You might be wondering what I’m doing posting on a Sunday night but with Computex starting in Taiwan there are a ton of things getting announced or about to get announced. You see a lot of people think that CES is the big event each year for PC hardware but CES is really for consumer electronics where Computex has more of a focus on PC hardware. So with that Nvidia has stepped up and is introducing their GTX 980 Ti. While the launch is exciting, it is a little surprising to see them launch now, before AMD launches their 300 Series cards. Typically companies leave an ace in the hole so Nvidia must be really confident that AMD doesn’t have what it takes to outperform the GTX 980 Ti. While we won’t know that until AMD launches their cards, what we can do today is run the GTX 980 Ti through our benchmark suite and see just how it compares to what is available today.
Product Name: Nvidia GTX 980 Ti
Review Sample Provided by: Nvidia
Written by: Wes
Pictures by: Wes
Amazon Link: HERE
| Specifications | ||||
| Model | GTX 980 Ti | GTX Titan X | GTX 980 | GTX 780 Ti |
| CUDA Cores | 2816 | 3072 | 2048 | 2880 |
| Texture Units | 176 | 192 | 128 | 240 |
| ROPs | 96 | 96 | 64 | 48 |
| Base Clock | 1000MHz | 1000MHz | 1126MHz | 875 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1075MHz | 1075MHz | 1216MHz | 928 MHz |
| Memory Clock | 7GHz GDDR5 | 7GHz GDDR5 | 7GHz GDDR5 | 7GHz GDDR5 |
| Memory Bus Width | 384-bit | 384-bit | 256-bit | 384-bit |
| VRAM | 6GB | 12GB | 4GB | 3GB |
| TDP | 250W | 250W | 165W | 250W |
| GPU | GM200 | GM200 | GM204 | GK110 |
| Architecture | Maxwell | Maxwell | Maxwell | Kepler |
| Transistor Count | 8B | 8B | 5.2B | 7.1B |
| Launch Price | $649 | $999 | $549 | $699 |
So let’s recap what we have going on in the stats for the GTX 980 Ti. For starters we know that basically the GTX 980 Ti is a cut down Titan X. It shares the same GPU with the GM200. The 980 Ti does have a few less CUDA cores though with 2816 vs the Titan X’s 3072. This is still a huge jump over the GTX 980 for CUDA cores and basically in line with what the older GTX 780 Ti had. Surprisingly the base and boost clocks are exactly the same as the Titan X and with that the 250 watt TDP is the same as well. We have the same 384-bit memory bus that is a step up from the GTX 980 but to keep costs down we get 6 gigs of vRAM over the Titan X’s monster 12 gigs. So the short version is basically this is a Titan X but with a few less CUDA cores and half the vRAM.
With the GTX 980 Ti replacing the GTX 980 as the top non-titan card it does change their pricing structure just slightly. Basically the Titan-X stays at its launch price of $999, the GTX 980 Ti comes in with an MSRP of $649 and the GTX 980 drops in price from its launch MSRP of $549 down to $499 making it a better value. The GTX 980 Ti does also get a free copy of Batman: Arkham Knight included as well to help with its price. When you consider where the Titan X is price wise the GTX 980 Ti isn’t too bad, but until we see performance numbers I can’t be to sure on that one.
