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Nvidia Launches GTX 980 And GTX 970 "Maxwell" Graphics Cards

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  • Graphics Cards
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  • Nvidia
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a b U Graphics card
September 18, 2014 7:25:25 PM

Nvidia has launched its all-new GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 graphics cards, which come packed full of new features and deliver this at a much lower TDP than before.

Nvidia Launches GTX 980 And GTX 970 "Maxwell" Graphics Cards : Read more

More about : nvidia launches gtx 980 gtx 970 maxwell graphics cards

a c 84 U Graphics card
a b Î Nvidia
September 18, 2014 7:35:19 PM

Wow cool!! My favorite out of all the features is power output is so low!! I can finally get a card that doesn't break the electric bill.

Hope I can afford one of these eventually.
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September 18, 2014 7:56:54 PM

This text sound like "We were not capable to improve the performance considerably, but at least it'll consume less energy... What about spend more $550 to 'save' money?"
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Related resources
September 18, 2014 8:00:56 PM

This text sound like: "We were not capable to improve the performance considerably, BUT at least we reduce the power output, so what about pay more $550 to 'save' money?"
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a b U Graphics card
September 18, 2014 8:09:10 PM

That 30W less power, if you run the card at max TDP for 24 hours every day for a whole month you will save around $3 give or take estimating retail electricity prices @ 15c kWh in America. Woot :D 
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a c 670 U Graphics card
a c 461 Î Nvidia
September 18, 2014 8:14:27 PM

$330 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti... AND uses over 100 watts less power? Not bad, price drops incoming everywhere, but who would want anything else?
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September 18, 2014 8:17:42 PM

Heat and noise and very important factors for me as I have an HTPC / gaming machine set up in a very small case. Cant wait to upgrade with one of these.
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a c 86 U Graphics card
a b Î Nvidia
September 18, 2014 8:28:39 PM

17seconds said:
$330 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti... AND uses over 100 watts less power? Not bad, price drops incoming everywhere, but who would want anything else?

It's $550 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti.

$330 only gets you a GTX 970, which is significantly slower. Should still be a great card though, and better value for money than the 980.
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September 18, 2014 8:29:23 PM

So basically not a worthy upgrade for those of us with GTX 780 or 780 Tis or 2 of them.
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September 18, 2014 8:31:29 PM

boju, that's not the whole picture, and compared to a 780 GTX the TDP difference 85w

So in SLI, that's 170w difference.

So by your math that saves $17 a month. But that's not all. That's also 170 watts less heat getting pumped into the room. Sure that doesn't mean much to you if you're living in canada, and gaming in the winter where you're struggling to keep the room warm enough to not freeze to death. But move that same rig into a place like Florida or Texas, in the summer, where you gotta blast the AC constantly just to not be drentched in sweat, and you would be very thankful for that much less heat getting pumped into your room.

So less power on the system, less power spent on AC, more comfortable experience while gaming, and not to mention lower temps can help with better overclocks.

Which the overclock factor imho is way more important than saving money on a power bill.

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a b U Graphics card
September 18, 2014 8:32:16 PM

Uhm... So they're saving money on these... Hard to believe nVidia would use a 256bit interconnect to the GDDR5 on a "high end" card. They had to push the VRAM to 7Ghz in order to not choke the GPU it seems.

It's a weird move in my book. Maybe Apple's takeover TSMC is hurting their design.

Well, in any case, until no benchies I'll just stay un-surprised.

Cheers!
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September 18, 2014 8:34:04 PM

Quote:
This text sound like: "We were not capable to improve the performance considerably, BUT at least we reduce the power output, so what about pay more $550 to 'save' money?"


The x80 cards are always overpriced because they are bling products. But having 290 performance at 145w is a pretty tangible achievement. The thing is, Nvidia is repeating the 600 series - AMD tech cannot compete clock for clock and watt for watt since they are still on GCN 1.3 and Maxwell is a tangible change, so they pulled the 680 again with the 980. Hence the m204 nomenclature and all.

You also need to remember though that any video card over $300 is insanely enthusiast. The 780ti is still printing them money, so why stop what is not broken.
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September 18, 2014 8:43:11 PM

They priced that GTX 980 just perfectly (despite the awkward $200). In a couple months the Titan 2 or GTX 980 Ti will drop at $599-$649 and they'll shift it down $100 making anything AMD throws at them in the meantime pointless unless it's a huge leap in all areas.

