Gtx 980 ti review: The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review

13 февраля, 2023

EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ review: See how this card unleashes Maxwell’s true power

Reviews

Move over, Titan X. Sit down, Fury X. EVGA’s customized version of the beastly GTX 980 Ti is the most potent single-GPU graphics card that’s ever graced PCWorld’s test bench.

By Brad Chacos

Executive editor, PCWorld

Heading into this week, I eagerly anticipated reviewing the most powerful single-GPU graphics card to ever grace PCWorld’s test bench—and I wasn’t disappointed. But the card that claimed that title wasn’t the one I expected! While AMD’s new, hotly anticipated Radeon R9 Fury X is a beast in its own right, the title of new heavyweight champion instead lies with EVGA’s $680 GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ with ACX 2.0+ (whew!), a custom-cooled, overclocked variant of Nvidia’s ferocious GTX 980 Ti.

EVGA sent me this card out of the blue on the same day I received the Fury X—a coincidence, I’m sure. But the GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ doesn’t just triumph over AMD’s new flagship, it outpunches Nvidia’s own $1000 Titan X in raw firepower.

What’s more, even though AMD’s dual-GPU Radeon R9 295×2 still manages to outrun EVGA’s beast, the GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ illuminates a key advantage the 980 Ti family holds over all other 4K-capable graphics cards.

Let’s dig in!

EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ under the hood

The EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+’s spec list. Click to enlarge any image in this article.

For the most part, EVGA’s card rocks the same basic tech specs as the reference GTX 980 Ti, which we covered in full in our initial review of Nvidia’s gaming goliath. You find the same 2,048 CUDA cores, the same 6GB of GDDR5 memory with a 7Gbps clock speed and a 384-bit bus, the same port selection, et cetera. You can find more details about Nvidia’s GM200 chip itself in our earlier review. The chart at right has the basic technical information specifically for the EVGA GTX 980 Ti Superclocked (henceforth to be referred to as the GTX 980 Ti SC+).

So what makes the EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC+ so special? The (full) name gives it all away. The card ditches the GTX 980 Ti’s reference cooling in favor of EVGA’s respected ACX 2.0+ cooling system, which has made an appearance on several Nvidia GPUs at this point. Rather than talking about its dual fans, custom heat pipe, MOSFET cooling pipe, and quiet operation yet again, here’s an EVGA-supplied diagram showing it all. You’ll see the end results in our benchmarking section.

Details about the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+’s ACX 2.0+ cooling solution.

The other tell-tale in the name is “Superclocked+”. The drastic cooling enhancements provided by ACX 2.0+ let EVGA positively crank the core clock speed on this bad boy, a tweak that helps it beat both the Fury X and the Titan X out of the box. While the stock GTX 980 Ti is clocked at 1,000MHz base clock/1,075MHz boost clock, EVGA’s managed to coax those numbers up to 1,102MHz base/1,190MHz boost in the GTX 980 Ti SC+—a sizeable jump.

Getting that kind of overclock out of the box, with full 3-year warranty support, is no joke.

If you want to push things even further—or boost the memory speed, which is left untouched from stock on the GTX 980 Ti SC+—you can turn to EVGA’s stellar PrecisionX overclocking software, which is available as a free download on EVGA’s website or via Steam. It’s a great solution, blending user-friendliness with the fine-tuning features power users demand. Need a primer? PCWorld’s overclocking guide refers to MSI’s competing Afterburner tool, but the same basic overclocking principles apply with PrecisionX.

The EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+’s backplate.

One final design tidbit: EVGA’s GTX 980 Ti SCi+ comes with an eye-catching custom backplate installed. Unlike the vanilla GTX 980, the reference GTX 980 Ti eschewed a backplate, ostensibly to facilitate better airflow in multi-GPU setups, but I’m a sucker for a nice backplate. Who wants to stare at exposed circuit boards?

Continue to the next page for EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC+ benchmarks and our final conclusions about the graphics card.

EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ benchmarks

With that out of the way, let’s get to the fun part.

