Until this month,Nvidia’s GTX 980 was the top singleGPU graphics card around. And then the inevitable happened. It dropped the full force of its GM 200 Maxwell graphics core in the form of the GTX Titan X.
We’ve gone into detail on the new ultra-enthusiast card on page 26, but suffice to say it’s the new GPU performance king.
At nearly $1,367, however, it’s beyond the reach of most of our bank accounts, which is why it and the R9 295X2 aren’t included in this test.
We’re concentrating on cards you’re actually likely to buy. Still, the GTX 980 is no budget option. This overclocked card from Palit, the Super Jetstream, is around $685, with the cheaper options being only around $45 less.
The GTX 980 is still one hell of a gaming graphics card. It may not hit the same levels of 4K gaming as its Titanic big brother, but it really doesn’t do badly.
The Palit card is hitting some 36fps in Battlefield 4at 4K Ultra settings, and 34fps in Shadow of Mordorat the same settings.
But having spent a lot of time with 4K monitors, anything below 40 inches just feels too small and you’re really paying a severe performance price.
So we’re still more than happy with our 1600p and 1440p screens, and at those resolutions, the GTX 980 is an absolute monster. Throw it on to a super-wide 34-inch 21:9 panel too and it just flies in whatever game you throw its way.
Price Wars
This Maxwell card though is caught in a battle with AMD’s Radeon R9 290X. Because there‘s been such a long time between its launch and the release of the upcoming Pirate Island, R9 3xx series, the prices of current-gen AMD stock have nose-dived like they were piloted by Harrison Ford.
The AMD card opposite is now almost half the price of this impressive GTX 980 and isn’t thatfar off in terms of 1080p or 1600p performance.
This Palit card comes with an outstanding 0dB cooling array where the fans only start spinning when the GM 204 chip hits 65ºC, and even then it’s remarkably quiet. It also runs with a good chunk less power than the Radeon.
But we also have to talk about the Nvidia ecosystem as a whole. When it released the GTX 980, Nvidia came out with a set of interesting techniques to get either more performance or more visual fidelity from our games.
Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) allows you to run at higher resolutions than your monitor can produce by rendering at that high level and shrinking it down to fit your screen.
For games with performance to burn, such as GRID 2in our suite of tests, that adds a little extra quality while still delivering the performance.
On the flip side, where you’re struggling for speed, there’s Multi Frame Anti-Aliasing (MFAA), which can produce 4x levels of anti-aliasing with the performance hit of only 2x. Then there’s Voxel Global Illumination ( V XGI), the cheating pseudo ray-tracing tech just included in the current custom branch of Unreal Engine 4.
At the current price though it’s tough to look past the R9 290X bargain. In those Sapphire clothes it’s cool and quiet and blazes through 1080p and 1600p benchmarks. The GTX 980 is just a little too pricey for the relatively small perf boost it offers right now.
SPECIFICATIONS
| Memory Amount | 4096MB |
| Memory Interface | 256bit |
| DRAM Type | GDDR5 |
| Graphics Clock | Base Clock : 1203MHz / Boost Clock : 1304MHz |
| Memory Clock | 3600 MHz (DDR 7200 MHz) |
| CUDA Cores | 2048 |
| Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) | 230.4 |
| NVIDIA G-SNYC | ✔ |
| NVIDIA SLI-ready | 2-way* |
| NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready | ✔ |
| NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround Ready | ✔ |
| NVIDIA PureVideo HD Technology | ✔ |
| NVIDIA PhysX-ready | ✔ |
| NVIDIA CUDA Technology | ✔ |
| NVIDIA GPU Boost | 2.0 |
| NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync | ✔ |
| Microsoft DirectX | 12 |
| OpenGL | 4.4 |
| Bus Support | PCI-E 3.0 x 16 |
| Certified for Microsoft Windows 7 | ✔ |
| Certified for Microsoft Windows 8 | ✔ |
| Maximum Digital Resolution | 4096x2160 |
| Maximum VGA Resolution | 2048x1536 |
| Dual-Link DVI | Yes |
| HDCP | ✔ |
| HDMI | mHDMI |
| DisplayPort | mini-DisplayPort x 3 |
| Height | 2.5 Slot |
| Board Length | 280mm |
| PCB Width | 280mm x 133mm |
| Graphics Card Power | 180 W |
| Minimum Recommended System Power | 500 W |
| Supplementary Power Connectors | 6-pin X1 8-pin X1 |
| Accessory | Manual, Driver Disc, DVI-CRT Adapter, Power Cable |
Source : www.palit.biz
Pros
Jetstream Great gaming performance; 0dB cooler; bulging ecosystem.
Cons
Still seriously pricey
Where to Buy
Buy from Amazon Market Place:
