Nvidia launches GTX 970 and 980... more cushion for the pushing...

[CardsFan88]

Nvidia has just released their new line of graphics cards, the GTX 970 (msrp $329) and GTX 980 (msrp $549), a couple of days ago. This is their first full fledged GPU leveraging the new Maxwell architecture, the successor to Kepler.

It's still based off the 28nm process node, but the 20nm likely isn't coming at all for graphics cards, and the next process node shrink won't likely occur until the 16/14nm node with FinFET. So late 2015 at the earliest, and most likely sometime during 2016 with an outside chance of it not arriving to even 2017.

TSMC and Global Foundries really screwed up by not utilizing FinFET (as opposed to Intel who did implement it with its 22nm process node in their homegrown fabs) and it's likely the only use for the 20nm process will be low end and mobile products, like the Apple iPhone 6. They could maybe retroactively refit some of the 20nm fabs, but this is unlikely. It makes the most sense for both sides, the fabs, and the GPU makers to wait until the next node at 16/14nm.

I found a great article that details the issues, it's from March, and it is a bit speculative at the time. But it asks some poignant questions, and hones in on the information being put out by industry insiders at the time. Fast forward to today, and it all rings crystal clear, and was obviously spot on.

http://techsoda.com/no-20nm-graphics-amd-nvidia/

So that said, what are the reviewers saying? The reviews are very positive. Granted this isn't the ultra high end $1200-3000 graphics cards, but the mainstream entry-moderate level enthusiasts that want great performance, but without paying for it like they were buying a used car. So don't expect this to dethrone a Titan-Z, but it contains improvement after improvement in many areas.

Lower power consumption, less heat, higher performance, improved tessellation, improved color compression to save memory bandwidth, new features, and all at a drastically reduced cost. While the GTX 980 isn't priced too well, when you compare it to the $700 GPU's it beats, the GTX 780ti, it's a great card. Maxwell is a magnificent feat of engineering.

But the shocker is the GTX 970 for $329, though Newegg and other retailers have bumped up the price a bit to $339-369, depending on the quality of the attached cooler.

This card when overclocked, factory or user, or both... can beat the ~$700 GTX 780ti. It can even best a stock clocked GTX 980. Not bad for ~$220 less then a decently priced GTX 980, which itself is lower priced then what it replaced.

This is a massive bang for your buck purchase. This is a quality successor to a GTX 560ti or a GTX 670, other recent bang for your buck quality cards from years past. In fact the GTX Titan that released one year and seven months ago, for $999 (though it routinely was sold for ~$1200) is bested by this $329 card. That's insane, especially without a new process node, and all the while reducing power consumption and heat.

If you want to SLI this card, it will only cost you about $660 (MSRP), which is not that much more then a GTX 980, and it will throttle a single GTX 980.

My GTX 670 was a great card, but it's been showing its age in recent games, even at 1080p, and so I couldn't resist this great value, and so my EVGA ACX1.0 GTX 970, with a factory OC boost to 1317 mhz will be arriving from newegg.com by the end of Tuesday. I can't wait to see how much more I can push it.

Anyways, here are a list of reviews. If you're in the market for a new PC, or simply an upgraded GPU, this is the one to get.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/190463-nvidia-maxwell-gtx-980-and-gtx-970-review

http://techreport.com/review/27067/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-and-970-graphics-cards-reviewed

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx_980/

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/74853-evga-geforce-gtx-970-ftw/

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-and-980-reference-review,1.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_970_SC_ACX_Cooler/

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...and-GTX-970-GM204-Review-Power-and-Efficiency

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/09/19/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-review/1

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/190463-nvidia-maxwell-gtx-980-and-gtx-970-review

http://www.techspot.com/review/885-nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-gtx-980/

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/msi-gtx-970-gaming-4g-review/