As always, we reviewed the GTX 980 Ti on PCWorld’s graphics testing system. You can see how we built the system here, but here are the basics:

  • Intel’s Core i7-5960X with a Corsair Hydro Series h200i closed-loop water cooler, to eliminate any potential for CPU bottlenecks affecting graphical benchmarks
  • An Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard
  • Corsair’s Vengeance LPX DDR4 memory, Obsidian 750D full tower case, and 1200-watt AX1200i power supply
  • A 480GB Intel 730 series SSD
  • Windows 8.1 Pro

I’ve already spoiled the results by calling this the fastest graphics card we’ve ever tested, but if you’re looking to game at high or ultra graphics settings at 4K resolution, the same caveats mentioned in our Fury X, Titan X, and reference GTX 980 Ti still apply. While all of these cards are fully capable of handling 4K gameplay by their lonesome, frame rates can still hover between 30 to 60 fps in some titles, depending on the settings you’re using.

A G-Sync monitor, which forces your graphics card and display to synchronize frame rates, greatly improves the experience when gaming at 4K by smoothing everything out and essentially killing both screen tearing and stuttering. Simply put, G-Sync (and AMD’s competing FreeSync displays, designed for Radeon cards) are wonderful. If you can afford to pick up a G-Sync monitor to pair with EVGA’s GTX 980 Ti SC+, it’s highly recommended.

The GTX 980 Ti’s cranked clock speeds help it shine in every test I ran. First up: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. The game itself is great, but more importantly, it comes with an in-game benchmark and an optional Ultra HD Textures pack that hammers the memory of even the most capable cards on the market today. It’s tested using the game’s Medium and High presets, then shifting to the Ultra preset and then cranking every graphics option to its highest possible setting—which even the Ultra preset doesn’t actually do. (Note: No matter which drivers I’m using, I just can’t coax Shadow of Mordor into playing nice with AMD’s dual-GPU Radeon R9 295×2.)

The long-awaited Grand Theft Auto V is finally available on PCs, and with all the bells and whistles on, it can be a bear. We tested it by enabling all the advanced video options, then shifting all the graphics settings and sliders to their highest settings. I tested it with 4x MSAA and 4x MSAA reflections enabled to push the active memory use over 4GB, as well as with the MSAA options disabled to bring it just under 4GB—primarily to test the Fury X’s 4GB of cutting-edge high-bandwidth memory at 4K resolution. 

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition is a recent remake of a wonderful older game, but don’t let that fool you: It can make even the most powerful graphics cards in the land sweat when you enable all its graphics options. Only the Radeon R9 295×2 hits 30 fps at 4K resolution, and although results at 2560×1600 resolution aren’t shown here, not even that card can hit 60fps at that lower resolution on extreme graphics settings.

Alien Isolation is the best xenomorph experience since the original Alien movie and when it comes to graphics, it scales well across all hardware.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is drop-dead gorgeous and one of the best PC games of 2014. Despite being heavily promoted by AMD at its launch, the game performs better on Nvidia hardware. 

We test Metro Last Light Redux with SSAA and Advanced PhysX disabled. SSAA cuts frame rates in half for negligible visual gain.

Bioshock Infinite is getting a bit long in the tooth, but it uses the popular Unreal Engine 3 and both AMD and Nvidia have had plenty of time to optimize their drivers for the game by this point.

Next up: The 3DMark Fire Strike and Unigine Valley synthetic benchmark tests. Fire Strike Ultra is a more demanding variant of the base Fire Strike benchmark, built specifically to test 4K gaming capabilities.

Power usage and thermal testing is conducted by running the grueling Furmark tool for 15 minutes. Thermals are measured at the end of the run using both Furmark’s built-in temperature tool as well as SpeedFan. Power usage is measured on a whole-system basis, rather than the individual cards themselves, by plugging the PC into a Watts Up meter.

