Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 and 980 reviews

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 and 980 reviews:

Gamespot

Anandtech

Guru3D

HardwareCanucks

HardwareHeaven

HiTech Legion

PCPerspective

TweakTown

TechpowerUp

Techspot

The Tech Report

Bit-tech

Tom's Hardware

Vortez

HardOCP

HotHardware

Legit Reviews

Overclockers Club

For those who are bored to read:

GeForce GTX 980 & 970 Product Video

A lot of people will want to buy the new GPUs especially the GTX970 which has near GTX780ti performance while it costs $330. So here are the most (trusted) reviews.

:)

So would you say the 970 would be a good upgrade from a 670 (2gb)? Looks like it to me....

Personally I would wait , unless your running 120hz monitor and or beyond 1080 resolution, what cant the 760-680 run on high to max settings.

I'm running at 1440p right now. I have had this 670 for over 2 years now, amazed at how well it's still running games but since I upgraded to 1440p I did notice a little hit.

The GTX970 will give you 50% more performance at the resolution you play.

@Coseniath:

Looks like 38%-40% to me....which is still a nice boost.

Would it be great to upgrade form 7870 to GTX970? (Monitor 1080p)

I think 330$ for such a great performance is absolutely suitable ....

@mjorh:

Yeah that's what I'm thinking. I mean for $330 (+/-).....that's amazing.

Waiting for a 300$ in Canada (currently 380$) before I retire my 670 for my 1440p monitor

GTX670 = 66%

GTX970 = 100%

100/66= 1,5 = 150% :)

Lets say you have 66FPS in a game and GTX970 can give you 100. Thats 33FPS more at your 66FPS which is 50% more.

Well if that's the case, even more reason to jump on it. Man, I can see these cards lasting for a REALLY long time. It's not so much like the old days when a card was history after 2 years. I mean my 670 would be more than enough still after 2.5 years if I had not upped my monitor res.

Completely agree with you. Consoles do not have enough power to challenge your GTX670 so most of the games that will be out, they will run fine at your PC.

The only thing that makes your GPU to sweat is your monitor res. 2560x1440 requires additional GPU power.

But yeah even if you stay with your GTX670 I don't see any problem with DX11 games.

DX12 however is an other story...

It's worth the upgrade. With a 970 I could max out everything I play now with aa and shouldn't see a hiccup in framerate. Provided my Intel i5-3570K holds up long term I should be set for a good while.

DX12 isnt adding anything new to the table over dx 11's standards like shader model 5. Main purpose of dx12 is to lower cpu overheads communicating to the gpu and allow more gpu resource control. And nice thing is that most of the dx12 feature will be available for dx11 cards that the gpu's companies deem worth while to update the drivers to make use of DX12 features. Like Nvidia saying 400 series and newer or AMD's 7000 series or newer. Also I do believe that AMD's Mantle will lose its thunder once DX12 comes out.

That i5 3570k is fast enough even at stock, if you have it overclocked I wouldnt worry until games start requiring cpu's with 8 threads/cores, and that wont happen for awhile yet.

Is the 970 what I have been told to wait for, Its roughly in my price range once I sell my old GPU. I have been itching for a GPU upgrade for a few months now.

Is the 970 a good upgrade from my 7850, keep in mind I rarely game at 1080p at the moment, my HDTV I game on is 720p. Only game in 1080p occasionally when I move PC to front room.

I was refering to DX12 games not the API.

I mostly refer DX12 games that they would be needed more GPU power, not because of the DX12 that would add more features, but because these games will have better graphics (pe: games with Unreal Engine 4, which we all saw at the demo how demanding it is)

I agree with you on Mantle. Even AMD admitted that Mantel is a filler til DX12 will come.

Your core i5 is just like 5-7% less performance than today's best core i5 (4690K). So your CPU will absolutely have no problem with GTX970. A lot of games do not even need something more than a 2500K...

Amd 290 to gtx 970, worth that sidegrade?

The 970 is nearly 3x faster at 1080p, so expect major fps gains and will allow you to use massive amount of AA in games.

The reference GTX 980 overclocks like a frickin madman!

Guess 780 Ti users can just wait... Shame was looking forward to unboxing and benchmarking a new card :(.

Worth switching my 690gtx for two 980's?

EVGA, K|NGP|N and TiN Break New Records with EVGA GeForce GTX 980

EVGA, K|NGP|N and TiN have once again broken new records with the new EVGA GeForce GTX 980. Armed with liquid nitrogen, the latest EVGA hardware including an EVGA X99 FTW motherboard, 1600W power supplies and an EVGA GeForce GTX 980 running at over 2050MHz, K|NGP|N was able to set new records on 3DMark Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme, breaking 19,000 and 9,000 barrier in each benchmark.

"The Maxwell GPU in the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 is an overclocking monster," said Vince "K|NGP|N" Lucido. "There is a ton of headroom on the GPU and Memory clocks, and performance scaling is some of the highest I have ever seen. Internally we have hit the highest clocks ever achieved on a GPU."

"The power efficiency of the new GPUs allow for higher overclocking with lower power consumption, even on air cooling," said Illya "TiN" Tsemenko. "The fact that it is not so demanding on power consumption, allows you to achieve clockspeeds that were not possible before on a reference power design."

Sounds like a massive waste of $$.

