NVIDIA Maxwell GPU - GeForce GTX 980 Video Card Review @ [H]

Traciatim said:
So, I'm a little confused on the DSR feature.... how is it different than just forcing super sampling?
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Yeah, I would like to hear more about this and see more pics/split screens.

It seems great for people still running 1080P
 
Great review, [H]. Thank you!

Was hoping to see around a minimum of 20% more average performance over 780ti, instead of around 10% (with the games tested). This is where the memory bus chosen for the 980 has confirmed my concerns. My 780 will be just fine until nVidia or AMD releases something with a stronger showing. Here's looking forward to Pascal!
 
The 970GTX to me after seeing reviews of it, seems like the best bang for the buck. I'm sure Nvidia will put out like a 960ti or something later, no way are they just not going to do that. I like this is happening, aggressive pricing from Nvidia, which in turn is going to make AMD lower their video card prices.
 
Thanks for the thorough and solid review [H], as always. Can't wait to see the overclocking results. This thing is so thorough I need to re-read to make sure I got it all..
 
Traciatim said:
So, I'm a little confused on the DSR feature.... how is it different than just forcing super sampling?
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It's exactly that...which is great because not every game has supersampling as an option to turn on in the settings. It's a way to get that crisper image without needing the expensive, higher resolution displays on EVERY game you own, not just a select few - at least that's how I'm reading into it.

On a side note, I'm not sure whether I want a single 980 or 2-way SLi 970s to power up my two 34UM94P's - not that having two matters since it's not demanding to run the desktop on monitor #2.
 
Traciatim said:
So, I'm a little confused on the DSR feature.... how is it different than just forcing super sampling?
Click to expand...

Performance hit should be lower and looks better because of a sharpening post filter. Its done by the hardware scaler.
 
Looks like a good card! I am glad NVidia is still moving things forward.
 
DejaWiz said:
Great review, [H]. Thank you!

Was hoping to see around a minimum of 20% more average performance over 780ti, instead of around 10% (with the games tested). This is where the memory bus chosen for the 980 has confirmed my concerns. My 780 will be just fine until nVidia or AMD releases something with a stronger showing. Here's looking forward to Pascal!
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Why? The chip is a replacement for GK104. Its smaller and has less transistors than GK110, not to mention the narrower bus. Yet it performs faster and is much more power efficient than GK110.

Since GK110 is sort of GK104 x 1.5, I think it bodes well for GM210 since it will be on 20nm (or even 16nm).
 
Thanks for the review guys.

The 980 may not be a big jump in performance really, but it sure is a big jump in efficiency, I could see this come into play in overclocking, I bet these things would fly with more headroom to play with, I hope you guys give that a test soon.

The 970 price is pretty good for what it offers, I'm half tempted to pick on up if my GPU wasn't sufficient for my needs at the moment... maybe next year I might, the efficiency could make for a nice quiet PC build with the right third party cooler on top.
 
Stoly said:
Performance hit should be lower and looks better because of a sharpening post filter. Its done by the hardware scaler.
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Isn't that exactly how super sampling works? Toms Hardware described it pretty much as having the exact same performance hit as super sampling too... I just don't see the difference. You could force super sampling in the driver for games that didn't support it I thought.
 
After reading the review, followed by this thread, my first thought was 'how are people disappointed?' From my perspective this looks like a win-win all around. We have more performance, lower TDP, lots of features, and a lower launch price.

I can't wait to get my hands on a 970. The price is great and unless they deviate from the $249 price point for the x60 cards, it looks like it will be well worth the slight premium.
 
Wierdo said:
Thanks for the review guys.

The 980 may not be a big jump in performance really, but it sure is a big jump in efficiency, I could see this come into play in overclocking, I bet these things would fly with more headroom to play with, I hope you guys give that a test soon.

