The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Review: Maxwell Mark 2
by Ryan Smith on September 18, 2014 10:30 PM ESTThe Test
For the launch of GTX 980 we are using NVIDIA’s press beta drivers for the card, release 334.07 beta. This is the first (semi) public release of the R343 driver set, and coinciding with the release of the Maxwell 2 architecture it also marks the end of support for NVIDIA’s D3D10 GPUs: the 8, 9, 100, 200, and 300 series. Beginning with R343 these products are no longer supported in new driver branches and have been moved to legacy status.
Meanwhile as noted earlier, due to time constraints and hardware problems today we are focusing our coverage on the GTX 980. Next week we will be looking at GTX 980 SLI (hint: it’s fast) and GTX 970.
And on a testing note, as is standard for our reviews we are using our reference Radeon R9 290X for our 290X benchmarks. For this reason we are including both the standard and uber modes for the sake of clarity and completeness. The temperature throttling that the reference 290X suffers from is basically limited to just the reference 290X, as the non-reference/custom models use open air coolers that have no problem dissipating the 290X’s full heat load. Both modes are included for this reason, to demonstrate how a reference 290X performs and how a custom model would perform. At this point you can still buy reference 290X cards, but the vast majority of retail cards will be of the non-reference variety, where the 290X Uber mode’s results will be more applicable.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon R9 290X AMD Radeon R9 290 AMD Radeon HD 7970 AMD Radeon HD 6970 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA Release 344.07 Beta AMD Catalyst 14.300.1005 Beta |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
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Laststop311 - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
I'm going to wait for the custom gtx 980's. It was already throttling from reaching the 80C limit on most games. Blower design wouldn't of throttled if they left the vapor chamber in but they didnt. My case has plenty of airflow so i don't require a blower design. MSI twin frozr V open air design will cool the gpu much better and stop it from throttling during gaming. People rushing to buy the reference design are missing out on 100's of mhz due to thermal throttle.chizow - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Yep the open-faced custom coolers are definitely better at OC'ing, especially in single-GPU configs, but the problems I have with them are:1) they tend to have cheaper build quality than the ref, especially the NVTTM cooler which is just classy stuff. The custom coolers replace this with lots and lots of plastic, visible heatpipes, cheapo looking fans. If I wanted an Arctic Accelero on my GPUs I would just buy one.
2) they usually take longer to come to market. Frequently +3-6 weeks lead time. I know its not a super long time in the grand scheme of things, but I'd rather upgrade sooner.
3) The blowers tend to do better in SLI over longer periods of time, and also don't impact your CPU temps/OC as much. I have a ton of airflow too (HAF-X) but I still prefer most of the heat being expelled from the start, and not through my H100i rad.
4) Frankly I'm not too worried about squeezing the last 100-150MHz out of these chips. There was a time I might have been, but I tend to stick it to a safe OC about 100-150MHz below what most people are getting and then call it a day without having to do a dozen 3DMark loops to verify stability.
Laststop311 - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Did you see the benchmarks. Some games were running in the 900's some in the 1000's some in 1100's. Stuck at these frequencies because the card was riding the 80C limit. As the review mentioned these aren't the same titan coolers as they removed the vapor chamber and replaced it with regular heatpipes. Getting a custom cooled card isnt about squeezing the last 100-150 from an OC its about squeezing an extra 400-600 mhz from an OC as many reviewers have gotten the gtx 980 to OC to 1500mhz. We are talking a massive performance increase from getting the proper cooling bigger than even the r9 290x going from reference to custom and that was pretty big itself.Laststop311 - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Even to get the card to reliably run at stock settings during intense gaming you need a custyom cooled card. The reference cooled card can't even reliably hit its stock clock under intense gaming because the blower cooler without vapor chamber sucks.chizow - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
No, you can adjust the Nvidia fan and GPU temp settings to get sustained Boosts. There is a trade-off in terms of fan noise and/or operating temps, but it is easy to get close to the results of the custom coolers at the expense of fan noise. I personally set my fan curve differently because I think Nvidia's 80C target temp profile is a little bit too passive in how quickly it ramps up fanspeeds. I don't expect to have any problems at all maintaining rated Boost speed, and if I want to overclock, I fully understand the sacrifice will be more fan noise over the custom coolers, but the rest of the negatives regarding custom coolers makes the reference cooler more appealing to me.venk90 - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
The GTX 980 page on NVIDIA website seems to indicate HDMI 1.4 as it says 3840*2160 at 30 Hz over HDMI (it is mentioned as a foot note). Are you sure about it being HDMI 2.0 ?Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Yes. I've confirmed it in writing and in person.vegitto4 - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Hi Ryan, great review! There will be the usual HTPC perspective? For example, did they fix the 23.976 refresh rate as Haswell does? I think it's important to know how these work as htpc cards. RegardsRyan Smith - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
For this article there will not. These cards aren't your traditional HTPC cards. However we can possibly look into it for next week's follow-up.chizow - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I think the definition of HTPC is beginning to change though, and while these may not yet fit into traditional HTPC (Brix and NUC seem to be filling this niche more), they are definitely right in the SteamBox/BattleBox category.Honestly, SteamBox was the first thing that came to mind when I saw that 165W TDP on the GTX 980, we will be seeing a lot of GM204 variants in the upcoming years in SFF, LAN, SteamBox and gaming laptop form factors that is for sure.