Nvidia GTX980 Ti Review

1. Introduction2. Nvidia GTX980 Ti3. Overclocking the GTX980 Ti4. High Res Gallery5. Testing Methodology6. 3DMark Vantage7. 3DMark 118. 3DMark9. Unigine Heaven Benchmark10. Grid AutoSport (1600p)11. Grid AutoSport (Ultra HD 4K)12. Tomb Raider (1600p)13. Tomb Raider (Ultra HD 4K)14. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (1600p)15. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Ultra HD 4K)16. Grand Theft Auto 5 (1600p)17. Grand Theft Auto 5 (Ultra HD 4K)18. Thermal Dynamics/IR Thermometer Readings19. Acoustics Performance20. Power Consumption21. Closing Thoughts22. View All Pages

Nvidia's Maxwell architecture has dominated the market since last year and today they release their new flagship board – the GTX980 Ti … slotting in above the GTX980 in the high end. The GTX980ti features 6GB of GDDR5 memory and a list of uprated specifications to bring it closer in line with the super expensive GTX Titan X.

The GTX980 has been a high profile success story for Nvidia, however the 4GB of GDDR5 memory has been a sticking point for many – especially enthusiast gamers building a new Ultra HD 4K gaming system. The extra 2GB of GDDR5 memory fitted to the Nvidia GTX980 Ti will be welcomed by the audience who have held back on a GTX980 purchase so far.

Right now AMD lovers have two high end choices. The power hungry, dual GPU R9 295X2 has been reduced in price to £499.99-£599.99 via selected retailers and there are some 8GB R9 290X cards available from companies such as Sapphire. Until AMD release their new series of cards, Nvidia have been able to run amok in the high end.

Regular readers will be pleased to hear that it shouldn't be too long now before AMD will have some tempting solutions available – KitGuru will obviously be on hand to give you the inside story when the time comes.

GPU	GeForce GTX960	Geforce GTX970	GeForce GTX980	Geforce GTX 980 Ti	Geforce GTX Titan X
Streaming Multiprocessors	8	13	16	22	24
CUDA Cores	1024	1664	2048	2816	3072
Base Clock	1126 mhz	1050 mhz	1126 mhz	1000 mhz	1000 mhz
GPU Boost Clock	1178 mhz	1178 mhz	1216 mhz	1075 mhz	1076 mhz
Total Video memory	2GB	4GB	4GB	6GB	12GB
Texture Units	64	104	128	176	192
Texture fill-rate	72.1 Gigatexels/Sec	109.2 Gigatexels/Sec	144.1 Gigatexels/Sec	176 Gigatexels/Sec	192 Gigatexels/Sec
Memory Clock	7010 mhz	7000 mhz	7000 mhz	7000 mhz	7000 mhz
Memory Bandwidth	112.16 GB/sec	224 GB/s	224 GB/sec	336.5 GB/sec	336.5 GB/sec
Bus Width	128bit	256bit	256bit	384bit	384bit
ROPs	32	56	64	96	96
Manufacturing Process	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm
TDP	120 watts	145 watts	165 watts	250 watts	250 watts

The Nvidia GTX980 Ti ships with 2816 CUDA cores and 22 SM units. The memory subsystem of the GTX980 Ti consists of six 64-bit memory controllers (384-bit) with 6GB of GDDR5 memory.

Today we test the Nvidia GTX980Ti against a modified GTX980, reference GTX Titan X, Sapphire R9 290X 8GB and as a topic of interest we also included the Nvidia Titan Z, and AMD R9 295X2 … both dual GPU solutions. We are using the latest Nvidia and AMD drivers (as of 25th May) to ensure even footing throughout.

Nvidia have controlled this particular launch, so we have no modified partner 980Ti's to highlight today. That said, we know the Maxwell architecture has always responded well to overclocking, so we get this out of the way first and include results at reference clock speeds and maximum stable settings, throughout the review. This should give a good indication of what partners will be able to squeeze out of the GTX980 Ti in the coming weeks.

Become a Patron!