The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Review: Maxwell Mark 2
by Ryan Smith on September 18, 2014 10:30 PM ESTFinal Words
When NVIDIA launched the first Maxwell cards earlier this year, we knew that we would be in for a treat with their latest architecture. Though just a fragment of the performance of what their eventual high-end cards would be, NVIDIA’s first Maxwell cards offered an interesting look at an architecture that would be capable of doubling NVIDIA’s performance per watt on the same 28nm TSMC manufacturing process they started with over 2 years ago. To that end I don’t think there has been any doubt that NVIDIA’s eventual second generation Maxwell cards would be equally amazing when it comes to power efficiency, but I feel NVIDIA has still impressed us when it comes to performance, features, and pricing.
In many ways it feels like this latest launch has returned us to the PC video card industry of 2012. NVIDIA’s flagship consumer card is once again powered by a smaller and more potent consumer-class x04 GPU, and once again NVIDIA is swinging the one-two punch of performance and power efficiency. When GTX 680 was launched it set a new high mark for the video card industry, and now we see GTX 980 do more of the same. The GTX 980 is faster, less power hungry, and quieter than the Radeon R9 290X, so once again NVIDIA has landed the technical trifecta. Even if we’re just looking at performance and pricing the GTX 980 is the undisputed holder of the single-GPU performance crown, besting everything else AMD and NVIDIA have to offer, and offering it at a price that while no means a steal is more than reasonable given NVIDIA’s technical and performance advantage. As such GTX 980 comes very, very close to doing to Radeon R9 290X what GTX 680 did to Radeon HD 7970 over 2 years ago.
Meanwhile from a feature perspective the GTX 900 series is going to prove to be a very captivating product. Dynamic Super Resolution is a brutish-yet-clever solution of what to do about anti-aliasing on today's deferred renderer games that cannot support traditional MSAA/SSAA, and while I’m withholding my judgment on Multi-Frame sampled Anti-Aliasing until it’s made available to users in NVIDIA’s drivers, the idea at least has merit. Otherwise I am very happy to see that NVIDIA has now fully caught up to the competition in terms of baseline API features by offering everything needed to support Direct3D 11.2 and beyond.
Along those lines, NVIDIA’s focus on voxel technology for Maxwell 2 is a very interesting route to take, and I am eagerly anticipating seeing whether it gets widely adopted and what developers do with it. VXGI is a very neat concept to generate voxel based global illumination, and building in the features necessary to do significant portions of it in hardware is a wise move by NVIDIA. The catch at this point is the same catch that faces all vendor specific technologies: just because the hardware is there doesn’t mean developers will put it to good use, especially in this age of console ports. NVIDIA for their part has made the right move by making sure VXGI will run on other hardware, but I am concerned that the performance delta means that it’s only going to be viable on Maxwell 2 GPUs for now, which could discourage developers. None the less we do need better lighting in games, and I hope this encourages developers to finally adopt these kinds of high quality global illumination systems.
As for the hardware itself, is there anything left to say other than that GTX 980 is a well-built, well-engineered card? The build quality is impeccable – raising the bar over even GTX Titan – and the power efficiency gains are truly remarkable. With a TDP lower than even GTX 680, this is the lowest power consumption has been for a chart-topping card since 9800 GTX over half a decade ago. It’s really a bit of a honeymoon period since if and when NVIDIA does Big Maxwell one has to expect power consumption will go back up, but for the time being it’s very pleasing to be able to get chart-topping performance inside of 165W. And the fact that this comes from the same company responsible for GTX 480 just 2 generations ago makes this the ultimate technical turnaround.
In conclusion, the GeForce GTX 980 represents another stellar performance from NVIDIA. Their reign at the top is not going to go unchallenged – AMD can’t match NVIDIA on performance, but they can sure drive down prices – but as was the case in 2012 the crown continues to securely reside in NVIDIA’s hands, and once again they have done the technical hard work to earn it.
Finally, as a reminder we will be following up this article next week with our look at GTX 980 SLI performance and a look at the GTX 970. Of the two cards launched today the GTX 970 is without a doubt the more interesting of the two thanks to its relatively low price compared to the performance NVIDIA is offering, but due to our aforementioned board issues we will not be able to take a look at it until next week. So until then stay tuned for the rest of our GM204 coverage.