@Coseniath said:

@KHAndAnime said:

The reference GTX 980 overclocks like a frickin madman!

EVGA, K|NGP|N and TiN Break New Records with EVGA GeForce GTX 980

EVGA, K|NGP|N and TiN have once again broken new records with the new EVGA GeForce GTX 980. Armed with liquid nitrogen, the latest EVGA hardware including an EVGA X99 FTW motherboard, 1600W power supplies and an EVGA GeForce GTX 980 running at over 2050MHz, K|NGP|N was able to set new records on 3DMark Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme, breaking 19,000 and 9,000 barrier in each benchmark.

"The Maxwell GPU in the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 is an overclocking monster," said Vince "K|NGP|N" Lucido. "There is a ton of headroom on the GPU and Memory clocks, and performance scaling is some of the highest I have ever seen. Internally we have hit the highest clocks ever achieved on a GPU."

"The power efficiency of the new GPUs allow for higher overclocking with lower power consumption, even on air cooling," said Illya "TiN" Tsemenko. "The fact that it is not so demanding on power consumption, allows you to achieve clockspeeds that were not possible before on a reference power design."

Keep in mind that is with Liquid Nitrogen.

@04dcarraher: its got me all excited, I'd wanna play metro last light maxed out at 1080p with nvidia. physx turned on :)

All top 3DMark entries are Liquid Nitrogen. There is nothing new there apart... GTX980 break all records in the 1st day without mature drivers :).

With all the positive reviews and hype behind the cards, I have very little buyer's remorse for dropping over half a grand on a videocard :P

I'm hyped for the dynamic resolution scaling. Should be a superior alternative to AA...at least it is in the emulators I've used.

@BSC14: I can't run Star Citizen on anything other than low, I keep reading how good the 690 is but if you stray off the SLI enabled games path, its really not all that. Its two under-clocked 680's.

Star Citizen is unfinished.

I payed about 680USD on my 2 GTX 970s and feel no remorse.

I am glad I waited and this will be a huge upgrade from my single GTX 570.

I remember when the GTX 780ti was over 700USD for one card and the 970 can perform better with a slight OC and with a good OC can match the 980.

Essentially I payed less than the price of the GTX 780ti for about twice the performance.

@BSC14: Sure but others are playing it on max without problems

how so? that vram is gonna become a problem eventually

@Coseniath: You are the king of the 900 series news updates

I can see the 970 being *the* card put into the majority of the upcoming Steam machines.

@klunt_bumskrint: Well since I tried to be more active forum member, I am trying to bring PC gaming hardware news, cause I think many people on our forums would love to be informed, especially the ones that want to build or helping building new PCs. Imagine how would someone felt if we wouldn't tell him not to buy a GPU over $300 the last weeks and he would saw the performance of GTX970 after he bought a GTX 780/780ti or R9 290/290X...

I did the same with R9 285 and Haswell-E series.

It's just that Maxwell is a new architecture and I wouldn't post so many times about it but, this is also the first time that so many unconfirmed rumors were flying around. :P

I used to post a lot of new gpu stuff but not had the time or inclination lately. Good job you're here :)

@klunt_bumskrint: Thanks :).

I'm sitting on a 760. Yes the 970's are a bit better but running on a 1080 monitor I just don't see the necessity for an upgrade at the moment. I might wait a while and if the price drops a reasonable amount maybe I'll pick one up.

Because you're taking about over $1k and considering what he's got now, he doesn't need it. It's not like the 690 is going to struggle any time soon. Besides, couldn't he get another 690 at some point? Not saying that 2 980's wouldn't be better, just saying that in my opinion it's hard to justify spending that much cash considering what he's got now.

Well if he manage to sell the GTX690 for around $500, wouldn't be nice to grab a GTX980 for $50?

my 980s will should be here monday :)

Maybe to him, not to me.

I'm not a fan of having more than one gpu though. IMO if it's a newer card then there is no reason for two of them. If the 980 were 2 or 3 years old then maybe but considering nothing on the planet can really push a single 980, what would be the point of paying for two of them? Unless you're playing at a crazy high res that I'm not familiar with or multiple monitors, it would seem like a waste of money to me.

@GamingVengeance: Cool man. What you upgrading from and which ones did you get? Let me know what you think of them.

I might join you next week.

@BSC14: Actually I want two so I can drive 1 GPU per eye in my Oculus DK2, which is something new nVidia is coming out with soon

I'm not telling you not to buy one. I'm just saying that TO ME it's not worth it.

upgrading from an i5 2500k(replaced with i7 5930k)and 2 670s, been waiting for this upgrade. I sort of wanted to wait for the 8 gb versions but im too impatient haha decided on the evga SC models, never had a problem with their stuff

I'm at 1080p with a 770 at the moment but am upgrading to a Vizio 4k@60hz over hdmi TV... should I get a Second 770 or just upgrade to dual 970s or 980s?

I upgraded my 660 to a 970! Super excited for the card to get here Tuesday.. Trying to convince my one IRL PC gamer friends to get one too..

2 x 770 for 4K resolutions will definitely be bottlenecked by their VRAM (2GB). Unless you got the 4GB version.

2 x 970 is one of the greatest value for money I have seen in years, especially for 4K.

If you want extra VRAM, wait a bit they are gonna release 8GB VRAM versions soon™.

edit: Over hdmi? Will hdmi be able to deliver 4K@60Hz?