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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Daroller - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
HAHAHAHAHA website lagged out and triple posted. That's awesome. Go go Google Chrome!naxeem - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I don't think it is all good with the overclocking part. On stock air (albeit 80% fan speed unless used Accelero IV at 40%) cooler TitanX cards easily get to 1300/1440 normal/boost clocks. Same cards on water got to 1375/1500 with cool-ish 55°C at max load. That applies to two TitanX in SLI with modified BIOS that allows for more power consumption and thus removes artificial limit.Since the chip is identical and 980Ti is actually partially defective TitanX with 50% less RAM and switched off defective parts, I highly doubt clock potential differs, especially not in favor of 980Ti.
I would and do expect 980Ti to clock the same as Titan X (loosing some on chip quality, gaining some on half the VRAM).
FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, June 13, 2015 - link
Nope. Other test sites show the opposite - 980TI is an overclock monster and beats the TXtruongpham - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Ryan, can you bench this one with Windows 10 and DX12?Ryan Smith - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
We won't be doing any complete Win10 benchmarking until that OS is finished and released. As for DX12, there are no games out yet that re using it; the handful of benchmarks are focused tech demos.cknobman - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Nvidia must have seen some undisclosed AMD benchmarks, went into panic mode, and rushed a release for the 980TI to get customers before the AMD launch.While its a great card the problem is Nvidia screwed some of their own customers.
I take this as a sign that whatever AMD is coming out with must be pretty good. :)
galta - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Maybe, but it could prove to be of little importance.You see, Win10 will be out on June 29th. Realistically speaking, DX12 games won't be real before Christmas or 2016.
It is more than enough time for a possible counterstrike from nVidia.
Having said that, unless one really really needs to upgrade now I would strongly recommend waiting for another month, just to check what Fiji is up to.
As of me, I have a pair of 980GTX Strix and have been with nVidia for a while, but I really hope AMD gets this one right.
Real competition is always good.
JayFiveAlive - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I've been waiting for this beast to drop... now to decide whether it's a good time to bite.Current setup is a 2500K OC to 4.4Ghz and a GTX 670, so kinda oldish... Was considering upgrading to a Skylake proc come Sept and this 980 Ti, but probably Gigabyte variant... hmmm.
Peichen - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Why upgrade CPU? 2500K at 4.4GHz is still very fast and shouldn't affect performance of a 980Ti much. Maybe 10% less fps vs if you have a 6-core Extreme but why spend $300-400 to get 10% improvement?mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Plus if he does need some more CPU oomph, just put in a 2700K. I've built six so far, every one of them happily runs at 5GHz with just a decent air cooler & one fan for quiet operation, though for final setups I use an H80 and two quiet fans. Some games will benefit from more than 4 cores, depends on the game (eg. PvP online FPS can involve a lot of host side scripting, eg. Project Reality, and the upcoming Squad).True though, 2500K is still very potent, just built a 4.8 setup for a friend. She lives on an island, it'll probably be the quickest system for miles around. :D