Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 And 980 Review: Maximum Maxwell
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Nvidia shows us what second-gen Maxwell architecture can do with its new GM204 chip and the GeForce GTX 970 and 980 graphics cards that wield it.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 And 980 Review: Maximum Maxwell : Read more
Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 And 980 Review: Maximum Maxwell : Read more
More about : nvidia geforce gtx 970 980 review maximum maxwell
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Reply to cleeve
Vivecss
September 19, 2014 5:26:19 AM
lancear15
September 19, 2014 5:41:06 AM
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HKILLER
September 19, 2014 5:41:13 AM
so how long before you do a round up?i mean this time i've seen some pretty crazy looking cards (Zotac's Extreme AMP! edition looks crazy and the Inno3D too)and EVGA has shown off ACX 2.0 which they claim to be the most efficient GPU air cooler in the world...so many to choose from also EVGA FTW has been nicely overclocked i've seen it performing almost on par with 980
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Reply to HKILLER
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realibrad
September 19, 2014 5:43:32 AM
balister
September 19, 2014 5:47:51 AM
Very nice, but I still want to see what the power consumption along with what might be possible with the drop to 20nm (since this is still 28nm).
Likely, we're going to see a Maxwell Titan equivalent come in the next year or so as these are a x04 much like Kepler with the 670/80s were and we're still going to be waiting to see what the x10 will be with the Maxwell architecture.
Likely, we're going to see a Maxwell Titan equivalent come in the next year or so as these are a x04 much like Kepler with the 670/80s were and we're still going to be waiting to see what the x10 will be with the Maxwell architecture.
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Reply to balister
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MANOFKRYPTONAK
September 19, 2014 5:48:18 AM
970 is the real story until the 980ti comes out - what a value proposition with the 970!
Good stuff here - but you guys were a bit slow on this one. Tom's Hardware is the first site I visit every morning. But with the delay of this article, I've been all over the net this morning on other sites that got their stuff out sooner.
Good stuff here - but you guys were a bit slow on this one. Tom's Hardware is the first site I visit every morning. But with the delay of this article, I've been all over the net this morning on other sites that got their stuff out sooner.
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Reply to vertexx
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daveys93
September 19, 2014 5:51:20 AM
Will there be a follow-up article about overclocking these cards? Other sites are showing results that both of the new cards are capable of 1500+ MHz on air (aftermarket coolers and even a few with stock coolers), which is a massive overclock. Looks like NVIDIA left the door open for some decent voltage increases, but many results have been in the 1450-1500 MHz range at stock voltage. I am a big fan of the thoroughness of Tom's articles so I am very interested in seeing overclocking results and analysis from this site.
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Reply to daveys93
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nikolajj
September 19, 2014 5:53:59 AM
tobalaz
September 19, 2014 5:58:40 AM
MANOFKRYPTONAK said:
Why didn't you include an overclocking comparison? Why didn't you include the 780, but included the 770? Doesn't make much sense...Same answer to both... no time.
We literally got the 970 for testing yesterday. The 980, we got the day before. We barely got the article out by this morning.
For those of you who want more info, we'll be spending more time with the GeForce GTX 980 and 970 in the weeks to come, don't you worry.
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Reply to cleeve
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BigMack70
September 19, 2014 6:04:29 AM
EnkiduW
September 19, 2014 6:05:00 AM
MANOFKRYPTONAK
September 19, 2014 6:06:35 AM
EnkiduW said:
Wonder what dual 970's would look like, the price is not that bad...http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_9...
Depending on resolution, dual 970's are roughly equal to the 295x2 at only 2/3's the price.
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Reply to vertexx
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Performance aside, which OBVIOUSLY is stellar for current price/performance consideration.
The features that Nvidia has been rolling out constantly has been quite impressive, while many of them do not appeal to me at all, the sheer amount and in most cases quality of them is insane.
Well done Nvidia. Let's see what AMD responds with, my next main gaming machine purchase as of now are 2 x Nvidia GTX970.
EDIT : Im sure that its a good upgrade to my 2 x HD7950s
The features that Nvidia has been rolling out constantly has been quite impressive, while many of them do not appeal to me at all, the sheer amount and in most cases quality of them is insane.
Well done Nvidia. Let's see what AMD responds with, my next main gaming machine purchase as of now are 2 x Nvidia GTX970.
EDIT : Im sure that its a good upgrade to my 2 x HD7950s
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Reply to Novuake
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cleeve said:
MANOFKRYPTONAK said:
Why didn't you include an overclocking comparison? Why didn't you include the 780, but included the 770? Doesn't make much sense...Same answer to both... no time.
We literally got the 970 for testing yesterday. The 980, we got the day before. We barely got the article out by this morning.
For those of you who want more info, we'll be spending more time with the GeForce GTX 980 and 970 in the weeks to come, don't you worry.
Thank you! That answered a question I had in a previous GTX980/970 tease on the live news feed.
Do you guys have this problem often with Nvidia? You always seem to have fewer Nvidia board partner variaty and slower review releases on Nvidia GPUs.
