The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTFinal Words
Bringing this video card review to a close, through the last 14 pages of benchmarks we have seen the same result time and time again. While on paper the GeForce GTX 980 Ti should trail the GeForce GTX Titan X by several percent, what we get in the real world is much, much closer. With an average performance deficit of just 3%, GeForce GTX 980 Ti is for all intents and purposes GTX Titan X with a different name.
Typically NVIDIA engineers a wider gap between their cards, and while there is plenty of room for speculation here as to why they’d let GTX 980 Ti get so close to GTX Titan X – and make no mistake, it is intentional – at the end of the day none of that changes the final result. With a launch price of $649, the GTX 980 Ti may as well be an unofficial price cut to GTX Titan X, delivering flagship GeForce performance for 35% less.
As it stands GTX Titan X does have one remaining advantage that precludes it from being rendered redundant: its 12GB of VRAM, versus GTX 980 Ti’s 6GB. However without any current games requiring more than 6GB of VRAM – and any realistic workload running out of GPU throughput before running out of VRAM – the GTX Titan X’s place in this world now hinges on an uncertain degree of future-proofness. For this reason GTX Titan X isn’t going anywhere, it will still be around for buyers who need the very best, or even compute users after a cheap 12GB card, but for everyone else the GTX 980 Ti is now going to be the card all other high-end video cards are measured against.
Meanwhile for prospective high-end buyers who haven’t already picked up a GTX Titan X, GTX 980 Ti comes at an interesting time for new buyers and upgrades alike. NVIDIA’s previous $649 card, the GTX 780, has just turned two years old, which is about the bare minimum for upgrading a video card these days. Gamers looking to replace the GTX 780 will find that the GTX 980 Ti offers around a 70% performance improvement, which compared to the gains we saw with GTX Titan X and NVIDIA’s other Titan cards is actually ahead of the curve. It’s still not enough to double GTX 780’s performance, nor are we going to get there until 16nm, but it’s a bright spot for those who may want to upgrade a bit sooner than 2016. On the other hand GTX 780 Ti owners will almost certainly want to hold off for the next generation, despite the name.
That said however, today’s launch is just the first part of a larger battle between NVIDIA and AMD. With AMD scheduled to launch their next-generation high-end card in June, the launch of the GTX 980 Ti is in many ways NVIDIA striking first and striking hard. By pushing GTX Titan X-like performance down to $650, NVIDIA has set the bar for AMD: AMD needs to either beat GTX 980 Ti/Titan X if they want to take back the performance crown, or they need to deliver their card for less than $650. It goes without saying that NVIDIA has given AMD a very high bar to beat, but AMD has proven to be quite resourceful in the past, so it shall be interesting to see just what AMD’s response is to the GTX 980 Ti.
As for this moment, the high-end video card market is essentially in a holding pattern. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti is a fine card for the price – a GTX Titan X for $649 – however with AMD’s new flagship card on the horizon buyers are likely better off waiting to see what AMD delivers before making such a purchase, if only to see if it further pushes down video card prices.
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RaistlinZ - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
What more would a review of the 960 tell you that you don't already know, honestly? I'd rather read reviews about interesting products like the 980Ti. People need to let the 960 review go already, geez.Michael Bay - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
I only trust AT numbers and am in no hurry to upgrade.God I wish they would compare Baytrail/Cherrytrail to i3s.
Brett Howse - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
I did compare Cherry Trail to the i3 SP3 in the Surface 3 review. Was there more you were looking for?Michael Bay - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I`m trying to get a cheap small notebook for my father. He is currently on i3-380UM and the choice is between N3558 and i3-4030U. Workload is strictly internet browsing/ms office.Not much point in changing anything if performance is going to be worse than it was...
sandy105 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Exactly , it would be interesting to see how much faster than baytrail they are ?DanNeely - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
DVI may be an obsolescent standard at this point; but 4/5k gaming is still expensive enough that a lot of the people buying into it now are ones who're upgrading from older 2560x1600 displays that don't do DP/HDMI 2. A lot of those people will probably keep using their old monitor as a secondary display after getting a new higher resolution one (I know I plan to); and good DL-DVI to display port adapters are still relatively expensive at ~$70. (There're cheaper ones; but they've all got lots of bad reviews from people who found they weren't operating reliably and were generating display artifacts: messed up scan lines.) Unless it dies first, I'd like to be able to keep using my existing NEC 3090 for a few more years without having to spend money on an expensive dongle.YazX_ - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Dude, majority are still playing on 1920x1080 and just few now are making the leap to 2560x1440p, i have been gaming on 1440p since two years and not planning to go 4k anytime soon since hardware still not mature enough to play at 4k comfortably with single video card.thus, DVI is not going anywhere since dual layer DVI supports 1440p and probably most of 1080p gamers are using DVI unless if they have G-Sync or want to use Adaptive V-Sync then they have to use DP, and dont forget that there are too many people who bought 27" Korean 1440 monitors that doesnt have except DVI ports.
DanNeely - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
If you're playing at 1920/60hz this card's massive overkill, and in any event it's a non-issue for you because your monitor is only using a single link in the DVI and you can use a dirt cheap passive DVI-HDMI/DP adapter now; and worst case would only need a cheap single link adapter in the future.My comment was directed toward Ryan's comment on page 2 (near the bottom, above the last picture) suggesting that the DVI port wasn't really needed since any monitor it could drive wouldn't need this much horse power to run games.
FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
totally disagree - I game at 1920x1200, the only rez the 980ti is capable of without knocking down the eye candy.Kutark - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Exactly. I literally just now upgraded to a 1440p monitor, and i can't even express in words how little of a sh*t i give about 4k gaming. Ive been a hardware nerd for a long time, but when i got into home theater i learned just how much resolution actually matters. 4k is overkill for a 120" projected image at a 15' seating distance. 4k at normal desk viewing distances is way beyond overkill. They've done tests on fighter pilots who have ridiculous vision, like 20/7.5 and such, and even they can't see a difference at those seating distances. 4k is almost as much of a marketing BS gimmick than 3D was for tv's.Anyways im clearly getting angry. But point still stands, every single gamer i know is still on 1080p, i was the first to splurge on a 1440p monitor. And now its put me into a position where my SLI'd 760's aren't really doing the deed, especially being 2gb cards. So, 980ti fits the bill for my gsync 144hz 1440p monitor just about perfectly.