Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Review

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The Ti's increased RAM and memory bus are what the GTX 980 should have included from the start if for nothing but to place a better price to performance gap from it to the GTX 970. As a 980 owner, I'd feel almost as screwed over as a Titan X owner had I bought a 980 more recently.
 

You act like a small driver update is going to give the Titan X another 20FPS in every game out there. Maybe 1-3 FPS.
 
Ok, I will preface this by saying I know I sound like a fanboy, but I still don't understand the point of a Titan X or now even a 980 TI. The 295x2 still beats both handily in every application at the $600 price point. Sure, two Hawaii XT GPU's on one PCB, but who cares? Not only does it run cooler, it clearly outperforms for cheaper. The 12 GB and 6GB VRAM that Nvidia chose turned out to be a gimmick. Not that anyone expected any differently, however when a 295x2 with only 4GB (VRAM doesn't stack with DX11) still handily outperforms the competition by quite a bit, I guess I don't understand going team green on this one.

Don't get me wrong, GM 200 is impressive, but its still hampered by GDDR5 and a 256 bit bus. I'm pretty excited to see what HBM will do for AMD's Fiji, if the rumors prove to be half true, then nothing Nvidia has this generation will even be remotely a competition.
 


Why Rude ? they DO work 10 times harder ... they work 14 hours daily , and even work Sundays and Saturdays so they can earn enough just to buy a cheap car and pay for Home debts. and all that for just 100$ more per month.

wake up and smell the coffee ....

no it is not Rude it is Fact.

I'll make around $50,000 USD this year. That's plenty enough to spend around $2,500 on games and $900 yesterday on a 980 Ti and a new power supply - my old 950 watt PC P&C was on it's last leg.

Enjoy your oil money, Mr. Arabian.
 
Ok, I will preface this by saying I know I sound like a fanboy, but I still don't understand the point of a Titan X or now even a 980 TI. The 295x2 still beats both handily in every application at the $600 price point. Sure, two Hawaii XT GPU's on one PCB, but who cares? Not only does it run cooler, it clearly outperforms for cheaper. The 12 GB and 6GB VRAM that Nvidia chose turned out to be a gimmick. Not that anyone expected any differently, however when a 295x2 with only 4GB (VRAM doesn't stack with DX11) still handily outperforms the competition by quite a bit, I guess I don't understand going team green on this one.

Don't get me wrong, GM 200 is impressive, but its still hampered by GDDR5 and a 256 bit bus. I'm pretty excited to see what HBM will do for AMD's Fiji, if the rumors prove to be half true, then nothing Nvidia has this generation will even be remotely a competition.
Ok, I will preface this by saying I know I sound like a fanboy, but I still don't understand the point of a Titan X or now even a 980 TI. The 295x2 still beats both handily in every application at the $600 price point. Sure, two Hawaii XT GPU's on one PCB, but who cares? Not only does it run cooler, it clearly outperforms for cheaper. The 12 GB and 6GB VRAM that Nvidia chose turned out to be a gimmick. Not that anyone expected any differently, however when a 295x2 with only 4GB (VRAM doesn't stack with DX11) still handily outperforms the competition by quite a bit, I guess I don't understand going team green on this one.

Don't get me wrong, GM 200 is impressive, but its still hampered by GDDR5 and a 256 bit bus. I'm pretty excited to see what HBM will do for AMD's Fiji, if the rumors prove to be half true, then nothing Nvidia has this generation will even be remotely a competition.

The PSU's on AMD"s "recommended PSU list" for the 295x2 list cost $400, frame variance is a thing that exists and AMD's drivers have long been terrible. Those *facts* are enough to dissuade most from buying one, great value or not.

As of about 5:00pm CST Sunday, the Titan X had no point for those spending less than $5,000+ on their systems. You'll need 12GB VRAM for triple screen 1440p or 4k setups, at which point you'll also need 2-3 Titan X's.
 