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hojnikb - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
7950 (which was then rebranded to 280) had 200W. With 280, they obviously upped the TDP for longer turbo speeds.ArtForz - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Wasn't the 280 more of a rebranded 7950 boost (925 turbo), and not a 7950 (825, no turbo at all)?Mr Perfect - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
True, but the 285 didn't live up to the 180 watt claim. Later in the article they showed it saving only 13 watts under load when compared to the 280. So more like 237 watts?http://www.anandtech.com/show/8460/amd-radeon-r9-2...
Which was really quite disappointing. I need something to cram in my mITX rig, and it has to be close to the 150 watts of the 6870 in there now.
Samus - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
On a per-watt scale, AMD's GPU's are now as inefficient as their CPU's when compared to the competition. It's good they got those console contracts, because they probably won't be getting the next round if this keeps up.Absolutely amazing Maxwell is twice as efficient per watt as GCN 1.2
Laststop311 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
well looks like the gtx 970 is calling your name thenAlexvrb - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
That seems to depend on the design reviewed. THG tested a similarly clocked card by a different manufacturer and there was a much larger gap between the 280 and 285 in terms of power consumption.With that being said the 980 and 970 are both extremely fast and power efficient. Especially the 970 - if it really hits the market at around that pricing wow! Incredible value.
Strange that the 980 throttles so much at stock settings even outside of Furmark, first thing I'd do is go into the settings and fiddle a bit until it boosts consistently. But given its performance and it's not really a problem, and it can be remedied. Still, something to keep in mind especially when overclocking. I wonder how the 980 would have done with the beefier cooler from its higher-TDP predecessors, and some mild overvolting?
Laststop311 - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
If you look in the gaming benchmarks the gpu is hitting 80C. Nvidia's design does not allow the gpu to exceed 80C so it has to lower frequencies to stay at 80C. This is the consequence of using the titan blower cooler but removing the vapor chamber lowering its cooling capability. That's why I don't get why all these people are rushing to buy the reference design gtx 980's as they are all sold out. They are throttling by hundreds of mhz because the titan blower cooler without a vapor chamber sucks. Custom cooling options are going to make the gtx 980 able to reliably hit 1300-1400 mhz some probably even 1500 mhz under full load and still stay under the 80C limit. Keep an eye out for MSI's twin frozr V design. It's going to have a beefy radiator with 2x 100mm fans in an open air design allowing WAY more cooling potential then the reference design. The twin frozr V design should allow the card to OC and actually keep those OC frequencies under heavy load unlike the reference card which cant even keep up with its stock setting under intense gaming. We should see a pretty big performance jump going to custom coolers and the reference performance is already staggeringAlexvrb - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Reviewers and "tech enthusiasts" alike jumped all over AMD when they didn't adequately cool their 290 cards. So while I don't disagree with what you're saying, I am just surprised that they would let it ship with such heavy throttling on ordinary games. Especially given that in this case it isn't because Nvidia shipped with a cooler that isn't sufficient - rather it's because by default the fan is running too slowly. Even without the vapor chamber, I bet it would be fine if they just turned up the fan just a hair. Not enough to make it loud, but enough to bring it in line with some of the other high-end cards here (under a load).Anyway I suspect the vapor chamber will return in a higher-end "980 Ti" type configuration. In the meantime, yeah I'd keep an eye out for high-end aftermarket designs with a more aggressive power delivery system and wicked cooling. There's no doubt these chips have serious potential! I'd bet an aggressive 970 could hit the market for under $400 with 980-like performance and a factory warranty. :D
I'd say "poor AMD" but this kind of leapfrogging is nothing new. Even if AMD can't come out with something really impressive in the next several months, they can always remain competitive by dropping prices. My GPU is idle outside of gaming so the actual difference in power consumption in terms of dollars is tiny. Now, for number-crunching rigs that run their GPUs 24/7... that's a different story altogether. But then again, AMD's professional cards have good DP numbers so it's kind of a wash.
Hixbot - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I'm very disappointed they got rid of the vapor chamber. I'm not a fan of the 3rd party coolers as they exhaust the air into the case (big deal for small form factor PCs). I prefer the blower cooler even though they are noisier, the loss of the vapor chamber is a big deal.Viewgamer - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
LOL people screaming at the 285. It actually consumes less power than the 980 and 970 not more.Nvidia greatly understated the TDP of the 980 and 970 to put it lightly.
Both cards consume more power than the 250W TDP 7970 Ghz yet they're somehow rated at 165W and 145W how laughable !
http://i.imgur.com/nfueVP7.png