GTX 980 8GB GDDR5 Allegedly Inbound – Landing in November

I know a lot of people waiting for these in order to make multi-GPU setups for 4K so...

Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 8GB GDDR5 Allegedly Inbound – Landing in November

So something pretty exciting happened regarding the Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 flagship. Hermitage Akihabara, one of our most authentic sources I might add, has posted with confidence that Nvidia is preparing to launch 8GB versions of their flagship. Needless, to say this is pretty big news, because not only will this help boost Maxwell sales even further, but also counter any 8GB variant that AMD rolls out.

Nvidia preparing 8GB variants of Maxwell GTX 980 – targeting the 4K Gaming Standard

For single GPU configurations 4GB memory is usually sufficient for most games, not counting an insane amount of Skyrim mods running concurrently. However once you start entering the realm of 4K, memory and bus width starts to matter a lot. The last generation rival from AMD, namely the R9 290X has a huge bus width (512 bits) so it has an automatic advantage over any 256 bit GPU. Nvidia employs alot of software wizardry and color compression techniques to make sure that the small bus does not become a problem, but since they are talking about increasing memory to 8GB I wondered how that would fare in situations that actually benefit from the excess vram.

Currently no single card (Dual GPU cards do not count as a single card technically) can run modern games at 4K resolution at high or near-to-high settings. It is because of this that GPUs usually dont have more than 4GB of memory. However, if you are entering the realm of multi-gpu configurations than playing at 4K finally becomes a reality, and if you are applying copious amounts of anti aliasing and mods, that vram is going to get eaten up pretty fast. As most of you would know vram does not stack in crossfire or sli configs, it is because of this that any cards which boast 8GB of memory is built ideally for Multi-GPU use.

A Dual Crossfire or SLI setup is usually the most optimum setup that offers good value and very decent scaling. So if you are going shopping for cards in the holiday season, and the 8GB version has a high premium, I would suggest skipping it unless you plan to upgrade to SLI or are into (very very) heavy modding. For casual modding needs, 4GB variants will more than suffice. The card is allegedly landing in November this year and HA mentions once again that the GTX 960 is queued for the first quarter of 2015.

You knew they'll release these then come January the full fat Maxwell will come with 6gb. And it'll be facepalm time.

Pretty much.

980 Ti with 6GB VRAM on a 384Bit bus and 2560 Cuda cores will make people who buy the 8GB 980 open up their base units and take a piss.

Well thats the most possible scenario. :D

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I am guessing this will be the order (starting at november...):

GTX980 with 8GB

GTX990 = dual full GM204

GTX960 = GM204/206 with 1280 cores and 3GB 192bit VRAM

GTX Titan II = GM200 with 1/0 SMX disabled + higher clocks from 980ti + 12GB

GTX980ti = GM200 with 2/3 SMX disabled 6GB

Just my guesstimates based on what I am reading daily :P

i am waiting for the 12Gb Titan

I am more interested in hearing about a possible GTX975, or a higher VRAM version of the GTX970. (doesn't have to be 8GB, but I would want more than 4gb)

I am also interested in when the GTX980ti comes out what its price/performance will be.

There is always going to be the waiting game.

I went with two GTX 970s with 4GB of vRAM since I only game at 1440p and the price of two of those cards was a great deal.

The price of the 980ti or even the 980 8GB version will probably cost more than both of my GTX 970s yet they perform quite a bit worse.

If you have a GTX 780ti SLI setup I wouldn't upgrade until Pascal.

I also have 970 SLI. 4K is still unrealistic with current video cards. Bus limitation definitely comes into play at 4K and current GPU power is lacking. It will be a while yet before we can max all games at 4K 60fps steady.

I think all will agree with me that they're more into GTX970 8Gb version rather than 980.

AMD already had 8GB R9 290X.

8GB Sapphire Radeon R9 290X TOXIC

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 03/13/2014 08:22 AM

Next piece of news will be 6GB 970's or 975's which will have to be weaker than stock 4GB 980's.

