Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Review

[JackNaylorPE]

i'm talking about the GTX 980ti.

The quote I referenced was not about the 980 Ti

not really sure what i think yet, considering all the bs surrounding the chopped 970. it wasn't a tech website but 1 individual who noticed the 970's misleading specs. i'll just leave this here.

You may have been using 970 arguments to support a statement about the 980 Ti but that argument disappears when it's recognized that 970 fake rage thing was a complete red herring. The specs thing as a semantic argument but, as the site reports, purported problems could not be duplicated.

 

[clonazepam]

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!

Nah, you simply buy what you wanna buy when you wanna buy it, and then enjoy it. Everybody knows there's always something else right around the corner. Anyone that concerned, wouldn't drop the money to begin with.

 

[Vlad Rose]

What's really ironic about how the prices of video cards have gone:

Back when Voodoo was still around, a starting gaming ready computer usually ran around $1200-$2000; not including a gaming quality video card. Many people had a hard time justifying spending $250+ on a high end video card upgrade. My Voodoo Rush had cost that much, with a whopping 6 megs of RAM (only 2 for 3d though). I would hardly call it high end though, quality/performance wise, since it was a dud design... lol

Fast forward to now. Competent gaming PCs start at around $400 (not including the video card) and people dont seem to mind spending $500-$1000 (nvidia even tried at $3,000) on a high end video card. $250 will only land you in mid range territory (960/290 series).

To sum it up, PCs themselves have gotten around 3-5x cheaper, while video cards have about doubled in price.

My how have the times changed....

 

[ern88]

What's really ironic about how the prices of video cards have gone:

Back when Voodoo was still around, a starting gaming ready computer usually ran around $1200-$2000; not including a gaming quality video card. Many people had a hard time justifying spending $250+ on a high end video card upgrade. My Voodoo Rush had cost that much, with a whopping 6 megs of RAM (only 2 for 3d though). I would hardly call it high end though, quality/performance wise, since it was a dud design... lol

Fast forward to now. Competent gaming PCs start at around $400 (not including the video card) and people dont seem to mind spending $500-$1000 (nvidia even tried at $3,000) on a high end video card. $250 will only land you in mid range territory (960/290 series).

To sum it up, PCs themselves have gotten around 3-5x cheaper, while video cards have about doubled in price.

My how have the times changed....

I remember paying big bucks for my Voodoo 5 5500 when it came out!!!

 

[Vlad Rose]

I remember paying big bucks for my Voodoo 5 5500 when it came out!!!

That's also around 3-4 generations ago, video card wise, vs the Rush. The main competitors to the Rush were the Riva 128 and Rage 1/ 2/Pro (can't remember which one). The voodoo 5 faced the Geforce 2 and Rage 128. It was 3dfx's last breath as they could no longer compete vs the competition; thus expensive and hard to find. Not saying Nvidia's and ATI's were dirt cheap either; just less than 3dfx.

 

[10tacle]

I'm still not sold on the need for 6GB VRAM right now at 1440p. I have yet to come close to hitting 3.5GB on my 970 SLI rig at 1440p. Granted, I do not play Skyrim or GTA5 (both get out of control on VRAM with mods). It will be a long time before most of us can afford 4K gaming at 60Hz, let alone at 120Hz in G-sync.

 

[pherbertp]

Crossfire needed to top a R9 295X2. That could add to the $$$ of The Big Dog rig.

 

[pherbertp]

Uh, I meant SLI needed to make up a BUG DOG rig that tops the R9 295X2. Set you back a few bux.

Ooops, sorry.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I'm still not sold on the need for 6GB VRAM right now at 1440p. I have yet to come close to hitting 3.5GB on my 970 SLI rig at 1440p. Granted, I do not play Skyrim or GTA5 (both get out of control on VRAM with mods). It will be a long time before most of us can afford 4K gaming at 60Hz, let alone at 120Hz in G-sync.

GTA V gets VRAM hungry without mods even. Per NVidia, 1080p maxed out needs 4GB of VRAM.

 

[10tacle]

GTA V gets VRAM hungry without mods even. Per NVidia, 1080p maxed out needs 4GB of VRAM.

Yeah, it is. And it's just a product of sloppy programming. Hitting 4GB of VRAM is absolutely absurd at 1080p. Fortunately that's not the case for most games currently even at 1440p. Keyword: currently.

 

[jimmysmitty]

GTA V gets VRAM hungry without mods even. Per NVidia, 1080p maxed out needs 4GB of VRAM.

Yeah, it is. And it's just a product of sloppy programming. Hitting 4GB of VRAM is absolutely absurd at 1080p. Fortunately that's not the case for most games currently even at 1440p. Keyword: currently.

I wouldn't say sloppy programing. There is a lot going on in the game. But I do think they could have optimized it to run on 3GB of VRAM vs 4GB of VRAM for 1080P even with 8x MSAA.

Then again that would men hours and thousands of dollars of time. Can't have that even when the game itself has already been released 3 times and sold more than 52 million copies. Roughly $3 billion in revenue not including any Shark Cards sold (in game money for GTA Online).