@Arabian Knight - You will find that it is not really rudeness but ignorance and naiveté that really rules the day in the US. So many Americans never venture very far outside their borders, if at all, and so have no concept of what day-to-day living is really like in other countries like yours. The so-called news programs in this country are a joke as their idea of 'World News' is the President going to Camp David! The world is in chaos all around us with mass genocide going on in Africa and the Middle East and the news media is only concerned with the hundreds of morons burning and looting their own town because some idiotic thug got himself killed trying to take a cop's gun away from him. And that lunacy gets covered ad-nauseum like it is the only thing going on in the world. It's pathetic really but it all comes down to ratings. If the mainstream news organizations did cover the rest of the world like they should their ratings would plummet because Americans have become conditioned to believe that they are the center of the universe and aren't interested in the petty affairs of the others that share their world. So news about those other places would bore them and they would change the channel to something more useless like Big Brother or Survivor or one of a hundred other so-called 'reality' shows that only serve to stoke the cult of celebrity that is so popular in this country. It is an embarrassment! (Sorry this was off-topic but I couldn't help myself.)
 
@Arabian Knight - You will find that it is not really rudeness but ignorance and naiveté that really rules the day in the US. So many Americans never venture very far outside their borders, if at all, and so have no concept of what day-to-day living is really like in other countries like yours. The so-called news programs in this country are a joke as their idea of 'World News' is the President going to Camp David! The world is in chaos all around us with mass genocide going on in Africa and the Middle East and the news media is only concerned with the hundreds of morons burning and looting their own town because some idiotic thug got himself killed trying to take a cop's gun away from him. And that lunacy gets covered ad-nauseum like it is the only thing going on in the world. It's pathetic really but it all comes down to ratings. If the mainstream news organizations did cover the rest of the world like they should their ratings would plummet because Americans have become conditioned to believe that they are the center of the universe and aren't interested in the petty affairs of the others that share their world. So news about those other places would bore them and they would change the channel to something more useless like Big Brother or Survivor or one of a hundred other so-called 'reality' shows that only serve to stoke the cult of celebrity that is so popular in this country. It is an embarrassment! (Sorry this was off-topic but I couldn't help myself.)
 

You act like a small driver update is going to give the Titan X another 20FPS in every game out there. Maybe 1-3 FPS.

At no point have I made such ridiculous claims that the Titan X will gain another 20FPS using the same drivers, this is your absurd assumption not mine so don't try to speak for me.

I always do research before posting, and all the sites that showed the 980ti was faster than the Titan X were using old drivers for the Titan X and new drivers for the 980ti, and the sites that actually bothered to test the Titan X again using new drivers showed the Titan X as the faster card, but marginally, not 20FPS faster, not a lot faster, just a few FPS, so I am not making any absurd claims or acting like anything, and you obviously like to cause conflict without having any valid point.

If you had bothered to read my post and follow up posts correctly or done the research yourself, you would know that I am only talking about a few FSP difference.

Check out the Anandtech and LinusTech benchmarks if you want to see the cards compared with the same driver.

There is no winner here, whether the Titan X is a few FPS faster, or the 980ti is a few FPS faster, people choose what is right for their needs. For people that use 3d rendering apps, or in development or game in surround over 4K monitors at max settings the Titan X with its larger Vram and extra cores is the best choice, if people don't need that, then the 980ti is the better cheaper option.
 


I owned a 290x for less than a day last fall before returning it. The AMD drivers were about six month old and squirrelly and it under performed the highly overclocked 680gtx it was supposed to replace. The 295 still doesn't provide a great gaming performance at 4K resolutions plus it requires the blocking of the back 120 air exhaust. My roof exhaust is already committed to my H100 clc for my CPU, so even if I was willing to put up with the crossfire and AMD driver problems, the 295 is a dead end as there aren't any more exhaust openings in my midtower case for a crossfired 295 to raise its performance to acceptable 4K levels. Plus even with the attached clc the 295 still uses a lot of energy and pumps out a large amount of heat. That is why the SLI of 980 or 980Ti makes sense as the way to go currently to play 4K at a decent level.
 




