The GeForce 9-series has been released
 

And the reviews are in:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/n…gtx-980-review

Well, it's the current king, as expected. It's just in time too, as we've got quite a few sexy games to look forward in the coming months (DA: I, TW3 etc).

I expect the 970 to be the new king of price/performance, so the ball is now fully in AMDs court.

I'm unlikely to upgrade for two years at least. Just bought a laptop with a 760m in December 2013.

So I guess I'll be buying an 11-760m then :D

Very nice. If only MS would hurry up and finish Win 9 so I can buy a new laptop.

Not trying to be a smart-ass but it should say 900-series as the 9-series was released back in 2008. They were already available this morning so I went a head and bought a 980 GTX. I´m coming from a SLI setup featuring two 580 so I hadn't upgraded in 3-4 years.

Avoid this series, it's just more rebranding of the same old chips. Wait until they release new chips with a more efficient production process. TSMC has production problems so it will take a while.

What happened to the 800 series?

They were only available in the mobile space.

Anandtech has a good review of it.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/n…gtx-980-review

Yep, chip architecture is practically the same… I'm content with my oc'd 670gtx, no reason for me to upgrade aside from a transient need for more VRAM.

I won't be upgrading for awhile yet. I'm pretty happy with my 7970m. Not the greatest card, but good enough for pretty much any game I throw at it. Guaranteed 30-60 FPS at max settings on most games I play…

Might be something to consider for TW3, unless that game will also require a CPU upgrade…. but I haven't met a CPU limited game like ever, unless you have a crazy graphics card and run at crazy FPS.

I try to keep abreast of technology and hardware, but I cant see that it would be worth it for me to exchange the 7950 in Xfire that I use at my resolution, 1080p (and have never had trouble with double cards).

But I think Nvidia actually are on the right track concerning the power envelope. Thats a good development. ( we all remember their industrial fan an heating systems.. ;-)

C

This new Maxwell architecture is really a nice accomplishment from Nvidia, delivering more performance with a less complex chip and lower power consumption is very promissing for the future. Imagine what they can do with this architecture and knowledge and a smaller procedure (20 nm), this could mean that laptop users (like me) are finally getting even closer to desktop graphics performance! :)

That's simply not true. The 980 uses Maxwell, not Kepler. Maxwell has only been used in a few cards so far, and in no top cards so far if I recall correctly. I think even GTX 780 Ti, the previous top card, used Kepler.

The next architecture is Pascal or some such thing, and is expected in 2016 or later. The next big jump is years away at this point.

Yes, I know, that review is the reason for this thread, hence why it's linked in the original post. :)

Nooooo, very different… The new GPUs are awesome

The Maxwell chips are shoving like 2billion more transistors into the same space. They have FOUR times the L2 cashe (2MB!), use a fraction of the power of the last generation…

However, the feeling I get is very similar to when the 680 launched. What I said back then was "Nice tech, but show me the 384bit memory interface version."

So what we have in the 980 is about 2000 CUDA cores (~800 less than 780ti), 128 texture units as with the 680, then a bizarre 64 raster operators, which I thought were hardly used these days while the shader cores were playing a much bigger part with "next gen" mostly being having enough shader processing power to run Ambient Occlusion without a frame rate loss..

TL;DR
Great GPU on a shitty configured PCB;
Nvidia has gone to a lot of effort to not make the 980 too good.
Keep an eye out for the 384bit or even 512bit versions!

I doubt we'll see the same GPU with a different memory interface.

While I agree it's not a large performance jump from the 700 series, it's still a very attractive card. The 980 is $100 cheaper than the 780 GTX Ti while being 5%-10% faster, having more VRAM, and consuming less power.

Now I regret purchasing my 770 GTX 6 months ago. I really want that 980 GTX. :)

Pretty sure I posted in that thread telling you to wait. :P

Maybe interface is not the right word…. Memory BUS might be more suitable. Let me try to explain my reasoning…

GTX 500 series
560 = 256bit (64bit * 4)
570 = 320bit (64*5)
580 = 384bit (64*6)
So the 580 uses 6x256MB ram chips to make its total 1536mb. I always like an even number of chips, but we'll get to that…


GTX 600 series
660 = 192bit (64*3)!?
670 = 256bit (64*4)
680 = 256bit (64*4) **My card! Hooray!**
TITAN = 384bit (64*6)
Perhaps here is where I should have spoken of "interface" as nvidias claim was they have some fancy way off utilizing memory so that they can make good use of an uneven number of ram chips. But note that the TITAN, not the 680, is the equivalent of the 580 "high end" card.
People who bought a TITAN paid the most in nvidias history for the high end card which was rationalized by the fact that it was going to be the most powerful card of the 700 series generation too.