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/67...rozr-v-gaming-oc-video-card-review/index.html

http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1443



I also read a good article today detailing how Microsoft and Nvidia were working together, along with Epic, the maker of the Unreal Engine 4 to better implement DX12 and the Maxwell architecture, and so it's very likely that even though DX12 isn't a finished specification, that these new Maxwell cards are indeed going to either be DX12 compliant or very nearly so. If you want to utilize DX12 and properly run games on the newer engines, such as the Unreal Engine 4, a Maxwell GPU (970 and 980) are the only available ones made late in the DX12 development process which should ensure they can properly utilize all the features and vice versa. Of course later generation cards will too, but Maxwell seems to be the cut off point. Maxwell and later, of which the GTX 970 and GTX 980 is the front line.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/directx/arc...-lights-up-nvidia-s-maxwell-editor-s-day.aspx

I'm really excited about the new super sampling technique called Dynamic Super Resolution, the new MFAA (Multi-Frame Sampled AA) , the new third generation lossless delta color compression for enhanced memory bandwidth (224gb/s supposedly performs as well as 300 gb/s), additional L2 cache (that's a 2nd memory improvement so some work doesn't even have to access that 224/300 Gb/s bandwidth), Oculus Rift latency reduction, Voxel Global Illumination, and more.

Other recent high-end cards may have brute force to fall back on, but when games in the future (and retroactively like AC IV: Black Flag) implement some of these features, the older cards will start tailing off faster then the new Maxwell architecture, if they can even access them.

This is a quality card all the way around. Once again I highly recommend the GTX 970. I'll post back more once I get it and benchmark it.

Currently my [email protected] and GTX 670 garners a 3dmark Firestrike score of 5908. This could come close to doubling with just the new GTX 970. If I overclock it past the factory overclock, it probably will.

Currently it should be noted that retailers have raised the price on-the-fly an extra 10-20 dollars, and there have been reports of European retailers increasing the price even more due to high demand. Also ATI could respond, but it will be hard pressed to beat either the performance or price of the GTX 970. Their tech is simply behind Nvidia's, and they will not be pulling a new process node (aka shrink) out of a hat. At this point the GTX 970 is well positioned to be a severe ATI killer for the foreseeable future.

 

[devilalum]

nerd

 

[SO91]

Oh dude, thanks for this post. I too have a 670 and didn't really feel the need to upgrade when the 700 series cards came out. Now though, I don't think I'll be able to resist the upgrade, wallet be damned

 

[Covert Rain]

I want to get my hands on one of these cards for sure!

 

[CardsFan88]

Well I installed it yesterday, and did a bunch of stock benchmarking, and playing around with games that were giving me trouble with the GTX 670. Games like Watch Dogs, AC IV: Black Flag, Crysis 3, Battlefield 4, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, as well as some other games which had some super high settings you knew you weren't going to be able to do correctly. Like Hitman: Absolution, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider (TressFX), Total War: Rome 2.

The synthetic benchmarks were good. Stock GTX 970 speed on my [email protected] ghz came back with a 3Dmark Fire Strike score of 9815. That's a 66 percent increase from the GTX 670 which got 5908.

I overclocked it this morning and got to a maximum of 1300mhz base, and 1452mhz boost, and 2015 mhz memory. For some reason GPU-Z has two speeds it reports and EVGA matches that this 1452 was actually 1476 mhz and 2015mhz memory as 2018mhz. This was the max benchmark stable. With this overclocked setup on 3dmark Fire Strike I scored 10829. That's an 83 percent increase from the stock GTX 670 score. The overclock gained 10.3 percent score over the stock overclocked GTX 970. At 1452mhz boost, that is an increase over the 1178mhz stock reference boost of ~23.2% increase.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

I actually got the memory up another 25mhz or so but some artifacts appeared. Still got through the 3dmark test but actually scored lower.

Overall this is pretty close to the same clocks techpowerup got in their review for the same exact vendor model of the GTX 970 video card. They got 1315 mhz max base and 2010mhz memory. So 1300 and 2015 is pretty close. (though if that 1476 max was correct it would mean I actually hit 1322mhz base which would be higher then they got).