The GTX 980 Ti SC+’s custom cooling solution helps it shave a full 9 degrees Celsius off the power use at load when compared to the reference GTX 980 Ti. And while it doesn’t show in the raw benchmarks—I don’t have a decibel meter on-hand—EVGA’s card runs pretty damned quiet, even when you’re hammering it with a demanding game. (Though obviously not as cool or quiet as AMD’s Fury X and R9 295×2, each of which uses an integrated closed-loop water cooler.)

The EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+’s outstanding performance comes as no surprise. The reference GTX 980 Ti was already a beast in every sense of the world, so slapping a slick custom cooler on it and cranking the clock speeds was guaranteed to turn the GTX 980 Ti SC+ into a true barn-burner. EVGA’s excellent build quality and design thoughtfulness is just icing on the delicious cake.

You could push frame rates to even more blistering levels with esoteric liquid-cooling solutions that allow for higher overclocks—witness EVGA’s own GeForce GTX 980 Ti Hydro Copper and GeForce GTX 980 Ti Hybrid, with their insane 1,228MHz boost clock speeds out of the box, for evidence of that. Meanwhile, some other cards, like MSI’s GTX 980 Ti Gaming 6G, manage to push the boost clock speeds beyond that. Those cards would no doubt hit frame rates even higher than the ones the GTX 980 Ti SC+ achieved here.

But as it stands, the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ is hands-down the fastest single-GPU graphics card we’ve ever tested, barely coming in second to only the formidable dual-GPU Radeon R9 295×2 (and its integrated closed-loop water cooler) in our testing. It’s a thrilling example of the kind of firepower that a custom-cooled, sped-up GTX 980 Ti can bring to the table—something that the flagship Titan X and Fury X can’t offer, with Nvidia and AMD locking those cards down to reference designs only.

Hail to the new king, baby.

Finally, the sterling performance of the $680 GTX 980 Ti SC+ is yet more proof that gamers should pass on the beastly $1000 Titan X, even with the latter’s 12GB of RAM. If you picked up one of those Titan X’s when it was the clear lord of the land a few scant months ago…well, there’s a reason that graphics card lust is the cruelest obsession.

Author: Brad Chacos, Executive editor

Brad Chacos spends his days digging through desktop PCs and tweeting too much. He specializes in graphics cards and gaming, but covers everything from security to Windows tips and all manner of PC hardware.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti review: A ferocious graphics card at a fantastic price

Home / PCs & Components / Reviews

Reviews

By Brad Chacos

Executive editor, PCWorld

How do you make one of the best graphics cards available today even better?

Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 980 already trumps the Radeon R9 290X in virtually every gaming benchmark—solidly in some tests, by a hair in others—while also running far cooler, quieter, and more efficiently than AMD’s aging flagship. But with a new generation of powerful Radeons buoyed by cutting-edge high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and a rumored new Fiji GPU right around the corner, Nvidia couldn’t stand still. So the question stands: How do you make one of the best graphics cards even better?

Easy. Instead of trying to improve on the GTX 980’s already winning formula, the new $650 GTX 980 Ti takes its beating heart from Nvidia’s ferocious Titan X—the first single-GPU graphics card capable of gaming at 4K resolution.

But does it do so at the ultimate expense of the Titan X itself? Let’s dig in.

Meet the GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Nvidia’s GTX 980 Ti ditches the vanilla GTX 980’s GM204 graphics processor unit (GPU) in favor of a cut-down version of the $1000 Titan X’s bigger, badder GM200 chip.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti’s technical details. (Click to enlarge.)

Where the GTX 980 packs 2048 CUDA cores running at 1050MHz (boosting to 1216MHz when needed), the GTX 980 Ti comes with a beefy 2816—a couple hundred shy of the Titan X’s 3072 cores, but an utterly massive boost over the 980. The GPU’s clocked at the same 1000MHz (1075MHz boost) as the Titan X itself, and the GTX 980 Ti has the same number of ROP units and just 16 fewer texture units than its big brother Titan. Our Titan X review has more detail about the GM200 GPU.

