Nvidia's Board Partners: GTX 980 And 970 Card Roundup

[Guest]

The one question I still have about these new cards is about the 256 bit interface. Is 4 GB even able to be utilized fully with that narrow of a bus? Or do very high memory clocks make up for that? I always thought 128 bit per 1 GB was the optimal scenario. I always wondered about Nvidia's memory configurations, though it was even stranger when we had cards with 1.2 and 1.5 GB of VRAM on some models lol.

 

[photonboy]

The one question I still have about these new cards is about the 256 bit interface. Is 4 GB even able to be utilized fully with that narrow of a bus? Or do very high memory clocks make up for that? I always thought 128 bit per 1 GB was the optimal scenario. I always wondered about Nvidia's memory configurations, though it was even stranger when we had cards with 1.2 and 1.5 GB of VRAM on some models lol.

1) NVidia uses a compression mechanism on the new cards so the interface is sufficient.

2) VRAM amount isn't related to the speed of the memory interface. When you go from 2GB to 4GB of VRAM you don't need a faster interface; it just means you can store more information there before being forced to swap back to the main hard drive or SSD.

The memory interface speed and memory speed are related, but not the amount of memory.

Summary:
To avoid confusion, just look at the GAME BENCHMARKS. If there was some sort of a problem then it would show up there, but there isn't which is reflected in the great performance of the cards.

A lot of people who have limited knowledge are spouting off about the interface or other features but NVidia really does know what they're doing. These are the best video cards ever made and there are no issues with them.

 

[solkeher]

So I'm thinking of selling my Sapphire R9 290 and buy a Gigabyte GTX 980 Windforce 3x... but the 970 seems like the best performance/price. So I'm not sure...

I don't even know if I should sell my 290.... oh decisions, decisions.

 

[Borge80]

You'd have to be crazy to buy a 980 rather than going for 970 sli..I have an oc'd gtx670ftw and it runs most things rather well and wasn't expecting an upgrade for sometime but I happened to stumble across newegg and catch a glimpse of that 970 price..got my first one coming in next week.