I think the 970 is too close to the performance of a 980 for there to be something inbetween. At least this soon from release.

The GTX 275 was pretty much the performance of a GTX 280 but that was around a year later before it's release.

As I said in the other thread, its close but from a marketing perspective its the smart thing to do, or they will be OEM only cards for Dell, HP, Asus, etc.

It probably won't happen, there hasn't been one since the GTX 200 series which was 5 years ago.

They might have one between the 960 and 970 though.

Actually guyz, GTX275 and GTX285 was a die shrink of GT200 which was used at GTX280 as well. (GTX275 had same perf with GTX280 despite the fact that GTX275 had "lesser" 448 bit VRAM.)

If they will do something similar today, they will change the entire name from GTX9xx to GTX10xx...

ps: This is a hint also that the performance increase of the same chip will be around 10% from the die shrink of GM204 like it was from GT200.

Just saying it is unlikely for them to put a card inbetween the x70 and x80 of a series and more likely to do it with their mid range.

They might release the 20nm process and keep it under the 9xx series and then release the 16nm on the 1xxx series for Pascal, but that seems unlikely.

I'm not looking that far ahead ;)

I think something like a 6GB 975 to replace a potential 8GB 970, this would slot in between the AMD 380x and 390 which @Coseniath reported on about a week or 2 weeks back.

I doubt it since the 970 is too close to the 980 on the same nm process.

And 6GB would entail a difference bus width of 384 or 192.

I think it's much more likely that they will release the 8gb versions of the 970 and 980.

Is the 980ti 6GB model exactly true or just an internet rumour. Don't want to jump onto a GTX980 8GB if the 980ti 6GB is true. Plus don't want to wait to find out it was just a rumour and miss out on the GTX980 8GB. The problem with video cards is they are constantly updating so you either bite the bullet or constantly wait for the next best thing and never upgrade.

My 780ti 3GB is handling a lot of games with no issues, except for the lack of VRAM. Thus I really need a better performing card.

I still cant see what is rush about 8 gb vram ! i just wish that witcher 3 dont come to this end to play it in ultra !! :S

Nah, 8GB VRAM atm, is for 4K.

All these games that claim more than 4GB VRAM is needed for 1080p or 1440p, I really wanna see benchmarks verifying this...

$650 probably.

I'm probably going to dump my 780 Ti for an 8GB 980. The 780 Ti is a would be great card with a crapload of fast CUDA cores that's completely hamstrung by its lack of VRAM, and it really shows in some of these terribly optimized console ports that are coming out. Video cards are going to need at least 8GB VRAM going forward due to the 8GB unified RAM on the Xbone and PS4. Developers don't really care about the lower VRAM on the PC. They're going to keep designing their games with the idea in mind that they will have 4-6GB VRAM available. I'm actually rather disgusted that AMD and nVidida weren't shipping cards with more VRAM much sooner. The PS4 has 8GB 256-bit GDDR5 and it's only $400. It was clearly a move so that people would have to upgrade when it became clear that 3 and 4GB VRAM weren't going to cut it. I'm also really disgusted with my 780 Ti. I don't think I've seen a video card age this poorly since maybe the late 90s or early 2000s. Less than a year later and a $330 card has identical performance, and it's obsolete due to lack of VRAM.

I don't think so. Console games at a minimum will use mostly 3Gb as VRAM and the most advanced, at most, around 4-4.5Gb. They can't use all available memory as VRAM, even when it's unified some of it needs to be used as system memory.

Also a single 980 with 8Gb will probably be useless, you will most probably get stuck in raw power before you effectively use all that extra VRAM. These cards will only shine in SLI configs.

I don't think so. Console games at a minimum will use mostly 3Gb as VRAM, and the most advanced, at most, around 4-4.5Gb. They can't use all available memory as VRAM, even when it's unified some of it needs to be used as system memory.

Also a single 980 with 8Gb will probably be useless, you will most probably get stuck in raw power before you effectively use all that extra VRAM. These cards will only shine in SLI configs.