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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Drunktroop - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
It is more like the G92s - 8800GT and 8800GTS 512 than HD4850 IMO.atl - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
In compute benchmark, i would appreciate some digital currency tests pack.Ryan Smith - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Could you please expand on that request?GPUs have been supplanted by FPGAs and ASICs for both Bitcoin (SHA-25) and Litecoin (scrypt). At this point I'm not convinced cryptocoin processing speeds are going to be relevant.
ABR - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Maybe not relevant for professional bitcoin miners as such, but a good benchmark of cryptography / big integer number crunching capabilities where a fair amount of effort has gone into optimizing the software for the hardware.Lux88 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I want to thank Ryan for using FahBench.rickon66 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I'm interested in 4K hardware, currently using 1600P Dell with a 780Ti OC and want to move up to 2160P. I'm hoping this 980 is fully compliant with HDMI 2.0!theMillen - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
you realize that if you're hoping for 2.0 compliance for a 4k monitor, you will want to use displayport.Hrobertgar - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
It sounds silly, but the pictures of the restaurant in the Voxel discussion look exactly like Poncho Villa's in Redondo Beach, Cali. That place was my favorite Mexican restaurant when I lived in Cali, and I always enjoyed Sunday Brunch there.Peichen - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
The one with the blue/white checkered table cloth? Maybe I will remember this when visiting CA in the future.SydneyBlue120d - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I'd like to read in future testing how the new cards handle 4K60 footage in both HEVC and VP9 format. Here http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?111230... You can find some 4K materials e.g.