The 970 price is pretty good for what it offers, I'm half tempted to pick on up if my GPU wasn't sufficient for my needs at the moment... maybe next year I might, the efficiency could make for a nice quiet PC build with the right third party cooler on top.
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It's funny, I'm not sure what nvidia has in mind but I think they are trying to drive that efficiency point home. I haven't seen a single review where the cards Boost overclocks less than 1350. They could have clocked the cards to 1350 or 1300 which would net an additional 10% frame rate performance boost and changed the tone of the card from all readers completely. +30%-35% over 780Ti and + 40%- 45%of R290X is nothing to scoff at.

Keep in mind these cards are replacing the GTX 770 and GTX 780 NOT the 780Ti people. They are fully utilizing the Full GM204 chip so the replacement of the 780 Ti which I expect around Xmas will not be the same GPU likely. I think they are waiting for AMD to show their hand before revealing their Full aggressive performance card.
 
THUMPer1 said:
TDP of 165 is not with Turbo right? So with Turbo it's more?
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that is with Turbo ON.. in order to keep turbo working it have to be between the designed TDP... Now anything above the stock advertised turbo speed its indeed increasing the TDP of the card due to GPU boost by power limit or Temperature. generally reference cards run very close to the advertised turbo clock.
 
Stoly said:
Why? The chip is a replacement for GK104. Its smaller and has less transistors than GK110, not to mention the narrower bus. Yet it performs faster and is much more power efficient than GK110.

Since GK110 is sort of GK104 x 1.5, I think it bodes well for GM210 since it will be on 20nm (or even 16nm).
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You haven't stated anything I'm not already aware of. And with all that factored in, the 980 disappoints me. Maybe my opinion will change when models with custom coolers arrive. Maybe it'll take 20/16 nm to change my opinion. Maybe not...we'll see. Until then, I'm perfectly fine knowing that my 780 will do the job just fine until Pascal or even what comes after. :)
 
Traciatim said:
So, I'm a little confused on the DSR feature.... how is it different than just forcing super sampling?
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The downsample is the key. The filter to downsample DSR is not something that runs through the GPU pipeline, like SSAA. Instead, it is a post process type of filter that does the downsample. Plus, it adds a 13-Tap Gaussian filter to it as well.

The idea is that DSR should be faster than SSAA.
 
n=1 said:
In case anyone's interested, here's a Hexus review of EVGA's GTX 970 FTW Edition.

Matches and even beats 780 Ti in most benchmarks and games (except Tomb Raider) even at 4K! And still has OC headroom that doesn't require overvolting, and can even just edge out a reference GTX 980!

Holy fucking shit!
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Okay I know it's a factory over-clocked card. But holy crap! I just jizzed my drawers!

I know what my next upgrade is gonna be.
 
DSR is coming to Kepler cards in the next driver, I think ManuelG at geforce.com forums confirmed that today.

Kinda tempting to pull the trigger and order a 980 today, MSI, ASUS and EVGA ones are in stock here in Germany. But then again I have a 780ti in a custom loop for 10 months that I didn't even OC yet. I think the wise decision for me would be to wait for big Maxwell, hopefully in summer 2015.

Thanks for the great review!
 
Quartz-1 said:
I have a 4K display, therefore it's important to me.
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i think you're just going to have to accept that for the time being, that proper 4k performance requires multi gpu, rather than insist that one card is 'good enough.'
 
misterbobby said:
That is very misleading. The 980 is no where near being 80% faster overall than the 680. Using a single min or max framerate in your calculations throws everything off.
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If you took two seconds to go to the site you would see that all of those numbers, except the few indicated as min frame rate are "average" numbers not maximum.
 
n=1 said:
In case anyone's interested, here's a Hexus review of EVGA's GTX 970 FTW Edition.

Matches and even beats 780 Ti in most benchmarks and games (except Tomb Raider) even at 4K! And still has OC headroom that doesn't require overvolting, and can even just edge out a reference GTX 980!