As much as I hate off-topic discussions, Americans do not think they are the center of the universe. For one thing, you are putting a label on 300 million individuals and assuming they are all alike in their thoughts about their country and the earth. America is the one nation that is more involved in foreign affairs than any other nation. America gets involved in a lot of crap outside of the country. For instance, the Second Gulf War, Korean War, Vietnam War, and even WWII. I also hate to say it but other countries falsify their information a lot. In Russia, their textbooks teach false information. They make up their own history and teach it to the kids. In Germany, I'm sure the teachings of Hitler are much different than that of America.

but anyway, you put a label on so many people. I couldn't give a crap about celebrities, nor do I think America is the best country, but you are quite foolish in labeling us as stupid people who don't know an outside world exists.
 


The Titan X is clearly faster, why would it not? The benchmarks even show it! I looked at all the charts and it showed it to be a few FPS faster. Worth $350 more? Neh.
 
FYI if you want to use AMD's 15.5 beta drivers for the witcher 3 you need to turn off temporalAA in the rendering.ini(see the release notes), as it seems to "prefer" nvidia hardware (it cripples crossfire), you can still turn on literally any other type of AA in the CCC and get a 75% speed increase.
 


The Titan X is clearly faster, why would it not? The benchmarks even show it! I looked at all the charts and it showed it to be a few FPS faster. Worth $350 more? Neh.

Why are you now quoting me as though I in some way said the oposite with a question mark? I have been saying the Titan X is the faster card from the start using the same drivers, and by a fraction as you are not going to get huge performance gains with an extra 256 cores!

For you yes maybe the Titan X is not worth the money, put for people like me that use the cards mainly for 3d production rendering, not just for gaming, the extra vram which is twice that of the 980ti is well worth the money, and makes a huge difference in the applications I use, not only in the size of scenes or data sets I can use but in performance. If you want to just game sure go for the 980ti, but if you want to use the card for gaming and professional use, develop!ent etc the Titan X is the. Better choice and is a hell of a lot cheaper than the equivalent Quadro M6000 card which is 500% more expensive than X, but exactly the same specification this time around, nvidia said this at the GPU development conference late last year, that the only difference this time is software and of course higher yield rates out of the factory, , that said , the 980ti will still be a good choice for DCC if budget is more limited.
 


Then I shall provide more details :)

I currently play at 1440p @ 144Hz. Don't see a need to go for 4k just yet.

This is why I was wondering about the 980Ti since it seems to be a good selection for 1440p resolution gaming.
 


I can afford to spend that amount of money but it doesn't mean I'm going to,
Home loan, kids, holidays all deserve that money more than an overly expensive GPU.
On the other hand I spend a whole lot of hours gaming each year so if I look at it as a $/hr ratio $1000 is about the cheapest entertainment I could think of. A lot better than a $15 movie ticket. Or even the cost of fuel to drive to the beach.
I'm still not buying a stupidly overpriced bit of hardware though.

I can only agree... I'm from eastern Europe and I consider myself an average person in terms of wage (IMO anyone who wants can get what he/she wants if he/she really wants) I have 2 kids a mortgage on the house a car...
Lately I consider myself only an average gamer but what is the point of gaming on low/minimum settings? I'm selling my gtx 660 ti (I bought 2 yrs ago) and buying 980 ti - for a simple reason (not 4k) - I won't upgrade in next coming 2-4 yrs... so if you look at that this way - spending 700+ euro on graphic card is justifiable...
And yes I also remember 300+ eur high end cards... but is there a choice if you still want to game? or your kids?


 


'Nobody buys an Aventador for MPG'
 
I wish we could actually see the profit margins on these cards.