More so than other websites.
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Reply to Novuake
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Novuake said:
cleeve said:
MANOFKRYPTONAK said:
Why didn't you include an overclocking comparison? Why didn't you include the 780, but included the 770? Doesn't make much sense...Same answer to both... no time.
We literally got the 970 for testing yesterday. The 980, we got the day before. We barely got the article out by this morning.
For those of you who want more info, we'll be spending more time with the GeForce GTX 980 and 970 in the weeks to come, don't you worry.
Thank you! That answered a question I had in a previous GTX980/970 tease on the live news feed.
Do you guys have this problem often with Nvidia? You always seem to have fewer Nvidia board partner variaty and slower review releases on Nvidia GPUs.
More so than other websites.
My bets are that no NVidia GPUs on the best GPU's for the $$ for the past several months earned Tom's a slight delay in the delivery of these GPUs.
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Reply to vertexx
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vertexx said:
My bets are that no NVidia GPUs on the best GPU's for the $$ for the past several months earned Tom's a slight delay in the delivery of these GPUs.
Nah, doubt Nvidia is that petty.
More publicity is exactly that, more publicity.
Tom's has been around a long time and is trusted by A LOT of people.
Doubt Nvidia would compromise the user base.
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Reply to Novuake
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Nossy
September 19, 2014 6:26:14 AM
MANOFKRYPTONAK said:
Why didn't you include an overclocking comparison? Why didn't you include the 780, but included the 770? Doesn't make much sense...Agreed that overclocking would have been interesting to see. But would including the 780 have added anything to this? The GTX 970 is already faster than an R9 290X.
The 770, at least, allows us to see the direct improvement from one x70 card to its replacement. Especially when they're approximately the same price.
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Reply to oxiide
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and just to add on while I am very excited about the better price/performance and performance per watt I would honestly say that while the increased efficiency is great, most enthusiast run a single gpu in a full atx case with ample airflow and because of that, I feel like features and price/performance, tend to dictate most purchases of gpu, not performance for watt (which isn't to say its not a good thing)
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Reply to legokill101
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Nossy said:
Nvidia and Intel are so way ahead of AMD...Don't count AMD out of the GPU world yet, they still need to respond with their release.
As for AMD CPUs, I have given up in the enthusiast market, but still have high hopes for low cost and low power APUs bringing affordable gaming to mobile devices.
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Reply to Novuake
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epileptic
September 19, 2014 6:33:10 AM
MasterMace
September 19, 2014 6:35:40 AM
Sexy. Going to admit, I posted in the rumor thread for the GTX 880 by Broekhuijsen. Clearly, the thread was wrong with the misnomer, but we're guessing there right? Secondly, I was wrong about the specs. It did turn out to be a 4 GPC, 64 ROPs. It wasn't based off the 750ti's GK107. The GK107 had 5 SMMs per GPC, the GM204 has 4 SMMs per. The 2MB of L2 cache turned out to be shared, instead of scaling. They dropped 4GB memory instead of 3GB, and a 256 bus instead of 512. I admit when I'm wrong
I do like how NVidia is pushing performance at the price points. I am hoping for a Maxwell gap closer between the 750ti ($145) and 760 ($225).
I do like how NVidia is pushing performance at the price points. I am hoping for a Maxwell gap closer between the 750ti ($145) and 760 ($225).
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Reply to MasterMace
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MasterMace said:
Sexy. Going to admit, I posted in the rumor thread for the GTX 880 by Broekhuijsen. Clearly, the thread was wrong with the misnomer, but we're guessing there right? Secondly, I was wrong about the specs. It did turn out to be a 4 GPC, 64 ROPs. It wasn't based off the 750ti's GK107. The GK107 had 5 SMMs per GPC, the GM204 has 4 SMMs per. The 2MB of L2 cache turned out to be shared, instead of scaling. They dropped 4GB memory instead of 3GB, and a 256 bus instead of 512. I admit when I'm wrong
I do like how NVidia is pushing performance at the price points. I am hoping for a Maxwell gap closer between the 750ti ($145) and 760 ($225).
Yeah that gap has always been very puzzling and also effects sales for Nvidia at anywhere between those prices, I don't get it.
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Reply to Novuake
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TheAshigaru
September 19, 2014 6:41:21 AM
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Jetpil0t
September 19, 2014 6:46:01 AM
On other sites you can see a fully overclocked 970 on stock cooling can just beat out a stock 980, which makes it crazy good value (something not really addressed in this article). With a water loop or AIO Liquid cooler bracketed onto the 970, it looks like you might be able to push it even further as others were hitting thermal limits at maximum overclock, not voltage or stability limits. This card looks to be one crazy good value board if you are overclocking.