Holy fucking shit!
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Now this is the kind of thing I was talking about in my last post...impressive. Now I'm looking forward to reviews of a 980 with this kind of factory OC, cooling, and headroom.
 
rennyf77 said:
i think you're just going to have to accept that for the time being, that proper 4k performance requires multi gpu, rather than insist that one card is 'good enough.'
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One would be delusional not to believe that as well.

I game on 3x 120hz 1080p screens in a portrait surround setup. That is less pixels than a single 4k display and I would not game on my setup on a single high end gpu. Even with a 60hz goal. 4k Gaming will require more than 1 card to run at 60hz until 20nm at least.
 
Quick question, to play games at 3440x1440, would you get 2 x 980 or 3 x 970? The former solution is about $100 more. Thanks.
 
hv43082 said:
Quick question, to play games at 3440x1440, would you get 2 x 980 or 3 x 970? The former solution is about $100 more. Thanks.
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If you are going to spend that kind of money, then $100 less for the three 970s makes sense to me, unless you have a budget that allows for three 980s... :cool:
 
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The next gen cards from AMD are going to be amazing and blow everyone away....
 
hv43082 said:
Quick question, to play games at 3440x1440, would you get 2 x 980 or 3 x 970? The former solution is about $100 more. Thanks.
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I would get 3 970s for that setup. If your motherboard can do 3x SLi go for it. They will be faster and provide better performance at such a high resolution. I'd even consider giving them a modest - aggressive overclock as well.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
I would get 3 970s for that setup. If your motherboard can do 3x SLi go for it. They will be faster and provide better performance at such a high resolution. I'd even consider giving them a modest - aggressive overclock as well.
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My rig is still a P87 with Intel 2500k chip though. I would have to cough up more money to upgrade to 3 way sli capable motherboard and may be even a new cpu. Sigh...decision decision. I ended up getting a pair of EVGA GTX 980 and the LG 34UM94 to go with my current set up.
 
hv43082 said:
My rig is still a P87 with Intel 2500k chip though. I would have to cough up more money to upgrade to 3 way sli capable motherboard and may be even a new cpu. Sigh...decision decision. I ended up getting a pair of EVGA GTX 980 and the LG 34UM94 to go with my current set up.
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LMAO, that's why I got 2 980s this morning. I do plan to get a new motherboard/cpu/ram but getting the 3 970s would have costed me a lot more because I would have needed a new case & a more expensive motherboard than the one I plan to buy in a week or 2.
 
Very impressed with the power improvements within the same node. Props to Nvidia on this one.
 
QuiteSufficient said:
If you took two seconds to go to the site you would see that all of those numbers, except the few indicated as min frame rate are "average" numbers not maximum.
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Well they must have used some magic dust as no way in hell the 980 is over 80% faster than the 680 overall. Seriously use some common sense as that would mean its nearly 60% faster than the 780 and 35-40% faster than the 780 ti.
 
These look amazing, I think I'll finally upgrade my old SLI setup (460s!) to a 970.
 
Very impressive but my backlog will play fine on the 770 at 1080p :) All you guys in the resolution rat race go and enjoy these beasts.
 
Amazing review as always! I am currently running two GTX 680s and the GTX 980 seems about on par with the performance I get out of them but yet it's extra Vram will make it even better in some of the newer games. I'm really thinking about selling my two 680s and getting a factory overclocked 980.
 
you guys really need to do more kinds of benchmarks. your "highest playable settings" are not the same highest playable settings for me, as i target 120 fps, so your benchmarks really only tell me that i can't play at whatever settings you use.
 
If it wasn't for the price point I would outright say I was unimpressed, that said it still is not doing good with 4K gaming

It does use a lot less power though, I'll wait and see what AMD comes out with and then make my purchase
 
As a pure gamer.....there isn't much to see here. Performance numbers at these levels have been around for a while (multi-gpu single cards or factory OC cards). As a technical person, NV tweaked out some stuff which is good. To me, its like your girlfriend went on a diet. She's more or less the same person but she eats less when you take her take her to dinner.
 
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