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_970_SC_ACX_Cooler/28.html

The display driver at this setting crashed a couple hours into playing. This means it simply resets to it's native clock. Then you go overclock it again. So I've lowered where I put it to so that it is 1290mhz base, 1442mhz boost, 2005 memory and we'll see how it goes. It could be a voltage issue though. I noticed I could score at that 1300mhz base with or without extra manual voltage and without the constant boost overclock setting engaged through EVGA's precision overclock tool. It still boosts voltage automatically, but I don't think to the same degree as selecting those settings. Didn't make much sense when it didn't seem to add anything. Perhaps it would keep me stable at that extra 10mhz or so, but if that's it, it's not worth it. It sure didn't help me go past that when both were enabled.

I could get the 3Dmark Fire Strike benchmark numbers higher if I further overclocked my CPU. I could take it from 4.3 to 4.6, perhaps a bit higher, I've gotten it to post at 4.8. Plus I could use my GTX 670 as a physx card, but for practical purposes I just wanted to compare GTX 670 to GTX 970.

Bioshock Infinite max settings and still pulls over 100 fps most times. The little yellow number is the FRAPS frames per second overlay.

You must be registered for see images attach

Max Payne 3 Solid 60 v-synvc with all settings maxed except 4xMSAA

You must be registered for see images attach

Far Cry 3 is 60 v-sync butter smooth as is Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

Batman: Arkham Origins uses these settings and gets this for its benchmark.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

Wolfenstein: The New Order is a maxed out 60 most of the time.

You must be registered for see images attach

It indeed makes the games I've checked, much more playable. Compared to the GTX 670 you'll be able to turn up settings and get back to 60 FPS V-Sync or near it most of the time.

Let's take Watch Dogs for example. This was at 35-55 FPS with many of the settings lowered to around medium with the GTX 670. Still you'd have drops lower than that.

You can raise all of them to ultra except AA (I used FXAA) and get pretty good performance. 35-100FPS, but you'll mostly be 45-80. You can turn a few settings down and get almost rock solid 60, with it averaging 55-85 in most places. The average frame is definitely above 60 when not V-Synced, but driving takes a hit. I saw in some small back alleyways on foot I'd get FPS up to 110. Seemed to hover around 65-90 when you're walking around. Word is there is something with the loading of new areas as you are driving around which gives the hit at times and go around 35 FPS if also alot of stuff is going on, which was alot lower with the GTX 670.

If you lock it to V-Sync you're mostly right at 60 and most drops are only a couple of frames. Overall the game can now be considered playable with the 970. It's not perfect. You'll still want to play around with the settings a bit, and this is with FXAA being used, but overall it's much more playable. If you put most things on high instead of ultra, it'll be almost a perfect V-Sync 60. Here's quite a few Watch Dogs screenshots so you can see what I'm talking about. Oh and these Watch Dogs pictures and framerates on them are from an overclocked GTX 970.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag was similar with the GTX 670. It needed some combo of low through high and you still got some big frame drops, which for Black Flag would push you to 30 FPS. With the GTX 970 you can put pretty much everything on max except PhysX. Put that at low or off and you'll get mostly 55-60 FPS, mostly 60. So once again you can turn up settings and get a much better framerate.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

Crysis 3 gets a minimum FPS of around 50 maxed out except for only FXAA during this rainy beginning of the game scene. But it's normally higher then that. Great improvement from the GTX 670.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

Battlefield 4 is maxed out with 2xMSAA easily keeping 60. Only thing that seemed to drop it below that is the tower fall in Siege of Shanghai map, and only briefly. Very, Very solid framerate. Butter smooth.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

Hitman: Absolution maxed out gets an average FPS in the benchmark of about 76 FPS.

You must be registered for see images attach

 

[CardsFan88]

Sleeping Dogs locked 60 max everything except one notch down on AA

You must be registered for see images attach

Tomb Raider maxed out with TressFX, still min FPS is 66 in the benchmark and average in the 80's when overclocked. Add 30 or so FPS without TressFX enabled. Here are pictures with TressFX without overclocking.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

Total War: Rome 2 gets an average of 65 FPS in their benchmark with mostly the highest settings (Extreme), but no SSAO or Alpha vegetation. Huge improvement from the GTX 670.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

Metro Last light benchmark showed a nice increase. Max settings gave an average of 26 FPS with the GTX 670 and with the 970 that went up to 41 and 43 the two times I tested it that way. I then tested the 970 without SSAO and the average FPS went up to 68 and 72 the two times I tested it. The in-game pictures are from the run WITHOUT SSAO.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

As you can see, it's a nice increase across the board. Higher settings and higher framerates. Make no mistake this isn't a 3xSLI Titan-Z setup, and with such a setup you'd get all the AA you want, so on and so forth. This is the $329-369 video card that can do all this and if you SLI two of them together it's only $60 more the GTX 980. But you really don't need two, just one will give you all this!

