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Nvidia's Board Partners: GTX 980 And 970 Card Roundup

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  • Graphics Cards
  • Components
  • Asus
  • Nvidia
  • EVGA
  • Gigabyte
  • MSI
  • Zotac
  • PNY
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a b U Graphics card
September 19, 2014 7:41:21 AM

Yesterday Nvidia launched its Maxwell-based GTX 980 and GTX 970 graphics cards, and today we bring you a roundup of various cards from the company's authorized board partners.

Nvidia's Board Partners: GTX 980 And 970 Card Roundup : Read more

More about : nvidia board partners gtx 980 970 card roundup

September 19, 2014 12:05:13 PM

The Asus strix 980 and 970 are supposedly going to be available today. Right now, only the strix 970 is listed but out of stock on newegg and amazon. Will be buying the strix 980 as soon as it's available.
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September 19, 2014 2:46:12 PM

I'm an MSI guy from way back and have yet to be disappointed. MSI offers what is arguably the very best aftermarket cooling solution available in their "TwinFrozr" design as well as some of the highest overclocks around. Style and design are also top notch.
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September 19, 2014 3:18:42 PM

Sigh... why in the hell did I buy an MSI 780 ti a few months back =/ Now I want a 980 or hell even 970s would give nearly twice the performance of my 780 ti and more efficiently
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September 20, 2014 12:37:20 AM

From the few reviews I've seen, the 970 looks like the real winner out of the 2, especially at it's price point. It is slightly slower than a 780TI while it appears almost identical in performance to the 780, while the 980 is slightly faster than the 780TI, but is also extremely expensive, double what the 970 costs. Also, it looks like the 980 has higher frame time variances at times than the 780 TI, but puts out higher frame rates. If I were buying a single card now, I'd get the 970. The 980 doesn't offer enough of a boost over it for the $300 extra it costs.
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September 20, 2014 2:46:08 AM

I have a 770 Phantom. I'll wait the release of the next Phantoms. But not going to buy until I get a G-sync monitor.
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September 20, 2014 2:46:08 AM

I have a 770 Phantom. I'll wait the release of the next Phantoms. But not going to buy until I get a G-sync monitor.
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September 20, 2014 4:05:24 AM

could you add Inno3D and Gainward?
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September 20, 2014 5:43:28 AM

Dear Tomshardware, any chance you will be doing a after-market cooling benchmark comparison on the GTX 970 and 980?
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September 20, 2014 6:17:15 AM

Keenan Johnson said:
The 980 doesn't offer enough of a boost over it for the $300 extra it costs.


Where do you see a $300 cost difference between the 980 and 970? At most, it's maybe $220. Is it worth it? Not really, but I'm certain that some clearly will seeing as it's still cheaper than a competing 780Ti.

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September 20, 2014 7:34:34 AM

Wonder what the hardware difference is between the 970 SC and FTW, if any... Then again, I'm yet to see a FTW for sale anywhere which sucks a lot since that's the one I'm more interested in atm, followed close by the MSi
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September 20, 2014 8:14:45 AM

I was thinking of selling my R9 290 and get the 970... But is it worth it? I like the lower TDP but as far as performance, is the 970 more powerful?
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September 20, 2014 9:25:02 AM

Just check the reviews that are out there... the GTX 970 will not only outperform the R9 290 as it will also outperform the much more expensive 290X most of the time!

If you're stuck between these two cards or your budget is around the $350 mark, this is a no brainer really. 970 all the way!
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September 20, 2014 10:59:02 PM

,,,,Evga's GTX 980.

Cue the 70's Porn music.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't shocked at the performance, when you consider the fact, there was no die shrink involved, and these 900's are kick ass, And it's efficient too. Looks like my 6870's will have to retire now... I'll miss them.
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a c 184 U Graphics card
a b Ĉ ASUS
a b Î Nvidia
September 21, 2014 8:24:58 AM

GTX980 vs GTX970:
The Techpowerup reviews are awesome as they use an average of about 20 games. If you look at the theoretical maximum performance the GTX980 is perhaps 23% faster (2048/1664) but BENCHMARKS are the only way to really compare.

The AVERAGE difference drops to about 15% difference at best depending on the games you choose. A few will approach 20% better on the GTX980 but that's about it. The GTX980 is however about 67% more expensive!