Would have really liked a GTX 980 @ $449 now instead of having to wait another 5-6 months.
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September 18, 2014 8:45:39 PM

Still holding out for GTX 990. I've got the 690 and ready to upgrade. To be honest, I like the x90 series as long as they keep with the two GPUs on one PCB. Less heat and less crowded in the case. :) 
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a b U Graphics card
September 18, 2014 8:48:12 PM

HDMI 2.0

That is all I need to know.

Well, that and 780ti comparisons at 4k. :) 
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September 18, 2014 8:50:13 PM

Quote:
17seconds said:
$330 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti... AND uses over 100 watts less power? Not bad, price drops incoming everywhere, but who would want anything else?

It's $550 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti.

$330 only gets you a GTX 970, which is significantly slower. Should still be a great card though, and better value for money than the 980.


Nope.

970 = about 780 ti performance

980 is definitely better than 780 ti, supposedly it's about 13% better performance than 780 ti, at least that's what the leaked review said.
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September 18, 2014 8:55:38 PM

As a Sapphire TriX R9 290 OC (further OCed) owner, I see no reason to upgrade. However, the big takeaway for this card is it's incredible engineering gone through the card which allows for some serious performance at such a low wattage. Not only it means less power requirements, but less heat and more overclockable. Also, some very neat features in terms of software like new AA, improved gameworks makes it quite attractive. The biggest threat for AMD in my opinion is the GTX 970...that level of performance, efficiency and non-nvidia like pricing can makes it so beautiful.


I always switch brands when it comes to GPUs. I am happy with my AMD card, next time I plan to jump to the green team; not with the maxwell cards, but with the next year's fermi class of GPUs.
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a c 247 U Graphics card
a c 94 Î Nvidia
September 18, 2014 8:56:22 PM

Geez, why does are we still seeing these "as fast as 780 Ti" comments. When you look at the videcardz.com benchmark graphs, take a moment to notice that:

The stock 980 is almost as fast as the the 780 Ti with a 31% overclock.

The 980 with a 6% overclock is 17% faster than the the 780 Ti with a 6% overclock. The 780.

The 780 was 21% faster than the 680, so if anything the 980 's increase over the 780 is a helluva lot bigger than the 780 over the 680 or the 680 over the 580.

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a c 670 U Graphics card
a c 461 Î Nvidia
September 18, 2014 8:57:28 PM

Tom's seems to be the only place that doesn't have their review up. And yes the $330 EVGA GTX 970 ACX SC is every bit as fast as a now discontinued $600 GTX 780 Ti, not to mention how it fares against a $500, soon to be $400, 290X.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_970_SC_ACX_...
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a c 86 U Graphics card
a b Î Nvidia
September 18, 2014 9:05:14 PM

ratchet256 said:
Quote:
17seconds said:
$330 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti... AND uses over 100 watts less power? Not bad, price drops incoming everywhere, but who would want anything else?

It's $550 for a card as fast as a GTX 780 Ti.

$330 only gets you a GTX 970, which is significantly slower. Should still be a great card though, and better value for money than the 980.


Nope.

970 = about 780 ti performance

980 is definitely better than 780 ti, supposedly it's about 13% better performance than 780 ti, at least that's what the leaked review said.

Nope. The GTX 970 is a little faster than the GTX 780, but it's definitely slower than the GTX 780 Ti. Just like the GTX 980 is a little faster than the GTX 780 Ti. In terms of performance, this launch is not a big step forward. But you get a bit more performance and much lower power consumption at a lower price, which is impressive considering they're still stuck with ancient 28nm tech.
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September 18, 2014 9:17:20 PM

You cannot judge the 900s right now without any benchmark testing. sure it sounds like only improved power consumption, but wait until there are some numbers available to judge if another $500 bill is worth it or not.
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September 18, 2014 9:45:38 PM

When are we going to get a review from Tom's ?
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September 18, 2014 9:47:36 PM

When is it going to go on sale?
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September 18, 2014 10:07:56 PM

It's suppose to be $299.00. That's what a Radeon R9 280x on sale, sells about... . or somewhere 'round there.
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September 18, 2014 10:12:28 PM