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Reply to Jetpil0t
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AndrewJacksonZA
September 19, 2014 6:56:27 AM
epileptic
September 19, 2014 6:58:03 AM
Another typo page 2: "Microsoft has committed that it's new graphics API" -> its
Edit: More:
p2: "Imagine the room your currently in" -> you're
p2: "the inevitable future of real-time photorealitic game graphics" -> photorealistic
p6: "EVGA sent us the its superclocked take" -> us its
p10: "Despite it's status" -> its
p16: "that represent he average performance" -> the
p16: "but it's price definitely makes high-end performance more accessible" -> its
p16: "they have got it it where it counts" -> got it where
Edit: More:
p2: "Imagine the room your currently in" -> you're
p2: "the inevitable future of real-time photorealitic game graphics" -> photorealistic
p6: "EVGA sent us the its superclocked take" -> us its
p10: "Despite it's status" -> its
p16: "that represent he average performance" -> the
p16: "but it's price definitely makes high-end performance more accessible" -> its
p16: "they have got it it where it counts" -> got it where
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Reply to epileptic
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Don, when you mention the Gigabyte "Golden Sample", why don't you fire up GPU-Z and read the ASIC score? It would be interesting to see the ASIC difference between the two chips.
In terms of Maxwell, consumers are all going to win. Prices are going to be dropping all over the place. The GTX 760 just had its price dropped, and the entire top-end Kepler line was discontinued. AMD cards are all going to be forced into big price cuts, and even then you'd have to think twice about purchasing one.
Hardware Canucks had a good summary of the situation:
"The GTX 980 must be causing a serious case of deja-vu for AMD. Back when the GTX 680 was launched, their Tahiti cards looked too expensive, too slow, too loud and too hot….and the situation hasn’t really changed this time around. In every almost every game the GTX 980 easily outmuscles their flagship R9 290X, consumes significantly less power and costs just $50 more. So what does this mean for AMD? They’re currently stuck with a power hungry, hot running architecture that is still quite competitive from a performance standpoint but some significant price cuts are desperately needed."
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-r...
In terms of Maxwell, consumers are all going to win. Prices are going to be dropping all over the place. The GTX 760 just had its price dropped, and the entire top-end Kepler line was discontinued. AMD cards are all going to be forced into big price cuts, and even then you'd have to think twice about purchasing one.
Hardware Canucks had a good summary of the situation:
"The GTX 980 must be causing a serious case of deja-vu for AMD. Back when the GTX 680 was launched, their Tahiti cards looked too expensive, too slow, too loud and too hot….and the situation hasn’t really changed this time around. In every almost every game the GTX 980 easily outmuscles their flagship R9 290X, consumes significantly less power and costs just $50 more. So what does this mean for AMD? They’re currently stuck with a power hungry, hot running architecture that is still quite competitive from a performance standpoint but some significant price cuts are desperately needed."
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-r...
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Reply to 17seconds
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Potata12
September 19, 2014 7:17:46 AM
xenol
September 19, 2014 7:24:21 AM
People need to understand something about Maxwell's supposed "boring incremental" performance over Kepler.
The fact is TDP is a ceiling for how much performance you can eke out of a GPU. Anything to lower it considerably means in the future you have a design you can work with to squeeze even more performance out of the architecture. We could say "screw that, give me the fastest card you can make!". But if we allowed runaway TDP, you would soon start seeing graphics cards that need a third power PCIe plug and take up three slots by default, or include a liquid cooler. Both of which would increase the initial cost of entry to enjoy high-end graphics.
Also since NVIDIA has a somewhat nontrivial chunk in all markets it participates in, it's easier to develop a power saving design for mobile and scale up, rather than build a desktop version and scale down. Remember, what saved Intel from going down a disastrous path of hot, inefficient CPUs? A design based on a highly power efficient mobile chip.
AMD is treading on thin ice if they can't match what NVIDIA is doing efficiency wise.
The fact is TDP is a ceiling for how much performance you can eke out of a GPU. Anything to lower it considerably means in the future you have a design you can work with to squeeze even more performance out of the architecture. We could say "screw that, give me the fastest card you can make!". But if we allowed runaway TDP, you would soon start seeing graphics cards that need a third power PCIe plug and take up three slots by default, or include a liquid cooler. Both of which would increase the initial cost of entry to enjoy high-end graphics.
Also since NVIDIA has a somewhat nontrivial chunk in all markets it participates in, it's easier to develop a power saving design for mobile and scale up, rather than build a desktop version and scale down. Remember, what saved Intel from going down a disastrous path of hot, inefficient CPUs? A design based on a highly power efficient mobile chip.
AMD is treading on thin ice if they can't match what NVIDIA is doing efficiency wise.
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Reply to xenol
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Potata12
September 19, 2014 7:28:52 AM
Yargnit
September 19, 2014 7:34:17 AM
Just ordered my GTX 980 as soon as I saw it pop up on Newegg after reading anandtech's review earlier, glad to see yours backs it up also. I've been waiting on Maxwell for over a year to upgrade my 560ti, people had me a bit nervous with all the talk of the 980 not even beating the 780ti, but this is pretty much an across the board improvement while also lowering cost and heat generation. One of the most all around solid GPU releases I've seen in a few years now.
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Potata12
September 19, 2014 7:37:39 AM
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