Then there is SLI which has been improving. While it's not perfect you can consider the worst-case scenario as no support at all and the best about 80% over a single GTX970.

That works out to getting roughly somewhere between 80% and 150% the performance of a GTX980 for only 20% more money if we use $660 (2x$330) versus $550.

In some cases it might be better to assign the 2nd GTX970 to PhysX thus running the main game on the 1st GTX970 (like Batman Arkham Origins). You'd have to test both ways and compare the frame rates as well as smoothness.

(I still love my Asus GTX680 TOP so as much as I love following technology and think NVidia's new GPU's are simply awesome I'm going to pass for another year. Several of the games I'm currently playing already run at 60FPS at Ultra settings. A G-Sync monitors is also a future purchase consideration. Perhaps a 4K IPS with low refresh once that's sorted...)
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September 21, 2014 11:49:06 PM

Quote:
Evga's GTX 980

Looks like my 6870's will have to retire now... I WON'T miss them.


Fixed that for ya! lol
And these cards, especially the 970, are very impressive. I went and read the comments section of the first post about the specs of these 2 new cards and how people were complaining about the specs. Guess they are all doing a double-take now! hahaha
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September 22, 2014 8:28:19 PM

SkyBill40 said:
Keenan Johnson said:
The 980 doesn't offer enough of a boost over it for the $300 extra it costs.


Where do you see a $300 cost difference between the 980 and 970? At most, it's maybe $220. Is it worth it? Not really, but I'm certain that some clearly will seeing as it's still cheaper than a competing 780Ti.



Yea, I saw an estimated MSRP price (Probably for an Asus model or the like) before I wrote that, now I see it's around $550 for the 980. Still, I'd go for the 970 over it. The 780TI vs 980 is a closer one though. Price to performance is the most important thing to me personally, and the 970 kills in that department! Hell it'll run whatever you want at maxed or near maxed settings @ 1080P for below $350. It's about time Nvidia prices new cards aggressively like this. AMD has it's hands full going after this one.
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September 22, 2014 11:35:24 PM

Keenan Johnson said:
It's about time Nvidia prices new cards aggressively like this. AMD has it's hands full going after this one.


Agreed. While I doubt I'll ever bother with resolutions above 1080P (thought I DO like the sharpness of 4K), the pricing scheme for what you're getting is absolutely stupendous with both cards but certainly more so on the 970 end. For what could amount to a shade more than $100 for the cost of one 980, you could run a pair of 970s in SLI and it would smoke that single card. That's just outrageous. It's definitely got my interest piqued way up. Despite that, I'll be waiting for a while to see what else comes out (Ti cards, mind you) over the span of the next couple of months.

And you're right in your statement that AMD now has a lot of catching up to do if they even hope to level the playing field at all. While I love their CPUs, I'm not keen nor have I ever been with their GPUs no matter what cost savings there may be. For me, it's AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs.
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September 22, 2014 11:41:31 PM

I'd say that even at 1440 the 970 holds its own nicely... especially with some overclock. Lots of reports of ppl running them at 1600Hz with stock voltage and putting it almost on pair with a reference 980. And once you've played at 1440, 1080 is just not the same unfortunately.
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September 23, 2014 4:07:34 AM

Recently purchased a pair of GTX 980's to replace my old GTX 770. I have them paired in SLI(because it would be a crime not to)

http://

http://

http://

My cable management isn't great at moment,however it will be remedied within the next few days.

Below is my basic clean setup:

http://
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September 23, 2014 4:22:44 AM

970 from gigabyte is getting windforce x3 well if I decide on upgrade with nvidia that will be most likely my choice.
This coolers are very decent. Asus is rolling its Direct CU... which is good but imho this 0 db is a gimmick... who needs that if my gpu is iddling or doing low workliads I can't hear it over stock intel cpu fan... This is great option for someone wanting to have card with a punch yet run 0 db pc when doing everything else beside gaming. I see how some audio engineers would find this useful. For me idling fans are far from disturbing sound.
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September 23, 2014 6:07:11 AM

Just a few things they didn't mention about the MSI Gaming 4G 970/980 - Just like the Strix, the fans are shut off when the GPU is at less than 60 degrees +/-. The fans are also controlled independently, so if you're overclocking and the VRMs are getting a little warmer than the GPU, it'll ramp up the appropriate fan as necessary.

High tech legion was able to reach 1500mhz stable on the MSI without having to increase voltage.