I was hoping Nividia would increase the bus from 256 to 384. Shove more data through the pipe. But what do I know? The specs are awesome for a $299 card.
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September 18, 2014 10:27:43 PM

So are they for sale in October or when exactly... sorry cor the dumb question.
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September 18, 2014 10:58:52 PM

I just bought the triple fan Gigabyte 760... FFFFFFF Maybe I should return it?
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September 18, 2014 11:11:20 PM

Whoa. Wait. everyone's changing the price to $329.00.. . This is what I hate. Yesterday they said It'll go on sale for $299.00 and today it's $329.00. I'm sorry I quoted you guys wrong the price. My bad.
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September 18, 2014 11:16:29 PM

This is a no brainer. If you already have an Nvidia 780 or 780 TI then you do not need to upgrade to either of these. However, if you have anything before those it is more than worth the upgrade for multiple reasons. I'm personally going to wait for the next version which is probably going to be the 980 TI in preparation for the consumer version of oculus rift :-)
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a b U Graphics card
September 18, 2014 11:25:04 PM

$420-520 AUD for GTX 970

$680-800 AUD for GTX 980

here in Australia. Not quite the good deal I'd hoped for.
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September 18, 2014 11:28:32 PM

There's going to be a boatload of 670 and 680 GPUs flooding the used market now by those of us who held out over the 7-series. I'll take two 670s in SLI for $700 Alex! And I won't even need to upgrade my power supply and will have lower power consumption than my 680s....just...wow.
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September 18, 2014 11:31:14 PM

Why is it that my fav tech site - ie. Toms is always so SLOW to do reviews on GPU's?

Other sites already have reviews up for this card.

Can someone from Toms please cast some light on WHY your GPU reviews especially for Flagship GPU releases are always so late? The same exact problem happened with the R9-290x as well.

:( 
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September 18, 2014 11:31:22 PM

Marl0w said:
I just bought the triple fan Gigabyte 760... FFFFFFF Maybe I should return it?

So the story goes. 2 years ago, I bought a HD7950, thinking it'll last me to 2016. Just 4 years. In 2012, it was the top of the line card from AMD. I spent those years doing everything I can to stay up with the BF 3 & 4 gamers. OC'd it, modified the cooling system with fans, air dams, and watercooling. It was so tired when the psu took it out, I didn't have words for it's death, but the power hate from above, for the Coursair RM 750 psu. Just 2 years. That's how long my 7950 lasted.

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September 18, 2014 11:31:57 PM

If this so called 980 can push 60FPS with v-sync on maxed at 2560x1440.. They got me. Will look forward to the upcoming benchmark review.
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September 18, 2014 11:42:35 PM

Anandtech, Guru3D, Techpowerup...all have reviews up. Anandtech is missing the 970 card however. Techpowerup already has 970 SLI benchmarks up as well. What's going on at Tom's?
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September 18, 2014 11:54:32 PM

Toms doesn't have to be the first, if you want a review fast you can look around the internet however toms is one of the most in dept which does take more time and really I don't mind. If I want info fast I am going to look elsewhere and there are a 1000 places to look. One more outlet telling the same story is not going to change anything here.
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September 19, 2014 12:36:33 AM

Wow no review when embargo lifts? you guys playing to many video games or something?
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September 19, 2014 12:41:26 AM

As another guy said: HDMi 2.0 is all I care about.
Ain't got no 780Ti to upgrade anyway but I do have a UHD tv to run at 60Hz for desktop. And lower TDP is always good. Power prices after taxes of all sorts is $0.50/kWh here.
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September 19, 2014 1:31:27 AM

Yea the 970 will be the sweet powerful choice for SFF gaming rig. Good bye 750Ti. haha yes!
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a c 158 U Graphics card
a b Î Nvidia
September 19, 2014 2:24:09 AM

It will be good to see AMD bring a competing product to market, not because you would necessarily want to buy it but it would push Nvidia to drop prices on these cards and release something better just like they dropped the price of GTX 770 and 780 and released the GTX 780 Ti after the release of the R9 290 and 290X.
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a b U Graphics card
September 19, 2014 2:46:55 AM

The problem is that amd can't compete on power without completely ripping up gcn architecture. They are simply unable to make efficient gpus or cpus and have to resort to brute force.
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a c 158 U Graphics card
a b Î Nvidia
September 19, 2014 3:29:22 AM

leeb2013 said:
The problem is that amd can't compete on power without completely ripping up gcn architecture. They are simply unable to make efficient gpus or cpus and have to resort to brute force.


