- Aug 30, 2012
- 6,598
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
Nvidia's graphics lineup could be deemed complete in the enthusiast front. Starting at $200 with the GeForce GTX 960 and finishing at $1,000 with the 3072 CUDA core monster that is the GTX Titan X. Hardcore gamers with cash to spare will arguably say the finish line isn't crossed until you hit two or even three Titan Xs, but I digress.
The GeForce 900 series based on the Maxwell GPU architecture is completed by the originalGeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 that arrived eight months ago. However Nvidia appears to be ready for a repeat with a Ti edition GPU that bridges the distance between its former GTX 980 flagship and the latest Titan.
The GTX Titan X is still a new endeavor, arriving to market in late March, it raised the bar for single GPU performance -- or rather took the bar and placed it so high that it almost warranted the Titan X's otherwise exorbitant asking price. In fact, had Nvidia not nerfed double precision compute performance, the Titan X would have been a serious deal at $1,000.
Regardless of pricing, there's a reason for the Titan X to exist: they sell like hotcakes. Even thoughwe found the Titan X to be ~37% faster than the GTX 980 while costing 80% more, that hasn’t stopped sales to exceed supply.
The new GeForce GTX 980 Ti is still targeting 4K gaming and with 6GB of memory onboard it's still overkill but without excess. Whereas the Titan X featured a fully-fledged GM200 chip with 24 streaming multiprocessors and 3072 CUDA cores, the new GeForce GTX 980 Ti has been slightly downgraded to 22 SM units and 2816 cores. The massive 12GB memory buffer found on the Titan X has been slashed in half resulting in an ample 6GB buffer, 2GB more than the original GTX 980.
Nvidia is banking on three new developments to further push sales of high-end GPUs:
Later this year Microsoft will release DirectX 12 which will reduce CPU overhead and enable new graphics features. For example, volume tiled resources will allow developers to render fire and smoke with richer detail than ever before. According to Microsoft there are at least a hundred game developers already working on DX12 titles.
High resolution gaming, i.e. 4K gaming, is also creating demand for more powerful GPUs. This accounts for much of the Titan X’s success as the first graphics card that can deliver playable 4K performance on a single GPU. Thanks to falling prices the adoption of 4K displays is really taking off. In the last 12 months, the 4K market segment has doubled in growth.
Virtual reality is also expected to drive PC gaming in the coming years. Nvidia seems to have a leg up as all leading VR makers have demonstrated their products on GeForce GPUs.
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TECHSPOT SCORE 90
Pros: Fast and efficient. Capable of 4K gaming. An expensive affair but nonetheless a good value. Runs quiet and overclocks well.
Cons: The Radeon R9 295X2 remains a threat in pure throughput.
Nvidia's graphics lineup could be deemed complete in the enthusiast front. Starting at $200 with the GeForce GTX 960 and finishing at $1,000 with the 3072 CUDA core monster that is the GTX Titan X. Hardcore gamers with cash to spare will arguably say the finish line isn't crossed until you hit two or even three Titan Xs, but I digress.
The GeForce 900 series based on the Maxwell GPU architecture is completed by the originalGeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 that arrived eight months ago. However Nvidia appears to be ready for a repeat with a Ti edition GPU that bridges the distance between its former GTX 980 flagship and the latest Titan.
The GTX Titan X is still a new endeavor, arriving to market in late March, it raised the bar for single GPU performance -- or rather took the bar and placed it so high that it almost warranted the Titan X's otherwise exorbitant asking price. In fact, had Nvidia not nerfed double precision compute performance, the Titan X would have been a serious deal at $1,000.
Regardless of pricing, there's a reason for the Titan X to exist: they sell like hotcakes. Even thoughwe found the Titan X to be ~37% faster than the GTX 980 while costing 80% more, that hasn’t stopped sales to exceed supply.
The new GeForce GTX 980 Ti is still targeting 4K gaming and with 6GB of memory onboard it's still overkill but without excess. Whereas the Titan X featured a fully-fledged GM200 chip with 24 streaming multiprocessors and 3072 CUDA cores, the new GeForce GTX 980 Ti has been slightly downgraded to 22 SM units and 2816 cores. The massive 12GB memory buffer found on the Titan X has been slashed in half resulting in an ample 6GB buffer, 2GB more than the original GTX 980.
Nvidia is banking on three new developments to further push sales of high-end GPUs:
Later this year Microsoft will release DirectX 12 which will reduce CPU overhead and enable new graphics features. For example, volume tiled resources will allow developers to render fire and smoke with richer detail than ever before. According to Microsoft there are at least a hundred game developers already working on DX12 titles.
High resolution gaming, i.e. 4K gaming, is also creating demand for more powerful GPUs. This accounts for much of the Titan X’s success as the first graphics card that can deliver playable 4K performance on a single GPU. Thanks to falling prices the adoption of 4K displays is really taking off. In the last 12 months, the 4K market segment has doubled in growth.
Virtual reality is also expected to drive PC gaming in the coming years. Nvidia seems to have a leg up as all leading VR makers have demonstrated their products on GeForce GPUs.
------------------------------------
TECHSPOT SCORE 90
Pros: Fast and efficient. Capable of 4K gaming. An expensive affair but nonetheless a good value. Runs quiet and overclocks well.
Cons: The Radeon R9 295X2 remains a threat in pure throughput.