While the MSI has one of the higher price tags, IMO it's the best 970/980 thus far, considering features, noise and performance.
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September 23, 2014 6:49:59 AM

Its funny to see the 970 strix for a 339$ price here and at my country (eu) the price is 409 euro! which is529 dollars!!
Plz is there any shop in Europe that sales that gpu in a normal price?
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September 23, 2014 9:07:33 PM

SkyBill40 said:
Keenan Johnson said:
It's about time Nvidia prices new cards aggressively like this. AMD has it's hands full going after this one.


Agreed. While I doubt I'll ever bother with resolutions above 1080P (thought I DO like the sharpness of 4K), the pricing scheme for what you're getting is absolutely stupendous with both cards but certainly more so on the 970 end. For what could amount to a shade more than $100 for the cost of one 980, you could run a pair of 970s in SLI and it would smoke that single card. That's just outrageous. It's definitely got my interest piqued way up. Despite that, I'll be waiting for a while to see what else comes out (Ti cards, mind you) over the span of the next couple of months.

And you're right in your statement that AMD now has a lot of catching up to do if they even hope to level the playing field at all. While I love their CPUs, I'm not keen nor have I ever been with their GPUs no matter what cost savings there may be. For me, it's AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs.


Same here, I'm perfectly happy with 1080 for now. To move higher would cost more than it's worth to me lol. Yes this particular architecture is one that has actually grabbed my attention, normally I don't pay much attention to new GPU's as gains year to year are not really that impressive. But these ones really did step up the game over their predecessors. I've been back and forth between AMD cards and Nvidia ones, currently have a 280X which has been great, but that 970 sure is tempting! It will be interesting to see what happens after the move to 20nm for sure! I have a feeling AMD is waiting for that to fire back at the top spot again. And also it will be interesting to see how AMD responds to the 970, that is gonna take business away from them readily. Although anything below $300 AMD still holds the advantage on for now.


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a c 184 U Graphics card
a b Ĉ ASUS
a b Î Nvidia
September 24, 2014 7:05:03 PM

Card length:
The Gigabyte GTX970 (Windforce 3x) is quite long at 12.2" so won't fit some cases. The Asus Strix is 11".
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September 26, 2014 10:15:09 PM

The one question I still have about these new cards is about the 256 bit interface. Is 4 GB even able to be utilized fully with that narrow of a bus? Or do very high memory clocks make up for that? I always thought 128 bit per 1 GB was the optimal scenario. I always wondered about Nvidia's memory configurations, though it was even stranger when we had cards with 1.2 and 1.5 GB of VRAM on some models lol.
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a c 184 U Graphics card
a b Ĉ ASUS
a b Î Nvidia
September 27, 2014 6:27:28 PM

Keenan Johnson said:
The one question I still have about these new cards is about the 256 bit interface. Is 4 GB even able to be utilized fully with that narrow of a bus? Or do very high memory clocks make up for that? I always thought 128 bit per 1 GB was the optimal scenario. I always wondered about Nvidia's memory configurations, though it was even stranger when we had cards with 1.2 and 1.5 GB of VRAM on some models lol.


1) NVidia uses a compression mechanism on the new cards so the interface is sufficient.

2) VRAM amount isn't related to the speed of the memory interface. When you go from 2GB to 4GB of VRAM you don't need a faster interface; it just means you can store more information there before being forced to swap back to the main hard drive or SSD.

The memory interface speed and memory speed are related, but not the amount of memory.

Summary:
To avoid confusion, just look at the GAME BENCHMARKS. If there was some sort of a problem then it would show up there, but there isn't which is reflected in the great performance of the cards.

A lot of people who have limited knowledge are spouting off about the interface or other features but NVidia really does know what they're doing. These are the best video cards ever made and there are no issues with them.
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September 28, 2014 4:36:56 PM

So I'm thinking of selling my Sapphire R9 290 and buy a Gigabyte GTX 980 Windforce 3x... but the 970 seems like the best performance/price. So I'm not sure...

I don't even know if I should sell my 290.... oh decisions, decisions.
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October 2, 2014 10:00:50 PM

You'd have to be crazy to buy a 980 rather than going for 970 sli..I have an oc'd gtx670ftw and it runs most things rather well and wasn't expecting an upgrade for sometime but I happened to stumble across newegg and catch a glimpse of that 970 price..got my first one coming in next week.
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