The GTX 980 Ti tops its namesake—which is seeing its price slashed from $550 to $500—in the memory department, too. The new graphics card packs 6GB of onboard GDDR5 memory clocked at a speedy 7GHz, and it uses a wider 384-bit bus than the 4GB GTX 980, which taps a 256-bit interface. It may not be HBM, but fear not—the GTX 980 Ti is no slouch even at high resolutions, as you’ll see later.

Beyond the GPU, the GTX 980 Ti cribs more features from the Titan X. GM200 is a more power-hungry chip than GM204, so the GTX 980 Ti requires 6-pin and 8-pin power connections to draw its 250-watt TDP, compared to the GTX 980’s dual 6-pins and 165W.

Port-wise, the card has a trio of full-sized DisplayPort connections, a lonely HDMI 2.0 port, and dual-link DVI. Design-wise, the GTX 980 Ti matches the same silver aesthetic Nvidia reference cards have been rocking since the 600-series days, rather than the Titan X’s cool black exterior. The GTX 980 Ti also eschews the GTX 980’s metal backplate in favor of open circuitry, ostensibly due to airflow concerns in multi-card setups.

The GTX 980 Ti also packs all the usual software features standard to Nvidia’s Maxwell-based GPUs, like Voxel Global Illumination, Gameworks VR (formerly dubbed VR Direct) for virtual reality gaming, Dynamic Super Resolution, and Nvidia’s impressive Multi-Frame-Sampled Anti-aliasing (MFAA) technology, which smooths jagged edges at a level similar to traditional MSAA, but with much less of a performance hit. They’re all interesting and useful features, and we covered them in more detail when the GTX 970 and 980 were released late last year.

In a prebriefing, Nvidia’s Tom Peterson also stressed that the Maxwell GPU architecture uncerlying the GeForce 900-series—including the GTX 980 Ti—will be DirectX 12 feature level 12. 1-compatible.

While the base 12.0 version of DX12 in Windows 10 includes the low CPU overhead, asynchronous compute, and closer-to-the-metal control options everybody’s so excited about, supplementary feature levels add extra goodies.

Feature level 12.1 includes support for volume tiled resources, which use volumetric pixels to create more life-like smoke, fire, and fluid, as well as conservative rasterization, which more accurately determines whether a polygon covers part of a pixel. The effect’s most noticeable with ray-traced shadows, Peterson says, which have fewer odd internal gaps and smoothed-out edges when rendered with conservative rasterization than with traditional tech. (Click the image above for an enlarged comparison.)

For a more detailed explanation, I highly recommend reading AnandTech’s article on DirectX 12’s new rendering features.

Enough stage-setting. On to the benchmarks!

Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti benchmarks

As you might have guessed by glancing at the raw specifications, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti is an utter beast when it comes to PC gaming. Though it’s a wee bit tamer than its big Titan X sibling, pretty much everything is—AMD’s beastly dual-GPU Radeon R9 295×2 aside in games with proper CrossFire support.

Speaking of the Titan X, one area where the GTX 980 Ti differs significantly is in its onboard memory capacity. The new graphics card sports only 6GB of RAM.

Well, “only.”

That may not sound like much in a world where the Titan X packs an insane 12GB of RAM and AMD’s forthcoming flagship will arrive riding revolutionary HBM technology, but don’t be mistaken—6GB is more than enough to handle today’s games even at 4K resolution. Ultra-high resolutions consume far more memory than gaming at 1080p or even 2560×1440, especially as you ramp up anti-aliasing options, but 6GB of RAM should take everything you throw at it and come out smiling and still hungry.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt running at 4K. Damn, that game has some gorgeous sunsets. (Click to enlarge.)

And that’s good, because while the GTX 980 Ti isn’t quite as potent as the Titan X, it’s still the second card ever with the firepower to game adequately at 4K resolutions by its lonesome—no multi-card SLI setup necessary.

But let’s dive into the details before I get too far ahead of myself.