Like if the difference in cost to produce a 980ti and titan x is only like $50 or whatever, because of vram count, but they jack up the profit margin of the titan X just to make a luxury item and then break a couple of fingers on the 980ti and sell it at 3/4's the price.
 

these halo products have very high profit margins attached to them.
compared to titan x, 980ti uses the same gpu die, only binned for a lower price point. should give you an idea about profit, lol. titan x card does have higher amount of vram though - slightly affects the end price.
 


Honestly, they probably rob people blind in regards to profit because consumers are willing to pay that much for it. Apple has done the same thing for many years. As a result, they're one of the highest profiting companies; but yet have 15% market share. Apple has is exclusivity though.

Nvidia has an over 70% market share right now; with 75% or more being classified as a monopoly:

http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/78209-nvidia-pulls-away-amd-graphics-card-market-share/

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Sherman+Anti-Trust+Act

meaning near ability to be able to dictate price.
 
I would politely request that peeps take some time to edit the posts when quoting a quote of a quote of a ..... It's burdensome for forum members to have to read / scroll thru 4-5 quotes of quotes of quotes and 8" of text and figure out what the 1 sentence response refers to.




No different from other hardware...2400 RAM that don't pass spec becomes 2133 RAM




The issue w/ DP is that 144 Hz 2160p monitors aren't available and if they were, they need more than DP can currently offer. Until they are, I don't see any sense in 4k because:

a) The premium cards in SLI are just breaking 60 fps
b) Until the new DP drops, 2160p can't do 144 Hz and i don't see giving yup 144 Hz to get 4k.





perfrel_2560.gif


SLI scales on average 50 - 95% depending on the game....,the more demanding the game, the higher the scaling. I'd keep the 780 Tis
 


Between AMD and nVidia, last split I saw was 76%
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/nvidia-shows-signs-of-strain.43294/page-163

However, another issue involved here now since Intel is competing in this arena

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Nvidia = 51.85%
Intel = 19.61%
AMD = 28.15%
Others = 0.39%

As far as regulation goes, if anything was to threaten nVidia I thought it would be what I looked at as "predatory pricing" on the 970. Introduced at a lower cost than previous 70 cards, it's price seemed aimed and destroying AMDs position in the market than anything else. By now however, I would expect that they have more than covered their R & D costs as sales have been extraordinary. This card has sold 53% more units than all 16 AMD R7 and R9 cards combined. At current sales rates, by the end of June it will have the largest "in use" market share of any discrete card and sit behind only the Intel HD Graphics 4000

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

3 of the Top 10 DX11 GFX solutions are Intel

The Intel HD Graphics 4000 sits in 1st place w/ 6.53% (-0.03% over last month)
The GTX 760 sits in 2nd place with 3.30% (-0.21%)
The GTX 970 sits in third place with 3.05% (+0.24%)
The Intel HD Graphics 4400 sits in 4th place with 2.78% (+0.13%)
The entire R9 series combined sits in 28th place with 0.82% (+0.03%)
The GTX 980 sits in 36th place with 0.84% (+0.07%)
The GTX 960 sits in 42nd place with 0.78% (+0.22%)
The entire R9 series combined sits in 54th place with 0.55% (0.00%)

 

Not sure about online sales, but high street retail involves pretty high margins, though we shouldn't complain because normal stores of that kind often cannot survive without the margins from premium items. A store owner in CA told me he makes 40% of his overall profit from high value items, while he makes a loss on the cheap stuff like HDDs because he has to in order get customers in, etc.