 

[Covert Rain]

Good job Cardsfan 88. Very thorough and nice touch with the screen shots. Good info. I am excited bout this card since I am in the process of either buying a new gaming PC or build another one. I can't decide how lazy I want to be this time.

Pretty impressive results with a single card setup. Dual SLI would be just gravy but I don't think I want to spend that much on a two card SLI setup anyway.

In your opinion is spending the extra $60 worth it? IM experience usually there is not enough of a jump in performance to justify $60 more but I have not had a chance to read all the benchmark reviews of both cards in detail yet.

 

[CardsFan88]

I've never had an SLI setup myself, but from what I understand, it's like this.

SLI can give you 70-99 percent boost, but of course each game is different, and each game has to support it, and thus each game can have flaws or bugs. When new games come out, it can be a bit buggy, or it won't allow you to run the game in SLI mode. Sometimes you have to wait for a patch.

But generally speaking, it seems most games are fine soon enough. If you don't buy two, you'll never have that extra power, and so at the very least you'll always have at least the power of one, and usually soon after both.

Also SLI can bring in microstutter, but I've actually heard that adding a 3rd card helps get rid of that. I've never experienced it. Some people hate it, others don't mind or can't tell it's there. I can't give you an answer on that one.

Nowadays you don't have to buy the exact same vendor version. So if you get one, and decide to get another later, it doesn't have to be your specific EVGA or MSI or whatever brand. As long as it's the same model, 970, then it should work.

It's not $60 more dollars, it's $60 more compared to 980. $329x2=$660 compared to $599 for the 980. Of course it may be a little higher then that if you pay $339-369 for the card, but this price will probably come back down in a few weeks. But the 980 can also go up in price, so it's pretty similar.

Is it worth it? It should give you 70-99 percent boost in frames. The 980 will only give you like a ~10 percent or so boost versus the 970. So yeah, it's a bigger improvement. Of course dual 980's would beat that, but again not by much.

So I can't answer whether or not you'll like SLI, but what I can tell you is that IF you want it, and many do, the GTX 970 will be the average man's choice card for SLI for foreseeable future.

Oh since you've built one before, just remember you can pick the quality components, get better stuff overall, and still spend less money if you buy it yourself. Alienware looks cool, but you can get the same computer for half the price.

I don't know if you use newegg.com, but they regularly have so much on sale. Just keep checking, and buy things as they come on sale (once you decide what type of computer you are going for). Also Intel's CPU's are lightyears ahead of AMD's. AMD's 8 cores are getting their butt's kicked by an Intel 4 core. So just remember that.

Also if you have the money Intel has a new line of 6 and 8 core CPU's with DDR4. You may want to double check how those 6 core run games, they're clocked lower and may not overclock as well. But either way with at least a quad core with HT from Intel, your CPU will be fine.

 

[Covert Rain]

It's not $60 more dollars, it's $60 more compared to 980. $329x2=$660 compared to $599 for the 980. Of course it may be a little higher then that if you pay $339-369 for the card, but this price will probably come back down in a few weeks. But the 980 can also go up in price, so it's pretty similar.

Is it worth it? It should give you 70-99 percent boost in frames. The 980 will only give you like a ~10 percent or so boost versus the 970. So yeah, it's a bigger improvement. Of course dual 980's would beat that, but again not by much.

This is what I was referring to. Not interested in SLI. I was really asking about the difference between the two versions of the card. However, I read several reviews yesterday and the consensus is paying the premium for the higher end card is not really worth the small boost in performance which you get with the 980 vs 970. Pretty much what I thought and par for the course.