I tested the GTX 980 Ti using a 4K Dell UltraSharp monitor and PCWorld’s dedicated graphics card testing rig. I detail the system in full in PCWorld’s build guide, but here’s the Cliffs Notes version:

  • Intel’s Core i7-5960X with a Corsair Hydro Series h200i closed-loop water cooler, to eliminate any potential for CPU bottlenecks affecting graphical benchmarks
  • An Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard
  • Corsair’s Vengeance LPX DDR4 memory, Obsidian 750D full tower case, and 1200-watt AX1200i power supply
  • A 480GB Intel 730 series SSD
  • Windows 8.1 Pro

Nvidia’s MFAA technology can help boost your frame rates at home, but I disabled it during testing to avoid giving GeForce cards an unfair advantage. For comparison, the GTX 980 Ti is going up against the Titan X and the original GTX 980 (duh), as well as AMD’s Radeon 290X and dual-GPU R9 295×2. You’ll find the odd GTX 980 SLI results mixed in, as well.

I wanted to include GTA V results, but the game needs to connect to the Rockstar Social Club to validate its license every time your swap out your graphics card, and the GTX 980 Ti and its drivers weren’t allowed to touch the ‘Net prior to their official unveiling. Alas.

Next page: Performance benchmarks and a final verdict on Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics card.

So first up, let’s look at the benchmark results for Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. This critically acclaimed game (though not by us) offers an optional Ultra HD Texture pack that can murder your graphics card’s frame buffer at high resolutions. In fact, the game warns you against using the texture pack if your GPU has less than 6GB of RAM (though you can still use it on cards with less memory). The game was tested by using the Medium and High quality presets, then by using the Ultra HD Texture pack and manually cranking every graphics option to its highest available setting (which Shadow of Mordor’s Ultra setting doesn’t actually do).

There’s no Radeon R9 295×2 data available because the game constantly crashes every time I attempt to change any visual settings—including the resolution—with both AMD’s stable WHQL drivers as well as its latest available beta drivers. Click any graph in this article to enlarge it.

Speaking of hammering hardware, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition may be a recent remake of an older (and surprisingly great) game, but it still chews up and spits out graphics cards for breakfast. The latest and greatest graphics cards can’t hit 60fps on Ultra settings in this bad boy—even at 2560×1600.

But the Radeon flagship fires both guns in the sublime Metro Last Light Redux, a recent remake of the gritty, atmospheric Metro Last Light. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti, meanwhile, falls just a few frames per second shy of the mighty Titan X, as it does in all the gaming benchmarks. We test the game with SSAA disabled, as it’s an extreme form of anti-aliasing that slashes frame rates by 40 to 50 percent. You wouldn’t use SSAA in-game, and we don’t test with it.

Alien: Isolation is the most terrifying xenomorph experience since the original Alien movie. It’s also a gorgeous game that scales well across graphics hardware of all types and potency.

Bioshock: Infinite is getting a bit long in the tooth and virtually every graphics card available today handles it wonderfully, but it’s nevertheless a fine representative for the still-popular Unreal Engine 3. (UE4 can’t come fast enough, though.)

Dragon Age: Inquisition is a gorgeous, massive game—one of the best of 2014, in fact. It runs on the same Frostbite 3 engine used to power Battlefield 4, but despite the close ties EA’s technical team enjoys with AMD—and heavy AMD promotion for the game—DAI doesn’t appear to play nice with the R9 295×2’s dual GPUs, seemingly utilizing only one at a time no matter whether you’re using AMD’s WHQL or beta drivers.

I also tested the systems using two synthetic, but well-respected benchmarking tools: 3DMark’s Fire Strike and Unigine’s Valley.

To test power and thermal information, I run the grueling, worst-case-for-GPUs Furmark benchmark for 15 minutes, taking temperature information at the end using Furmark’s built-in tool as well as SpeedFan. Power is measured on a whole-system basis, rather than the GPU itself, by plugging the PC into a Watts Up meter rather than the wall socket itself.

The Radeon R9 295×2 runs cool and quiet thanks to its integrated closed-loop water cooler, but none of these cards—barring the reference R9 290X—are loud whatsoever. Anecdotally, the GTX 980 Ti’s sound levels are comparable to the Titan X’s: louder than Nvidia’s other 900-series Maxwell-based cards, to be sure, but still nowhere near noisy enough to bother you in a real-world scenario. Especially a gaming one.

