Nvidia Launches GTX 980 And GTX 970 "Maxwell" Graphics Cards

[N.Broekhuijsen]

Nvidia has launched its all-new GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 graphics cards, which come packed full of new features and deliver this at a much lower TDP than before.

Nvidia Launches GTX 980 And GTX 970 "Maxwell" Graphics Cards : Read more

 

[TechyInAZ]

Wow cool!! My favorite out of all the features is power output is so low!! I can finally get a card that doesn't break the electric bill.

Hope I can afford one of these eventually.

 

[srdragun]

This text sound like "We were not capable to improve the performance considerably, but at least it'll consume less energy... What about spend more $550 to 'save' money?"

 

[srdragun]

This text sound like: "We were not capable to improve the performance considerably, BUT at least we reduce the power output, so what about pay more $550 to 'save' money?"

 

[boju]

That 30W less power, if you run the card at max TDP for 24 hours every day for a whole month you will save around $3 give or take estimating retail electricity prices @ 15c kWh in America. Woot

 

[17seconds]

$330 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti... AND uses over 100 watts less power? Not bad, price drops incoming everywhere, but who would want anything else?

 

[Nameless7]

Heat and noise and very important factors for me as I have an HTPC / gaming machine set up in a very small case. Cant wait to upgrade with one of these.

 

[Sakkura]

$330 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti... AND uses over 100 watts less power? Not bad, price drops incoming everywhere, but who would want anything else?

It's $550 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti.

$330 only gets you a GTX 970, which is significantly slower. Should still be a great card though, and better value for money than the 980.

 

[soldier44]

So basically not a worthy upgrade for those of us with GTX 780 or 780 Tis or 2 of them.

 

[airborne11b]

boju, that's not the whole picture, and compared to a 780 GTX the TDP difference 85w

So in SLI, that's 170w difference.

So by your math that saves $17 a month. But that's not all. That's also 170 watts less heat getting pumped into the room. Sure that doesn't mean much to you if you're living in canada, and gaming in the winter where you're struggling to keep the room warm enough to not freeze to death. But move that same rig into a place like Florida or Texas, in the summer, where you gotta blast the AC constantly just to not be drentched in sweat, and you would be very thankful for that much less heat getting pumped into your room.

So less power on the system, less power spent on AC, more comfortable experience while gaming, and not to mention lower temps can help with better overclocks.

Which the overclock factor imho is way more important than saving money on a power bill.

 

[-Fran-]

Uhm... So they're saving money on these... Hard to believe nVidia would use a 256bit interconnect to the GDDR5 on a "high end" card. They had to push the VRAM to 7Ghz in order to not choke the GPU it seems.

It's a weird move in my book. Maybe Apple's takeover TSMC is hurting their design.

Well, in any case, until no benchies I'll just stay un-surprised.

Cheers!

 

[zanny]

This text sound like: "We were not capable to improve the performance considerably, BUT at least we reduce the power output, so what about pay more $550 to 'save' money?"

The x80 cards are always overpriced because they are bling products. But having 290 performance at 145w is a pretty tangible achievement. The thing is, Nvidia is repeating the 600 series - AMD tech cannot compete clock for clock and watt for watt since they are still on GCN 1.3 and Maxwell is a tangible change, so they pulled the 680 again with the 980. Hence the m204 nomenclature and all.

You also need to remember though that any video card over $300 is insanely enthusiast. The 780ti is still printing them money, so why stop what is not broken.

 

[bison88]

They priced that GTX 980 just perfectly (despite the awkward $200). In a couple months the Titan 2 or GTX 980 Ti will drop at $599-$649 and they'll shift it down $100 making anything AMD throws at them in the meantime pointless unless it's a huge leap in all areas.

Would have really liked a GTX 980 @ $449 now instead of having to wait another 5-6 months.

 

[deftonian]

Still holding out for GTX 990. I've got the 690 and ready to upgrade. To be honest, I like the x90 series as long as they keep with the two GPUs on one PCB. Less heat and less crowded in the case.

 

[Au_equus]

HDMI 2.0

That is all I need to know.

Well, that and 780ti comparisons at 4k.

 

[ratchet256]

$330 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti... AND uses over 100 watts less power? Not bad, price drops incoming everywhere, but who would want anything else?

It's $550 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti.

$330 only gets you a GTX 970, which is significantly slower. Should still be a great card though, and better value for money than the 980.

Nope.

970 = about 780 ti performance

980 is definitely better than 780 ti, supposedly it's about 13% better performance than 780 ti, at least that's what the leaked review said.

 

[The_Icon]

As a Sapphire TriX R9 290 OC (further OCed) owner, I see no reason to upgrade. However, the big takeaway for this card is it's incredible engineering gone through the card which allows for some serious performance at such a low wattage. Not only it means less power requirements, but less heat and more overclockable. Also, some very neat features in terms of software like new AA, improved gameworks makes it quite attractive. The biggest threat for AMD in my opinion is the GTX 970...that level of performance, efficiency and non-nvidia like pricing can makes it so beautiful.


I always switch brands when it comes to GPUs. I am happy with my AMD card, next time I plan to jump to the green team; not with the maxwell cards, but with the next year's fermi class of GPUs.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Geez, why does are we still seeing these "as fast as 780 Ti" comments. When you look at the videcardz.com benchmark graphs, take a moment to notice that:

The stock 980 is almost as fast as the the 780 Ti with a 31% overclock.

The 980 with a 6% overclock is 17% faster than the the 780 Ti with a 6% overclock. The 780.

The 780 was 21% faster than the 680, so if anything the 980 's increase over the 780 is a helluva lot bigger than the 780 over the 680 or the 680 over the 580.

 

[17seconds]

Tom's seems to be the only place that doesn't have their review up. And yes the $330 EVGA GTX 970 ACX SC is every bit as fast as a now discontinued $600 GTX 780 Ti, not to mention how it fares against a $500, soon to be $400, 290X.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_970_SC_ACX_Cooler/25.html

 

[Sakkura]

$330 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti... AND uses over 100 watts less power? Not bad, price drops incoming everywhere, but who would want anything else?

It's $550 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti.

$330 only gets you a GTX 970, which is significantly slower. Should still be a great card though, and better value for money than the 980.

Nope.

970 = about 780 ti performance

980 is definitely better than 780 ti, supposedly it's about 13% better performance than 780 ti, at least that's what the leaked review said.

Nope. The GTX 970 is a little faster than the GTX 780, but it's definitely slower than the GTX 780 Ti. Just like the GTX 980 is a little faster than the GTX 780 Ti. In terms of performance, this launch is not a big step forward. But you get a bit more performance and much lower power consumption at a lower price, which is impressive considering they're still stuck with ancient 28nm tech.

 

[zxt827]

You cannot judge the 900s right now without any benchmark testing. sure it sounds like only improved power consumption, but wait until there are some numbers available to judge if another $500 bill is worth it or not.

 

[Free2play_noobs]

When are we going to get a review from Tom's ?

 

[Linnaeus]

When is it going to go on sale?

 

[Rexer]

It's suppose to be $299.00. That's what a Radeon R9 280x on sale, sells about... . or somewhere 'round there.

 

[Rexer]

I was hoping Nividia would increase the bus from 256 to 384. Shove more data through the pipe. But what do I know? The specs are awesome for a $299 card.