Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Comes With NVTTM Cooler
Were you curious about the GTX 980? Well, today a boatload of new details have surfaced.
By now, it's no secret that the GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980 are about to launch, but that doesn't mean rumors aren't interesting, especially considering that we now have a preview of the reference GTX 980. The images come from VideoCardz.com.
At first sight, the GTX 980 looks exactly like some older Nvidia cards, as it's using the same NVTTM cooler – with a couple of changes.
First off, part of the metallic shroud now also covers the I/O connectors from the interior, but more notably, the card will come with a backplate. This backplate has the same design as that of the GTX Titan Z, although it's been adapted for a single-GPU card.
Nvidia might have made some changes to the cooler's performance, but in all honesty, we don't think that happened. The GTX 980 is expected to carry a TDP of 180 W, which is much less than the 250 W TDP of the older GPUs that this cooler used to handle, so there really is no incentive for Nvidia to improve the cooling performance – if anything, it will run more silently.
There have been a few rumors about the display connectivity on the card, and an image from the ChipHell forums appears to settle that debate by showing that the card will have not one, not two, but three DisplayPort outputs, as well as a single HDMI port and a single Dual-Link DVI port. We do not know which versions of the interfaces these connectors are. What we do see is that the expansion bracket will have the same exhaust grille design as the GTX Titan Z, which appears to be a wee bit less restrictive.
As far as specifications go, VideoCardz.com also posted that the GTX 980 will carry 2048 CUDA Cores, and will have 4 GB of GDDR5 memory running over a 256-bit memory interface with a bandwidth of 224 GB/s. Calculated benchmark scores predict that the GTX 980 will perform right between the GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti.
The GTX 970 and GTX 980 are expected to launch on September 19th.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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LukaBoki Oh.My.God!!!! We've been waiting for sooooooooo much and now we get to see it.Reply
AMAZING!! And about time,if I may say. :D -
Cryoburn101 The reference cooler is just as cool as it was in the 700 series.... See what I did there? I'll leave.Reply -
TechyInAZ Sweet!!! WOW, only 180W TDP?? Insane that's really cool.Reply
I'm also glad they are starting to phase out DVI. But now that it has 5 outputs, I hope you can connect 5 monitors. -
Au_equus anybody know whether these upcoming generation of cards (nvidia/amd) support hdmi 2.0/DP 1.3?Reply -
ubercake I would expect the next-gen 980 (it is the next-gen right???) would be at least as good as a 780 Ti , not between a 780 and 780 Ti. I guess I'll be waiting for the 980 Ti this time around.Reply -
Innocent_Bystander 180W? The sweet silence of my gaming PC is about to get even quieter. I'm glad I've been holding off on the upgrade for this.Reply -
10tacle ReplyOnly interested if it drops prices of current GPU's
Based upon the non-price drop of the 670/680 when the 7-series came out, don't bet on it. Instead of a serious $100+ price drop of those cards, vendors just let the stock run out. I believe the biggest discount of the 680 was about $40.
With that said, I skipped the 7-series. And based upon the 180W TDP and apparently cooler operation, let alone the improved performance, I'm glad I waited.
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dgingeri Compared to my GTX680, that's the same power profile, 1/3 more CUDA cores, and twice the memory. It's really not that impressive, comparatively. I think I'll wait for the next generation to upgrade. My dual 680s have done well so far.Reply