There you have it: The Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti is a beast. It’s one of just two single-GPU graphics cards capable of gaming at 4K.

The same caveats apply as with the Titan X, of course. You won’t be able to crank the eye candy to Ultra settings at 4K—you’ll want to stick to High settings, lest your game devolve into a slideshow. And even on High settings, you’ll see frame rates shy of the buttery-smooth 60 frames per second threshold in most titles.

That’s perfectly acceptable for many gamers, but if it’s not for you, you could disable anti-aliasing entirely—smoothing out jaggies isn’t as necessary on such a pixel-packed screen, and AA comes with a sizeable performance hit—or investing in an Nvidia G-Sync-compatible monitor, which syncs the refresh rates of your GPU and your display to kill screen tearing and stuttering. G-Sync simply creates a superior, smoother visual experience overall. Or you could always turn to an SLI or CrossFire setup—if you’re willing to deal with the headaches inherent with a multi-card solution in exchange for more raw firepower.

But forget all that. What’s really interesting about the GTX 980 Ti is that it even exists, at least in its current form.

This graphics card brushes up against the $1000 Titan X’s lofty performance for $350 less and a free copy of Batman: Arkham Knight—essentially eliminating the practical need for PC gamers to consider the pricier card whatsoever. There’s little reason to spend $1000 for a Titan X over a $650 GTX 980 Ti even if you’ve got cash spilling out of your pockets.

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti removes the need for all but the most demanding gamers to consider the beastly Titan X (pictured).

Yes, the Titan X offers an insane 12GB of RAM, but frankly, that’s overkill for today’s games. Beyond gaming, its lack of double-precision floating point performance severely limits the Titan X’s appeal for many GPU compute tasks, though the card still excels at single-precision performance. 

The GTX 980 Ti’s 6GB of memory is more than enough for gaming unless you’re going nuts with the anti-aliasing settings at 4K resolution, and it will likely be enough for a while. Sure, if you’re running a multi-monitor setup with several 4K displays for 8K or 12K gaming, you’re going to want the larger 12GB frame buffer of the Titan X—and a SLI setup that essentially dedicates a Titan X to each screen. But if that’s you, you’re not just the 1 percent, you’re the 0. 00000001 percent.

Further reading: Tested: Nvidia GeForce and AMD Radeon graphics cards for every budget

So why does the GeForce GTX 980 Ti even exist? Just look at its reveal timing.

After a long delay, AMD’s scheduled to reveal its new flagship Radeon graphics card any day now, powered by a new Fiji GPU and that revolutionary high-bandwidth memory, which should theoretically rock at ultra-high resolutions. But it’s also rumored to be capped at 4GB memory capacity.

A-ha. Suddenly the $650 GTX 980 Ti—and its not 4GB, not 8GB, but 6GB of RAM—starts to make a lot more sense, even if it obliterates most of the Titan X’s positioning in the market.

And suddenly, I’m a lot more interested in seeing the price and performance details for AMD’s forthcoming flagship, because this is what Nvidia used to counter the Radeon’s release, and the GeForce GTX 980 Ti is nothing short of one hell of a graphics card at one hell of a price.

Author: Brad Chacos, Executive editor

Brad Chacos spends his days digging through desktop PCs and tweeting too much. He specializes in graphics cards and gaming, but covers everything from security to Windows tips and all manner of PC hardware.

Choosing an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics card: a review of 12 models

Table of contents

  • Introduction
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti
  • Lineup GeForce GTX 980 Ti
    • ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti Strix
    • ASUS ROG Matrix GTX 980 Ti Platinum
    • ASUS ROG Poseidon GTX 980 Ti
    • Gainward GeForce GTX 980 Ti Phoenix GS
    • Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti G1 Gaming
    • Inno3D GeForce GTX 980 Ti iChill X4 Ultra
    • KFA2 GeForce GTX 980 Ti OC
    • KFA2 GeForce GTX 980 Ti Hall of Fame
    • MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Gaming 6G
    • MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning
    • Palit GeForce GTX 980 Ti Super JetStream
  • Characteristics of tested graphics cards
  • Performance GeForce GTX 980 Ti
  • Conclusion

Introduction

The Overclockers. ru laboratory continues the cycle of materials devoted to the choice of game graphics accelerators. Previously, we already got acquainted with the GeForce GTX 9 lines60, GeForce GTX 970 and GeForce GTX 980, but now we will talk about the next model in the Nvidia hierarchy, which can rightly be considered top-end.

