discussion NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Performance Review Comment Thread

[ontariotl]

Just wow to some of the pro AMD arguments here... "they're not that bad on power when you compare to oc'd 780 etc vs them at stock".. but they are still worse and if your gonna compare use oc'd 290x vs oc'd 780ti. which is not a good view for AMD..

Is AMD the best bang for buck? They were... they need another price-drop, think the 970 is prolly the best bang for buck at the mo.
Ohh and when was the last time AMD launched with stock and didn't sky-rocket in price?

re mantle, it was made a huge deal of, but anyone with a decent processor will see no difference in the games.

re physx, so far been underwhelming with the games that use it.. but it does look great and the improvements shown are astonishing... And I would say the same if it was AMD that released it.

Infact I'd love to see their sound tech built into games.. Thats a brilliant technology.

I'm no nvidia fan-boi... I'm a fan of quality. As I've said, had 3 AMD cards over the years and I'm not a "have to upgrade" type person. anyone with a 670/760 R9280~ up shouldn't be looking at these unless they are bumping res or something.

The day I'm looking for a new card and AMD have better combination of quality, power and price, I'll be on AMD

But to say AMD is better than Nvidia is just plain blindness. It's like saying I'll buy a Cheap Chinese car cos I get the same no of wheels and doors etc vs a European / american / jap hell even the other Asian "cheaper" brands (kia etc) and it costs less money... Well my answer is Yes it's cheaper, yes you can do basically the same thing and you may even get more power / room for your money... But again I'll take quality, efficiency and refinement over sheer price-performance.

I thought some of the first comments were just whatever.. But it's obvious your a die hard fan so I'm not gonna argue any further.

For the record, I'm not a fan boi of anything.. I take things on their merits. I have dual 780's cos I bout them on release @ $600 each and they bet AMD for price to performance when they were released by a long way. I'm not anti AMD but they need to pick up their game in a big way to compete on a level pegging.


Right off the AMD stuff...


What about a 990? That could be a monster in a SFF build.

Pro AMD and die hard fan? Wtf did you even read my post properly?

Did I say to buy AMD at any point? Did I not perhaps mention that owning a 290x or 780ti didn't justify upgrade to the new hardware instead?

You mentioned some things about AMD that begged for a rebuttal, so I made my point (s) since I do own AMD at the moment makes me a fan boi? It's called a debate/discussion. So to defend a purchase I made almost a year ago or those who own a 780ti and that I don't have to go out and plop another 400 a card after all said and done makes me pro AMD, you are a complete idiot.

Obviously you completely ignored my last comment about if I still owned gtx670s. What did I say I would purchase?

 

[Skippman]

Why won't they take return? was on sale or summint?

Even if re-stocking fee I would do that, sell and you'll drop quite a bit of coin.

I got the RMA approved through Newegg but now I'm wondering if I should just keep the ASUS. I was planning on adding it to my water cooling loop and wonder how much noise difference there would be between the two cards.

 

[ontariotl]

I got the RMA approved through Newegg but now I'm wondering if I should just keep the ASUS. I was planning on adding it to my water cooling loop and wonder how much noise difference there would be between the two cards.

Well one review I read is the 780 has a vapor chamber heat sink where the 980 uses just heat pipe heat sink so the fan needed to spin faster to keep it cool. Noise however was marginal between the two. Since you plan on water cooling does noise really factor in your decision?

 

[Skippman]

Only if I'm willing to buy a separate water block for the GPU, which I hadn't planned on.

 

[ontariotl]

Only if I'm willing to buy a separate water block for the GPU, which I hadn't planned on.

For air cooling, I wouldn't factor noise as a decision as I've read it's marginal or on par. It will be quieter than AMD oem cooling either way.

 

[Coach]

What do you mean? I see a ~60% generational increase.

GK104 -> GK204 (ie: first generation Kepler versus first generation Maxwell)

GK110 doesn't have a Maxwell equivalent....yet.

I agree. To me this means that the 980Ti would hypothetically be a great deal more powerful than GK110 aka 780/780ti.
:thumb:

 

[Dzzope]

@ ontariotl
If some of your comments were related to what I said don't necessarily think it was all aimed at you, if it was I would have said so.

I addressed some comments from various users which I thought needed a rebuttal, some are obviously from fan-bois but I don't tar everyone with the same stick.

For your post specifically:
I have to agree with the person who stated that this is not a huge improvement in performance whether it be the 780Ti or 290x. It's certainly not going to make me give up my Trifire 290x's in which I haven't had any issues with the games I play and drivers have been fine for me. Using the PCI-E bus instead of xfire bridges or sli bridges is much more efficient.
It's a pretty standard generational jump to get 15%-30%.. @~20% average over 780ti's and 290x's I would say it's a very substantial jump as this is really a 770 tier card.. The 780 / 780ti replacements will hopefully come in around or before next summer.