 

[dragonsqrrl]

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.

If there's one thing I've learned about the Tom's Hardware community over the past 6 years, it's that the site seems to be unusually popular amongst Eastern Europeans for some reason.

and those work 10 times harder than any one in USA ...

Wow, that was kind of rude.

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.

Wow, you don't do much self reflection do you? I mean, you can't possibly be this oblivious to your own words can you? Forgive me, but you just don't seem like a plausible person to me. You criticize someone for being ignorant, and then in that very same response you manage to openly, blatantly demonstrate that same level of ignorance.

Pro tip, if you're going to criticize someone for something you find offensive on an open forum, try not to beat them over the head with hypocrisy while you're at it, you'll look like a fool.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

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 ..

Yep that's basically it. Nvidia pretty much just torpedoed a very important product launch for AMD and set pricing for the generation. It limits AMD's top Fiji card to ~$650 price point, which they almost certainly had other plans for based on its elevated branding.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

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.

Really? I'm not sure what specific workload you're referring to, but overall Maxwell has very competitive OpenCL performance. There's also CUDA to take into consideration, which is still the more popular and widely adopted GPGPU computing platform.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

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.

Actually it just sounds like you don't understand the issue, or how AMD's relatively poor performance per W is impacting their market share and finances. A big problem for AMD right now, one amongst many, are their profit margins. They're being forced to sell cards with more complex memory interfaces, power delivery, PCB's and larger die sizes in order to stay performance competitive relative to the competition, and the problem is all the more pronounced in the mobile market. The impact of these tighter margins and lower volumes feed into R&D for successive generations, and I think we're going to see that more than ever with the upcoming 300 series lineup.

 

[Omegaclawe]

When the 980 was announced, I knew Nvidia was holding something exactly like this close to their chest, just to rain on AMD's parade when they tried to announce a competitor chip. Now imagine what will happen with the next die shrink... 4k will be easy, soon.

...this is assuming Nvidia and Intel don't manage to kill of AMD, in which case, we'll never see more than a few percentage improvements because there will be no real competition... so lets all hope Fiji's better than the rumors are suggesting.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

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.

Yes it's quite deceptive when you look strictly at the specs, which is why it's important to take real world performance into consideration. From what I've seen it's not the drivers. The 980Ti tends to achieve higher boost clocks and sustain them for longer periods of time with its available thermal headroom. This is why the performance gap tends to widen in benchmarks that rely on short bursts rather than longer sustained runs.

 

[CTurbo]

One thing is for sure, the regular 980 needs a very significant price drop to stay relevant.

 

[pherbertp]

You gotta have this high bandwidth to feed UHD TVs in living rooms all around the USof A and other middle class countrys who game in their living rooms.

 

[pherbertp]

I went RED so my pocket book ain't dead.

i7-3930K [x42 multi in PerfMon]
Intel DX79T0 motherboard
XFX R9 295X2
QNIX Perfect 32" UHD Monitor 60Hz Display Port
Corsair Obsidian 450 case
GEiL EVO Corsa DDR3 2133 16GB Quad Channel
Raidmax RX-850-AE

 

[ShadowStar_]

Is there a site where I can find this? I checked alot of sites and can't find one.

 

[PaulBags]

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.

who cares about your statistics ? I am talking about the hours per day they have to work to earn enough for living. like 12 to 14 hours DAILY instead of 6 or 8 as in rich countries !

and all that for just 100$ more salary ...

even work every week end ...

Don't you believe that Americans are a bunch of spoiled bums that work a little for a big pay. If that were the case, then America wouldn't have the most powerful economy in the history of the world.

The USA has the most national DEBT in the world, they just happen to also have the largest MILITARY PRESENCE in the rest of the world. The U.S. shuns or bombs countries that want to trade their oil for gold instead of U.S. currency, in part because the U.S. has already spent _other countries_ gold from it's federal reserve. The federal reserve themselves have admitted that they have no gold left, yet it wasn't even theirs to spend. In the next decade China will likely take over as preferred international currency.

Most powerful economy, HA!

 

[pherbertp]

Is there a site where I can find this? I checked alot of sites and can't find one.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB is a brand new card. Tom's has links on the page sides at times and a shopping guide.

i7-3930K [x42 multi in PerfMon]
Intel DX79T0 motherboard
XFX R9 295X2
QNIX Perfect 32" UHD Monitor 60Hz Display Port
Corsair Obsidian 450 case
GEiL EVO Corsa DDR3 2133 16GB Quad Channel
Raidmax RX-850-AE

 

[mapesdhs]

I went RED so my pocket book ain't dead.

No, but the planet will be from the power consumption and extra heating... 😉

i7-3930K [x42 multi in PerfMon]

Is that all? Hardly seems worth bothering with a 3930K if one is going to run it at less than 4.7.

Ian.

 

[Vlad Rose]

i7-3930K [x42 multi in PerfMon]

Is that all? Hardly seems worth bothering with a 3930K if one is going to run it at less than 4.7.

Ian.

Not all i5s and i7s overclock that high. I have an i5-4670k that will not go above 4.2ghz without blue screening; no matter what you try.