Being the junior version of the GeForce GTX Titan X, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti turned out to be a more affordable and interesting video card, not only becoming one of the leaders in terms of performance, but also providing users with another reason for disputes that have been going on since the days of the Radeon X1950 XTX and GeForce 7900 GTX .

Despite the fact that the announcement of the GeForce GTX 980 Ti took place six months ago, many interesting models reached domestic retail only recently. But among them there are both versions that deserve attention, as well as simpler solutions. And our review will help to understand this diversity.

recommendations

Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Description on the manufacturer’s website — link.

Nvidia engineers used the design of representatives of the GeForce GTX Titan line in the novelty, while retaining the company’s traditional CO design. Obviously, the existing cooling systems left over from the design of the GeForce GTX 770 / GTX 780 (Ti) perfectly suited not only the new single-processor flagship, but also the GeForce GTX 980 Ti.

The very design of the cooling system is borrowed from the GeForce GTX Titan X, and it, in turn, migrated to it from the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. Inside, instead of the usual heat pipes, there is an evaporation chamber, since only it is able to transfer a large amount of heat to the radiator fins.

A small slot has been left next to the SLI connectors to allow heated air to escape. And up to a third of the total heat comes out through this hole, so you should not block it. The main radiator is not soldered to heat dissipators of the power system and memory chips. Thanks to this, it is possible to install a separate water block.

«GeForce GTX» on the side is illuminated by a green LED. It is controlled through a separate application, there are three modes to choose from: off, constantly on, smoothly fading backlight.

The GeForce GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti are twin brothers. The same printed circuit board, the same number of power phases, what can I say, even the elements are the same. By overclocking the older model, one can judge the typical power consumption of 250 watts. The rest is limited in the BIOS. But even in this scenario, there is a small margin of 10%.

Of course, the quality of the GM200 GPU die in the GeForce GTX 980 Ti is lower, otherwise where do the stripped-down versions come from? Although it also happens that the market situation forces manufacturers to «reject» fully working microcircuits.

The combination of power phases involved is “6+2”. The PWM controller remained the same — NCP4206. It is easy for them to manage third-party utilities. True, it is difficult to use the entire range of the voltmod due to the power consumption limit of the video card, which is set by Nvidia.

Even by today’s standards, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti has an impressive 6 GB of video memory. All microcircuits are located on the front side.

The nominal frequencies of the video card are 1000 MHz for the GPU (GPU Boost up to 1075 MHz) and 1750 MHz for the memory. In practice, the GPU is capable of reaching frequencies of 1177-1200 MHz.


In load mode, GPU Boost 2.0 technology increases the frequency of the video core up to 1200 MHz. The original cooling system copes with its task, not allowing the GPU to warm up above 83 ° C, then special algorithms work that keep it at this level, sacrificing performance. The emitted noise level can be described as above average.

For a more detailed version of the reference design, see Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti Video Card Review and Test.

Lineup GeForce GTX 980 Ti

ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti Strix

Description on the manufacturer’s website — link.

Externally, this video card is strikingly different from other modifications of the ASUS Strix series. Thanks to the original cooling system and protruding heat pipes, the model looks massive. Red and gray elements are located on the sides of the casing, which gives expressiveness to the design.

The developers equipped the model with a non-reference printed circuit board, which, together with a protruding heatsink, increases the length of the video card to 305 mm, and the width to 150 mm. Even by today’s standards, the dimensions are outstanding, which imposes some restrictions when used in modern ATX cases. It also benefits the appearance of the presence of a “backplate”, which will come in handy if the system unit is equipped with a side window.