However, for power efficiency I will say Nvidia has done an impressive job with the 970/980, but you do lose some of that efficiency once overclocking is involved, not as much as the 290's but there is still the gain of power. Same as what happened to the 780ti when people boasted it was less wattage than the 290x, but overclocked it came pretty damn near 290x numbers.
And where are the 290x's numbers in power consumption when over-clocked and not limited by temperature?
If your going to say that these use more power when overclocked so they aren't that far ahead then please do it vs an oc'd 290

$330 will not be interesting since that is in US dollars and I doubt you'll be paying MSRP once the e-tailers start jacking the prices up with all the orders that will storm through on the first week of release. Same goes for the 980, but I tip my hat to Nvidia for not pricing it like the 780Ti.
Really this is something AMD suffers from much more, supply chain woe's have plagued their last 4 years of releases at least. Nvidia tends to have reasonable stock at launch and a steady flow there after limiting the jacking of prices. perfect examples are 7970 vs 680 and 290(x) vs 780(ti).. Could you deff get an nvidia at launch.. no.. Could you def get them at MSRP.. probably not BUT AMD tends to have less stock and suffer higher price hikes. Granted the last year saw this majorly exasperated through the mining craze.
With all that said, I personally see this card as the most disruptive. 780 levels of performance for 770 money.. right on the sweet-spot / upper reaches for most people and with dx12 support, low power heat and cost all working in it's favour.. expect to see these fly unless AMD slashes it's prices by a fair margin.

As for mantle, AMD hyped it just like Nivida hypes their crap as well (Don't get me started on PhysX) There was an announcement of quite a few more games that will be supporting Mantle a couple of months ago. Like DX12, they hyped it one day and said no more about it because there is no need to keep bringing it up which the same should go for mantle.
My point about mantle isn't their coverage after the release(my bad on the wording).. it's the hype they made and what it actually does. Unlike physx which works and increases realism in many (not all) situations where it's implemented mantle has basically no effect to anyone with a half decent cpu. Whether it get's implemented or not is down to the game devs.
Also I was referring to the improvements they made.. Just look at the turf demo, the liquids (and goo lool) and the lighting. Thats not to say AMD doesn't do good things.. eg the directional sound that was released with the 290. That was awesome and I wish more games would do something cos I find nearly everything has very poor directional sound bar a few exceptions.

Now if I still owned my tri-fire GTX670 FTW's, I would consider the 970's for sure as it is worth the upgrade, but I'm sticking with my flashed 290's (saved me some mula on release day) for a little longer.
I'm not saying for a second that anyone with an any way decent or even just a card they are happy with should get this, what I would say is that if your looking for a card, the 970 is a go to card and IMO the 980 brings more value through being an overall more refined and polished product than anything AMD can offer at the moment. And with their release being pegged for first half of next year (not even stating a quarter) tells me AMD have absolutely no answer for this or are simply going to be behind the curve again and Nvidia will release their 780 replacements to combat them keeping the pressure up... Just like IMO the 290 isn't a touch on a 780 except with price.. But then we know how hard they were to get at their proper price.

As you can see I have allot of criticisms of AMD at the moment, Nvidia aren't perfect by a long way either but for me the quality of what they are releasing puts them very much ahead (ignoring price, simply on the products straight comparrisons). Price always complicates things with considerably different products targeting the same customers and is the biggest variable.

I would say anyone sticking with 1080 @ 60hz doesn't need anything more than a 760 / 670 level card to max out probably 99% of games with only a handful that will bring almost anything to it's knees.

I can see defence of your choice of 290's in your last statement but you don't need to, I wasn't in any way saying than AMD are crap or no-one should ever buy one.. They just aren't as close to Nvidia as they need to be on refinement. On a performance point they will match and often beat their nvidia equivalent and if you got them substantially less than a 780 then fair enough.. I still like european/jap/(some) american cars over the geelys and cheerys of the world though, even if I have to pay a premium (I'll still buy smart in that market though, I go ford / vw / skoda rather than the audi / bm route if you don't mind the car analogy).

Last thing on this I'll say is I really hope AMD raise their game, innovation and competition are what drive the market and if they do anything more than stumble it's only a bad thing for us. Unfortunately I think they have been stumbling since Nvidia released the 5xx series. The 7xxx righted that until the 6xx series released and matched the performance for less power heat and actually cost. AMD were far far too slow to react to that and it's been bad IMO since. Though their reactions to price has been better.

 

[Dzzope]

I got the RMA approved through Newegg but now I'm wondering if I should just keep the ASUS. I was planning on adding it to my water cooling loop and wonder how much noise difference there would be between the two cards.

Do it but don't buy a stock one... there will be many custom versions coming into the supply lines very quickly. Read some reviews but I think Asus will have good momentum after their last showing but then there is always ACX2.0 (evga) and all the other usual suspects.

If they won't cross-ship, you'll have a few days to read up and wait for reviews anyway.

If you are going to water cool it though, get one with a reference layout of a board.

 

[Shadowarez]

So I see a few retailers are charging almost $150 above mrsp these companies should really open a store even if online were regular ppl can buy there gear at msrp instead of relying on other stores to jack up price. Seen more then 1 brand as high as $649 before tax and shipping far cry from $550

 

[Dzzope]

Would that be a soc type custom design? Saw similar in UK store but it had 200mhz on the others.
Still too much but to be expected on launch day, supply and demand. Don't blame the store, blame the people willing to pay it. They are there to make money after all and if you can increase your margin on release while there is limited stock, then the vast majority will.