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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bernstein - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
it's nice having one article with a full review, & it's nice to have early partial results... so in the future if publishing with missing content PLZ put in a big fat bold disclaimer:xyz content missing, update coming on 2.2.2222
chizow - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
@Ryan, thanks for the update, sorry I just scanned through and didn't see the subtext mentioning your issues with the 970. Looking forward to updated results once you get some good samples.nevertell - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
You can't read through the article in one sitting yet you complain about the article being rushed ?chizow - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
@nevertell, not sure if that comment was directed at me, but I never read through the entire article in the first sitting, especially in this case where I was actually in the market to buy one of these cards and might need to make a quick buying decision. I generally look at results and jump around a bit before going back to read the entire article, and I did not see any subtext on why the 970 wasn't included on this page about "Launching Today":http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce-...
I expected to see something about why the 970 wasn't launching today, staggered launch, didn't get review sample etc but did not see anything, so I asked bc I saw Ryan was attending the comments here and might get a quick response.
boot318 - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Bye, AMD!Amazing card(s) Nvidia bought to market! I've already seen a couple of reviews showing this monster overclocking over 1450+. Just think about when Nvidia drops a big die version........ :)
dragonsqrrl - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
AMD is by no means out of it. They're still very competitive in terms of performance, however they're far behind in terms of efficiency, which means to compete with the 980 they'll likely have to launch a far higher TDP card that requires more exotic cooling and will almost certainly be more expensive to manufacture. Even when you take the 285 into consideration, which offers 280 level performance at greatly reduced TDP, it's still at a higher TDP then the 980 which now outperforms the 290X by ~15%. And this isn't even taking noise, build quality, or features into consideration... Not a good position for AMD, in fact it's somewhat reminiscent of their processors (minus the competitive performance part)."Just think about when Nvidia drops a big die version........ :)"
Fortunately for AMD that's just not going to happen on 28nm, otherwise I might be inclined to agree with you. They still have a very real competitive chance with their upcoming cards.
arbit3r - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
O god really? 285 has greately reduced TDP? um 280 had a 200watt TDP, the 285 is 190, 10 watts less i wouldn't call that greatly reduced. Before you say 280 had 250watt tdp, no that is the 280x.dragonsqrrl - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I haven't done much searching around, but according to Anandtech's review of the 285, the 280 has a 250W TDP.http://www.anandtech.com/show/8460/amd-radeon-r9-2...
arbit3r - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
plenty sites i know of say its 200, so if there is that much misinfo then likely AMD at fault for that one. Seeing a lot of reviews put real world power usage around 20watts difference.Ryan Smith - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
For the record, 250W for R9 280 comes directly from AMD's reviewer's guide for that product.