We've all complained about pricing one way or the other (I ranted about it yesterday), but at the end of the day an item is only ever worth what someone is willing to pay (hence the bizarre bidding one can see on eBay, both high and low). There's clearly a market for the latest & greatest premium items, at a big markup. Perhaps it's linked to things like benchmarking & overclocking competitions, people wanting to be the best on HWBot, etc. If so, well, I suppose that's to everyone's benefit in the long term as it drives the tech. Just a shame when the overall longer term effect is an upslide in the pricing scales, such that now a midrange is almost 2X the cost of a midrange from 5 years ago. The flip side to this though is that a lot of people probably buy a midrange card (or whatever) because they specifically want a midrange card, they want their hw to be on the ladder in that position so to speak, even though it's very likely the games they're playing don't remotely need the performance of something like a 970. Given how many are still using 1080 or less, I bet this happens a lot.




Exactly! Prices have major markups in the UK, but people are willing to pay them, so what can ya do?




Hear hear! And often a lot of the name tags in each sub-quoted chunk are missing, so one can't tell who said what, it all just gets swamped in a sea of indentation. I sometimes skip mega quoted posts, can't be bothered wading through it all to find the 1-line response.




Indeed. It would certainly involve a speed drop. He might benefit from the higher RAM, but that totally depends on the games he's playing, detail level, res, no. of monitors, any game mods used, etc. Some here have said yes, go ahead, but we cannot possibly know if he'd notice any difference from the RAM increase withot a lot more info. Modded Skyrim would likely benefit, but most standard games wouldn't unless it's a multi-screen setup, but then the performance loss might be more annoying than the gain from the higher RAM.

It can be hard to find exact comparisons, depends on site reviews covering the precise config one's interested in, but he can at least search the 3DMark site for matching submissions. One just has to bare in mind the effect of platform speed and oc'c configs (even Firestrike is affected by this now).

At least he could cover most or even more than all of the upgrade cost by selling the 780 Tis, which might be no bad thing (easily doable if he targets the right buying audience, ie. After Effects users, for whom the 780 Ti is one of the best cards available and will remain so untill official MW CUDA V2 support comes out). Also means less power consumption, heat & noise. From the graph you quoted though, it does look like the speed difference would be quite large for many games, so not worth it unless he's already drowning in surplus frames and/or he can benefit from the larger RAM (with a heavy IF for the latter).




Only just noticed your post! 😀 The OCN email update linked to later in the thread... I'll leave what I wrote above though.




In that case you could very well be someone who might benefit from the larger RAM, but it totally depends on the games you're playing, how much you like to crank up the detail, AA, any use of mods & suchlike. All I can suggest is to use Afterburner or something to monitor your GPUs, see what they're doing for VRAM usage. If you're border line maxing out the VRAM, then a 980 Ti may well be a good switch, assuming that the inevitable performance loss will not be detrimental, which it very well could be given you're presumably aiming for 144Hz for smooth play (btw, with that kind of setup, hope to see you in Squad or PR some day!! 8)




Indeed. It's just that switching to a 980 Ti from an existing powerful config such as you have is definitely going to mean a speed drop. What frame rates are you getting atm? I wonder if you're like me and just crank everything up until the minimum frame rate drops to the point below which you're not willing to go, assuming other factors like VRAM don't kick in. I bought a 980 so I could do this with Elite Dangerous, discovered that I could max out every setting except for just one (forget which offhand), and the performance difference did suggest it was a VRAM limit I was hitting rather than a GPU performance limit. I suppose if I was buying now, yeah I'd probably get a 980 Ti instead. For the older games I still play though (Crysis, Oblivion, Stalker COP, etc.), a 980 was perfect.

Have you done any 3DMark runs on your system? If so, feel free to PM me the URLs, I can send you my 980 links which you can use to guage how a 980 Ti would compare, based on the 980 vs. 980 Ti differences shown in reviews. And meanwhile of course, when it launches we should start to see people submitted 980 Ti 3DMark results anyway, though some review sites do use it, eg. Guru3D. Only other thing I can suggest is a thorough Googling to try and find a 980 Ti review which just happens to include 780 Ti SLI in its graphs.

Meanwhile, I'm still smiling that the URL for this review doesn't have 'Ti' in it. :)

Ian.

 


i'm talking about the GTX 980ti.
 
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