GTX 700 series
760 = 256bit
770 = 256bit
780 = 384bit
780ti = 384bit
The 600 series Kepler chips proved so good that nvidia didn't even need to do a real new generation of cards and rebranded the 680 as a 770 while having the 780 actually come in behind the true high end 600 series card, the TITAN.

GTX 900 series
750 = 128bit
750ti = 128bit
960 = ???
970 = 256bit
980 = 256bit
980ti = ???
I'm including the 750 cards in the 900 series as they use the Maxwell architecture the 900 series uses.

So, it looks like we've seen the super low end cards and the mid range cards are out now. I reckon soon we'll see the high end 384bit card and low 960… HOWEVER the 960 might be too good and cut into the mid range sales so we won't get that budget beast option for a while.

I've been telling people to wait for this series for the last few months, as I expected Maxwell to be considerably better than Kepler (already knew that based on the mobile cards to be honest), but in early 2014 the 770 was still a great option.

As for beefed up versions: Yes, there will no doubt be a Ti or Titan or some such version. However, it would surprise me if it's released in 2014, as they usually release such cards to compete with whatever AMD is offering. Right now, the 980 is simply the king, so there's no reason for them to release a stronger version.

Speaking of which, when will AMD release their next series? I thought it was late 2014, but it seems to be mostly rumors at this point.

Not terribly impressed, to be honest. According to the two reviews I've seen, the 980 performs more or less like my 780 TI. In fact, one of them said the TI was still the fastest card around in most cases.

Good for me, I guess - and now I don't need to worry about upgrading for a while.

I understood what you were saying. However, they've started by releasing the high-end cards first in this series. They'll no doubt follow up with a 960, 950, etc. There might be a "Ti" version later, but based on past history, it'll probably just have a higher clocked GPU and VRAM.

It is disappointing that they stuck with a 256-bit memory bus though.

Yes, performance is not too impressive but no one expected that anyway. Actually contrary to pre-release rumors that had the GTX 980 between the GTX 780 and 780Ti, it has turned out surprisingly fast since it is almost always a little faster than the GTX 780Ti.
What's impressive though is the low power consumption (= less heat = less noise) and also the overclocking headroom. Should be some nice non-reference cards with custom cooling coming up.
Another thing that is fairly impressive is the increase in image quality with DSR, a feature that is exclusive to the 9xx series for now, though I've read that they might make it available for older cards in upcoming drivers.
The real star is the 970. Price/performance is great on that one.

AMD has an event scheduled this week on 9/25 and no one really knows what it's about. Probably same procedure as every time nVidia releases new products before them, i.e. an announcement to make people not buy a GTX 9xx card but telling them to wait for what they have in store.
Some rumors indicated that their next cards would be shipping with water cooling preinstalled since AMD had quite a lot of issues with power consumption, noise and heat. Guess we'll find out very soon…

No, the correct answer is "who cares?" ;)

The only thing AMD is good for these days is keeping Nvidia's prices in check.

Another review, this one from Tom's Hardware:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/…well,3941.html

It's pretty much what you'd expect: They're the best cards around. Anything else would be rather strange. The in-depth description of the new features is nice though, so it's worth a read for enthusiasts.

When I upgrade my GPU, I expect a significant performance increase. Lower power consumption and OC potential is nice, but it's not really my priority.

Since I spent a fortune on my 780 TI, I was kinda worried that it would be outranked significantly by these new cards - because it would mean I'd have to upgrade sooner.

I didn't really expect anything, though, I just comment on what I'm seeing.

That said, I'm now seeing that the 980 does, indeed, outperform my TI - if only slightly.

That's more in line with what I feared, but thankfully not a big deal.

Nah, anyone with a 780 Ti certainly shouldn't upgrade. That would be madness.

Personally, I tend to run two desktops though, so I often have one from the current generation and one from the previous one. I'll probably upgrade the older one in about a month or so, which means I'll have one desktop with 780 and one with 980. The 780 will (most likely) stay until the next generation, even though it's quite a bit behind both the 780 Ti and 980.