The DirectCU III cooler consists of a fairly massive heatsink, which uses 49longitudinally arranged aluminum plates, and three 88 mm axial fans with an improved blade shape, mounted on a plastic casing.

Five copper heat pipes of different diameters are used to evenly distribute heat over the entire area of ​​the radiator: two 10 mm, two 8 mm and one 6 mm. The heatsink fins and heatpipes are nickel plated. To increase the efficiency of heat transfer, the tubes are securely soldered to the aluminum heatsink fins and the copper base.

Separately, we note that the main cooling system contacts directly with the power elements of the power subsystem using a thermal interface. But the memory chips, unfortunately, are deprived of any additional cooling.

The PCB version of the GeForce GTX 980 Ti Strix does not really look like a reference. Not that it is not similar, but entirely made from scratch. This is partly dictated by the rules of the manufacturer — Strix, DirectCU III, Matrix and Poseidon have long been created with special requirements.

Nvidia GeForce GTX Ti 980’s standard wording is «6+2» power phase. ASUS is rewriting it to «12+2» phases. Moreover, it rewrites so that the changes also apply to the PWM controller — now it is Digi + ASP1500U.

The ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti Strix graphics card boasts factory overclocking: the core operates at a frequency of 1216 MHz, the video memory frequency is 1800 MHz.


In gaming applications, thanks to the GPU Boost 2.0 algorithm, the clock speed of the video core increased to 1380 MHz. This is a very good indicator. The applied cooling system did not allow the GPU to warm up above 78°C. In general, the noise level was above average.

More details about this model can be found in the material «Review and testing of the video card ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti Strix (Strix-GTX980TI-DC3OC-6GD5-Gaming)».

ASUS ROG Matrix GTX 980 Ti Platinum

Description on the manufacturer’s website — link.

As a rule, the ASUS Matrix series used black and red colors, but in the new solution, the palette has been changed and now the cooling system casing is decorated with a metallic surface with an orange accent.

The orange color is even present on the back. There is a protective plate here, which provides additional structural rigidity, and also protects the back of the device from various mechanical influences.

The cooler layout is the same as for most other graphics accelerators. The main difference lies in the heat sink, where the tubes directly contact, otherwise the design is already familiar.

Five copper heatpipes radiate from the base and are plated with nickel and then with black paint. Two of them are 8 mm thick, two are 6 mm thick and one is 10 mm thick. They go both up and down. Then they bend to the sides, and then turn back, penetrating an array of aluminum ribs along the way.

Note that the shape of the blades is similar to those of the ASUS GTX 980 Ti Strix, but the motors are different. FirstD FD10015h22S devices with technical characteristics of 12 V, 0.55 A are used here. The radiator is covered with a plastic casing from above.

The printed circuit board is very large in height, however, like the Strix version.

Memory chips can easily overcome the resulting frequency barrier of 8000 MHz. Together they form a 384-bit data exchange interface, and their total volume reaches 6 GB.

The power subsystem deserves special attention. Partly thanks to her, the board turned out to be so large in height. It is made according to the formula «12+2+1» (GPU/MEM/PLL). The power system on the ASUS GTX 980 Ti Strix is ​​made according to exactly the same type.

ASUS graphics cards are rated at 1216 MHz (GPU Boost up to 1317 MHz) for the GPU and 1800 MHz for the memory. For such a version of the GeForce GTX 980 Ti with such a powerful power supply, the application is more than logical.


In load mode using GPU Boost 2.0 technology, the frequency of the video core increased up to 1442 MHz, but then smoothly decreased to 1430 MHz. With this approach, the cooling system did not allow the GPU to warm up above 66°C, while operating at 50% of its maximum power (~1450 rpm). Thanks to this, the video card works quite quietly.

Yes, and according to the results of our material «Review and testing of the video card ASUS ROG Matrix GTX 980 Ti Platinum (Matrix-GTX980TI-P-6GD5-Gaming)», the impression was good.