There is nothing nonsensical about buying high end GPU's, it's all relative to your standards.

Most TVs are like that i agree but there are some TVs that are much better. I play on a plasma too, and credit to Panasonic, they made some great models for gaming. I've been gaming for over a decade and used crt/tn screens in the past and with certain Panasonic models there's no difference in response - mouse movement in FPS games is spot on. I've used an LCD TV once and the input lag (With game mode on and other effects off) was like lagging in water. Not that all LCD TVs are like that, just saying i've experienced input lag and fast monitors to know a difference and im very impressed by how these plasmas perform.

The picture quality is very decent too on these teles @1080p and upwards of 65". Its a shame LCD took over because Plasma was really underestimated and could have improved more if the market was there.

 

[CaptainTom]

How important is gaming to you if you spend $500 on GPU and $500 on a monitor?

I guess i am the only one paying for rent out there.

How important is gaming to you if you spend $500 on GPU and $500 on a monitor?

I guess i am the only one paying for rent out there.

How important is gaming to you if you spend $500 on GPU and $500 on a monitor?

I guess i am the only one paying for rent out there.

If you don't have $1000 of discretionary income each year, you need a better job. Better question would be, what adult doesn't have $1000 for a graphics card and a monitor?

If you put it that way it is a fair point.

no it is not and he is a very rude person.

not all people live in USA and have good salaries.

People in Romania Graduated from uni for example earn around 500 euro per month only. and is ALL spent on living and eating and clothes and rent , at the end of the month nothing remains.

in places like India or Ukraine or Africa or Asia is even lower.

and those work 10 times harder than any one in USA ... but live in a Poor country.

you are selfish and rude people. very rude !

sorry but you lost me at "Those work 10 times harder than anyone in USA." All statistics point to Americans and Japanese working harder than those in other countries BY FAR. Yeah it was stupid that he said everyone has tons of money to waste, but you were just as dumb as him. Get over yourself.