It hasn't always been like that. The HD 5000 series were amazing. The competing product from Nvidia was the GeForce 400 series and they couldn't touch AMD/ATI for efficiency. I think Nvidia learn't a valuable lesson out of that and have come a very long way since then.
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September 19, 2014 3:51:23 AM

N.Broekhuijsen said:
Nvidia has launched its all-new GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 graphics cards, which come packed full of new features and deliver this at a much lower TDP than before.

Nvidia Launches GTX 980 And GTX 970 "Maxwell" Graphics Cards : Read more


but it will break your wallet ... Don`t get me wrong .. i like this lower power consumption idea but for guys who already have a 780 or something similar getting this card for lower power bills .. at the cost of high price in the first place makes no sense ..since you`ll be spending your economy on the card itself ...
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a b U Graphics card
September 19, 2014 4:08:28 AM

So no full review yet? No NVidia cards on the "Best GPUs for the Money" charts for the past 3 months gets you guys sandbagged?
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a c 158 U Graphics card
a b Î Nvidia
September 19, 2014 4:35:38 AM

vertexx said:
So no full review yet? No NVidia cards on the "Best GPUs for the Money" charts for the past 3 months gets you guys sandbagged?


The GT 730 is the only card that got a full recommendation on that list this month.
The list though is all about performance per dollar, which is where AMD excels.
The list doesn't take into account Nvidia only features, power usage, heat, noise or quality of drivers which are all the reasons people keep buying Nvidia.
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September 19, 2014 4:47:35 AM

Waiting for the real test results. But it is nice to see that Nvidia has a change to compete AMD also in the price. But at this moment it remains to be seeing. The efficiency is definitely nice thing to see!
And if you have 780 or similar, then it may not be worth upgrading. Same as with CPUs...
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September 19, 2014 4:50:10 AM

the heat-sink no longer uses a vapor-chamber base ,it uses a base plate which reduces thermal capacity slightly. but hope other third party coolers from ASUS or EVGA change it to a vapor-chamber base .
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September 19, 2014 5:07:52 AM

I like this one. Overclocking should be a lot easier to accomplish with these new cards, or if you're like me and like to run them at stock, the noise levels (on an already excellent cooler) should be a fair bit lower. Tack $200 savings on a 780Ti for roughly the same performance and it's an attractive package.

It should also give NVidia some competitive agility to OC the Ti version significantly when they respond to the Radeon 390's.

Overall a good package. Well done!
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a b U Graphics card
September 19, 2014 5:09:48 AM

CBA to read through all of these. Just gonna correct the most common misconceptions that the comment thread is being flooded with.

1) GTX 970 is amazing. Hexus.net did a test of EVGA factory-OCd one and it's within 5% of the stock GTX 980, go figure. Beast of a card, upgrading to if from my 560 Ti when I can have a friend bring it to me from the US. Unless GTX 960 comes out and costs less (like $250 which I got my 560 Ti for) and can be factory OCd to stock 970 level :p 

2) Maxwell architecture fixed the issue of narrow memory bus crippling performance by adding a considerable amount of L2 cache to the GPU. A 256-bit bus doesn't SOUND good, but the performance is just as good or better than a Titan with its 384-bit.

3) Lolwut, dropping TDP to 145W isn't worth it on GTX 970? Get real, the closes card out there in terms of TDP is GTX 670 with 170 W, and it has HALF the performance. Maxwell is an amazing breakthrough, you can now build badass Mini ITX gaming rigs wihtout even thinking of water cooling (except maybe for CPU)! Who was it there who wanted to take two 670s in SLI for $700? 10tacle? Well, you'd SERIOUSLY lose out. Factory OCd 970 is double performance with less power consumption than a SINGLE 670 and costs only about $350. How about that?

For real, guys, when are you going to study the new architecture and its benchmarks a little bit before bashing what you think isn't good? NVIDIA isn't stupid, there's a reason there's a Maxwell in every decent laptop with dedicated graphics and not... whatever AMD calls its most recent cards, I'm sick of trying to follow every new code name they cook up every month or two.
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