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NVIDIA Launches Maxwell-Based GeForce GTX 980 and GeForce GTX 970 GPUs
MojoKid (1002251) writes NVIDIA has launched two new high-end graphics cards based on their latest Maxwell architecture. The GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 are based on Maxwell and replace NVIDIA's current high-end offerings, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, GTX 780, and GTX 770. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 are somewhat similar as the cards share the same 4GB frame buffer and GM204 GPU, but the GTX 970's GPU is clocked a bit lower and features fewer active Streaming Multiprocessors and CUDA cores. The GeForce GTX 980's GM204 GPU has all of its functional blocks enabled. The fully-loaded GeForce GTX 980 GM204 GPU has a base clock of 1126MHz and a Boost clock of 1216MHz. The GTX 970 clocks in with a base clock of 1050MHz and Boost clock of 1178MHz. The 4GB of video memory on both cards is clocked at a blisteringly-fast 7GHz (effective GDDR5 data rate). NVIDIA was able to optimize the GM204's power efficiency, however, by tweaking virtually every part of the GPU. NVIDIA claims that Maxwell SMs (Streaming Multiprocessors) offer double the performance of GK104 and double the perf per watt as well. NVIDIA has also added support for new features, namely Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR), Multi-Frame Sampled Anti-Aliasing (MFAA), and Voxel Global Illumination (VXGI). Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 980 is the fastest single-GPU powered graphics card ever tested. The GeForce GTX 970 isn't as dominant overall, but its performance was impressive nonetheless. The GeForce GTX 970 typically performed about on par with a GeForce GTX Titan and traded blows with the Radeon R9 290X.
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Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
What is nice to see is that these cards are slightly faster than the generation they replace, while using less power.
The power use of video cards has been creeping up in recent years, going up to the point where a pair of PCI-E power cables was required for one card.
Nice to see a fast card that can be put into a modest system, the 970 is 20% slower than the 980, while costing 40% less money and using only 165w of power
That is low enough that it should work with most cheaper rebuilt systems from the likes of Dell/HP/Acer etc.
I know what you mean. I don't want to play games but am looking to carry sacks of grain through the Andes, and these cards lack the qualities of a trusty burro.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Not true, each DisplayPort 1.2 output on a GTX 980 card can drive up to two monitors daisy-chained, so with a single GTX 980 you could have up to 6 displays with DisplayPort alone, more if the other outputs are independently driven (haven't checked into this yet).
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
Nope http://www.geforce.com/hardwar... . Trust me I have tried and they don't allow you to drive more than four even in SLI mode.
Finally it has monitor ports, which implies you can drive 5 , nope only 4.
I'm thinking about upgrading my monitor to 4k but I'm a bit confused about the current situation with both connectors and screens. How is running 4k@30Hz for normal desktop purposes, with no 3d gaming? Are the cheap 4k 39-40" TVs completely fine for those purposes? What connector(s) do I need from my GPU? How long would I have to wait for GPUs and TVs/monitors to support 4k@60Hz (HDMI 2.0? Displayport x.y?). Can I connect more than one screen to a single GPU card if I want 4k?
This might be a candidate for Ask Slashdot, I guess
If you want more than 4 , you have to pay up from the quadro series. I had more than four in SLI on GTX 760 cards , until they did a driver update and set the max to 4.
The R9 280 certainly doesn't count as low power (250W), the R9 285 is considerably better in that department (190W) and got some newer features to boot, with a $249 MSRP it should just barely squeeze inside your budget. To stay in your budget limit the nVidia alternative is GTX 760, but I wouldn't buy a Kepler card today, too hot and too noisy. Unfortunately there's not a Maxwell to match your specs, there's a gap between the GTX 750 Ti (which wouldn't be a performance upgrade) and GTX 970 (which blows your budget at $329).
Personally I was very surprised by the GTX 970 launch price though, the GTX 980 @ $549 was as expected but the 970 delivers 13/16ths of the processing power with the same memory size and bandwidth for over $200 less. I bought two to use in a SLI setup, in the games that scale nicely it's a kickass value. I suspect that by December this will have had some market effect at the $250 price point too, so I'd say check again then. Asking for advice 2-3 months out in a market that changes so quickly doesn't really make much sense.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
At this point I think it's safe to write off TSMC's 20nm fab process. It's not gonna happen, with signs pointing to development being shifted to 16nm instead.
A lot of what you see going on in the GPU and mobile front is being dictated by the failure of TSMC and other fabs to transition to 20nm for processors (memory is a lot easier and reached 16nm in 2013). Intel made the transition from 32nm to 22nm last year with Haswell and Bay Trail. The other fabs were supposed to leapfrog Intel by going from 28nm to 20nm this year. They haven't, which is what's allowed Intel to produce Atom SoCs with power usage approaching that of ARM SoCs. ARM has the lower power tech, but Intel's smaller lithography is mostly wiping out that advantage. If you see Intel successfully make the transition to 14nm in 2015 while the other fabs can't get 16nm to work, things are going to get really interesting on the mobile SoC front..
The GPU front is bleaker. Both nVidia and AMD use third party fabs like TSMC, so there's no competitive advantage to be had. We've just had to suffer with stagnating product lines and slow product releases because the expected lower power consumption in GPUs from 20nm didn't happen in 2014.
They do this on purpose to sell quadros. My 580 actually has more double performance than the 980, and it is 4 years old. The funniest part of it, though, is that people interested in double precision are simply going to buy amd instead. Nvidia is just shooting themselves in the foot here.
No you are still limited to 4 displays, NVIDIA did a dick move and limits it to 4 in the driver. You have to have quadro card to have more than 4 displays. Note when I first got my 2 gtx 760 cards I could drive 6 displays, and then a driver update and they limited to 4 displays even in SLI.
So upgrading to about 40" with 4k shouldn't be a problem
You can http://www.eevblog.com/forum/c... but you also need to hack to report of your machine as approved machine to run quadro in SLI.