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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Klimax - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Just small bug in your article:Page "GRID Autosport" has one paragraph from previous page.
"Switching out to another strategy game, even given Attila’s significant GPU requirements at higher settings, GTX 980 Ti still doesn’t falter. It trails GTX Titan X by just 2% at all settings."
As for theoretical pixel test with anomalous 15% drop from Titan X, there is ready explanation:
Under specific conditions there won't be enough power to push those two Raster engines with cut down blocks. (also only three paths instead of four)
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out.bdiddytampa - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Really great and thorough review as usual :-) Thanks Ryan!Hrobertgar - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Today, Alienware is offering 15" laptops with an option for an R9-390x. Their spec sheet isn't updated, nor could I find updated specs for anything other than R9-370 on AMD's own website. Are you going to review some of these R9-300 series cards anytime soon?Hrobertgar - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
When I went to checkout (didn't actually buy - just checking schedule) it indicated 6-8 day shipping with the R9-390X.3DJF - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Ummm....$599 for R9 295X2?......where exactly? every search i have done for that card over the last 4 months up to today shows a LOWEST price of $619.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
It is currently $599 after rebate over at Newegg.Casecutter - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
From most result the 980Ti offer 20% more @1440p than a 980 (GM204) and given the 980Ti cost like 18-19% more that the orginal MSRP of the 980 ($550) It's really not any big thing.Given GM200 a 38% larger die, and 38% more SU's over a GM204 and you get 20% increase? It worse when a full TitanX is considered, that has 50% more SU's and the TitanX get perhaps 4% more in FpS over the 980Ti. This points to the fact that Maxwell doesn't scale. Looking at power the 980Ti is needing approx. 28% more power, which is not the worst but is starting to indicate there a losses as Nvidia scaled it up.
chizow - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Well, I guess its a good thing 980Ti isn't just 20% faster than the 980 then lol.CiccioB - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
This is obviously a comment by a frustrated AMD fan.Maxwell scales perfectly as you didn't consider the frequency it runs.
GM200 is 50% more than a GM204 in all resources. But those GPU run at about 0.86% of GM204 frequency (1250 vs 1075). If you can do simple math, you'll see that for any 980 results, if you multiply it by 1.5 and then for 0.86 (or directly for 1.3, that means 30% more) you'll find almost exactly the numbers the 980Ti bench shows.
Now that the new 980 $500 price, do the same and... yes, it is $650 for 980Ti.
Oh, the die size... let's see... 398mm^2of GM204 * 1.5 = 597mm^2 which compares almost exactly with the calculated 601m^2 of GM200.
Pretty simply. It shows everything scales perfectly in nvidia house. Seen custom cards are coming, we'll see GM200 going to 50% more than GM204 at same frequency. Yet these cards will consume a bit more, as expected.
You cannot say the same for AMD architecture though, as with smaller chips GCN is somewhat on par or even better with respect to nvidia for perf/mm^2, but as soon as real crunching power is requested GCN becomes extremely inefficient under the point of both perf/Watt or perf/mm^2.
If you tried to plant a doubt about the quality of this GM200 or Maxwell architecture in general, sorry, you choose the wrong architecture/chip/method. You simply failed.