:-/
Based on past history, the high end cards don't retail at 400-500$ They've gone with 256 bit to leave headroom for the high end card and showcase the low power use.

And the power use isn't THAT amazing. 980 was 165watt while 680 was 195watt.

I'd expect the high end card release before the 960 option because, judging by the great performance of the 750ti for its price, chances are the 960 will be "good enough" for most users when you consider the crappy GPUs in the "next-gen" consoles, with the xbone having about the power of a 670 rig, that AAA developers are targeting.

edit: Stating the obvious, just in case…
…And no one will want to pay more for the higher cards when the 960 runs everything maxed out!

There's certainly no reason for you to upgrade.

In fact, for people looking to upgrade, it might even be worth looking for a price drop on a 780ti

Things are pretty different in Australia. Since we pay about 50% more for everything the ~350$ price on the 970 is starting here around $500. The 980 is going to be about 750$, meanwhile the 780ti is down to about $650.

So you can pay $100 more for better power consumption or snatch up a TI before they're all gone and still get the same performance.

That's what I did getting my 680 for $370 while the 770s were 460$.

The 980 is cheaper than the 780 Ti over here.

Same here, by quite a margin actually (about $50).

I'm actually considering the 750 Ti for my next GPU upgrade (from a Radeon HD 6770). I like quiet and energy efficient and the card is only ~60-70 Watt under load and ~6 when idle, which is pretty cool and would probably be sufficient for my occasional gaming needs. I only have a single 1920x1200 monitor, nothing at all like those 4K things I keep hearing about.

I hope they have at least a 4GB version or you won't be playing many new AAA releases. If you care to.

Even so, I would never settle for a 750Ti at this stage unless you're on a strict budget. I doubt you'll see much of any difference over your former 6770, temperatures aside.

Yeah, If you plan on playing newer games at 1920x1200, I would recommend at least a GTX 760. The speed is more important than the VRAM though unless you plan on having heavy anti-aliasing in all your games.

If you can hold out a couple weeks the 960 will be out. It's rumored to be around $250-300. If your budget allows that's the one I'd look at.

I'd still suggest 4GB ram as games are already recommending that and more and more will as they are ported from the consoles. Shadows of mordor calls for 6gb for ultra textures.

I've yet to try and run any of these games on less than 4gb so I'm not sure if they run fine or not. I just know that with consoles having 8GB of shared ram, seems like it ( 4GB) will become the new standard.

I would hate to end up with a card that's fast enough to run everything maxed but not be able to because your stuck with 2GB VRAM.

8 GB of "shared" RAM on consoles doesn't translate to the same amount of VRAM on a dedicated video card.

We're still a long time away from needing more than 2GB of VRAM just to run most games.

I'm not saying more RAM doesn't have it's uses, but 2GB is fine for what people like Arhu are looking to do. High-end enthusiasts are a different story.

Of course, that's why I said 4GB of vram. Obviously they can't use all 8GB of ram for vram and I didn't say they would.

We'll just have to disagree on that. I don't know what Arhu does on his computer but it doesn't sound like he's one to upgrade very often ( pure speculation) so a 2 GB card today could definitely be a liability in a year or 2. Also 4 GB cards much more in most cases.

All I'm saying is a 4GB 96o will have a much longer lifespan than a 2GB 960. I guess we will see.

2GB certainly won't be a liability in only a year. It sounds like you're talking about running games on their highest settings. I'm talking about just running them. For a non-enthusiast, a fast 2GB card will easily last a few years. The key word there is "fast".

Your right there I don't ever think of running games at any other settings than max. So yes when I talk about it, running on lower settings didn't even cross my mind.

However I still wouldn't buy a 2gb card now. The cheapest 4gb 760 on newegg is $199 after $30 rebate. The cheapest 2g 760 is $189.

Seems silly not to go 4GB.

Sure, but value is beside the point. ;)

I agree though. Obviously it makes sense to get the 4GB card if the price difference is really that small and everything else on the card is the same.

Yeah the value is just one more reason.

I still stand behind my initial point. I just think developers are going to want to push the abilities on the next gen consoles and won't be bothered too much with optimizing it for pc so specs will continue to rise.

We can revisit this in a couple years and 1 of us can say I told you so.;)

Oh, the suspense is killing me.:lol: