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Verdict

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 And 980 Review: Maximum Maxwell
By , Igor Wallossek

If you've skipped to the last page to see our conclusion, I'm not going to waste your time: both the $330 GeForce GTX 970 and $550 GeForce GTX 980 represent tremendous, earth shattering value from a price/performance perspective. But don't take my word for it, have a look at the following charts that represent the average performance we recorded from these cards:

The GeForce GTX 980 not only sets a high-water mark for single GPU performance, but at $550 it does the trick for $50 less than the GeForce GTX 780 Ti costs at e-tail. That's a mere $70 more than the Radeon R9 290X, by the way. There are two important implications with this product: first, that a dual-GPU setup is no longer the only viable path to playability on 4K monitors. Second, the fastest single-GPU graphics card can now be purchased under $600. That's significantly cheaper than the $1050 GeForce Titan Black, the previous title holder.

As for the GeForce GTX 970, it may not bring performance to a new level, but its price definitely makes high-end performance more accessible. At $330 it delivers frame rates comparable to the Radeon R9 290X, a card that currently sells for an average price of about $170 more. We did not expect to see a product this potent at a price tier significantly below the $400 Radeon R9 290, which has suddenly become less appealing.

Nvidia, you had us at the price/performance ratio. But you didn't stop there: the power draw is very low when you consider the performance these cards deliver in return. Anti-aliasing features such as Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) and Multi-Frame Sampled Anti-Aliasing (MFAA) promise to increase visual fidelity and increase the frame rate, respectively, in a manner completely transparent to the games we play. The point is that we can enjoy these features without relying on developers to implement them on a per-game basis, and that is a good thing. In addition, the technologies under the company's VR Direct initiative speak directly to the virtual reality enthusiast in us, and we can't wait to try them out. As for Maxwell's ability to handle Voxel Global Illumination (VXGI), we think it's a valuable step toward photo realism in games. On a final note, it goes without saying that DirectX 12 compatibility is a desirable feature from a long-term perspective.

Of course, nothing is perfect. The GeForce GTX 980 might be the fastest graphics card on the planet with a solitary GPU onboard, but you're still going to have to lower detail settings most of the time in order to make 3640x2160 a playable resolution. In addition, our expert Igor Wallossek has some insights into the GeForce GTX 970 and 980's power draw as he found micro-spikes and load scenarios that draw significantly more than the TDP these cards are rated for. As for features, we couldn't test MFAA as it isn't yet implemented in the GeForce driver. At this point we're taking Nvidia's word that this new anti-aliasing method will be as effective, efficient, and backward compatible as the company suggests. We weren't even able to test DSR to our satisfaction thanks to the late arrival of our sample cards. Finally, as promising as VXGI may be, we're extremely skeptical that this generation of hardware is powerful enough to handle meaningful real-time voxel cone tracing in a modern game with complex geometry.

But the beauty of the GeForce GTX 980 and 970 is that, regardless of any minor annoyances, they have got it where it counts: higher frame rates for significantly less cash than we're used to paying. That's a formula that speaks directly to our gamer hearts, and inspires us to award both of Nvidia's new graphics cards with the highest appropriate honors. For the GeForce GTX 980 we bestow Tom's Hardware's Elite award, stealing the prized mantle-piece (pardon the pun) from the Radeon R9 290X. As for the GeForce GTX 970, Tom's Hardware's Smart buy award is a perfect fit for this card, which provides strong performance for an incredible value. It may have taken a while to get here, but the second-generation Maxwell GPU was worth the wait.

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Top Comments
  • 15 Hide
    vertexx , September 19, 2014 5:48 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.
Other Comments
  • 2 Hide
    Vivecss , September 19, 2014 5:26 AM
    Wow.......
  • 2 Hide
    lancear15 , September 19, 2014 5:41 AM
    I was waiting for Tom's review to make my final decision, the 980 is definitely going into my current 5960x build! I cant wait.
  • 4 Hide
    HKILLER , September 19, 2014 5:41 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
  • 1 Hide
    realibrad , September 19, 2014 5:43 AM
    byt he way... Last page 2nd sentence after the graph of Avg game performance.

    I was hoping for more performance but the efficiency is quite nice. They just put pressure on the top end and gave us a price reduction, instead of overall performance gains.
  • 3 Hide
    balister , September 19, 2014 5:47 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.
  • 0 Hide
    MANOFKRYPTONAK , September 19, 2014 5:48 AM
    Why didn't you include an overclocking comparison? Why didn't you include the 780, but included the 770? Doesn't make much sense...
  • 15 Hide
    vertexx , September 19, 2014 5:48 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.
  • 4 Hide
    daveys93 , September 19, 2014 5:51 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.
  • 2 Hide
    nikolajj , September 19, 2014 5:53 AM
    I need this...
  • 4 Hide
    tobalaz , September 19, 2014 5:58 AM
    I want a 970, wow!
    That's some flat out insane price / performance ratio right there!
  • 9 Hide
    cleeve , September 19, 2014 6:00 AM
    Quote:
    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. ;) 
  • -4 Hide
    BigMack70 , September 19, 2014 6:04 AM
    Since we know this is only the mid-size Maxwell chip (just like GK104 vs GK110), shouldn't this article title be "Medium Maxwell"?

    I'm waiting for the real Maximum Maxwell myself. Unimpressed with these xxx04 launches from Nvidia.
  • 2 Hide
    EnkiduW , September 19, 2014 6:05 AM
    Wonder what dual 970's would look like, the price is not that bad...
  • 1 Hide
    MANOFKRYPTONAK , September 19, 2014 6:06 AM
    Why didn't you include an overclocking comparison? Why didn't you include the 780, but included the 770? Doesn't make much sense...
  • 4 Hide
    vertexx , September 19, 2014 6:09 AM
    Quote:
    Wonder what dual 970's would look like, the price is not that bad...


    http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_970_SLI/

    Depending on resolution, dual 970's are roughly equal to the 295x2 at only 2/3's the price.
  • 3 Hide
    Novuake , September 19, 2014 6:14 AM
    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 :D 

  • 1 Hide
    Novuake , September 19, 2014 6:18 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    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.
  • 2 Hide
    vertexx , September 19, 2014 6:21 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    Quote:
    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. :ouch: 
  • 7 Hide
    Novuake , September 19, 2014 6:23 AM
    Quote:

    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. :ouch: 


    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.
  • -2 Hide
    Nossy , September 19, 2014 6:26 AM
    Nvidia and Intel are so way ahead of AMD...
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