NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980 Ti Costs $350 Less Than TITAN X, Performs Similarly

Deathspawner writes: In advance of the rumored pending launch of AMD's next-generation Radeon graphics cards, NVIDIA has decided to pull no punches and release a seriously tempting GTX 980 Ti at $649. It's tempting both because the extra $150 it costs over the GTX 980 more than makes up for it in performance gained, and despite it coming really close to the performance of TITAN X, it costs $350 less. AMD's job might just have become a bit harder. Vigile adds The GTX 980 Ti has 6GB of memory (versus 12GB for the GTX Titan X) but PC Perspective's review shows no negative side effects of the drop. This implementation of the GM200 GPU uses 2,816 CUDA cores rather than the 3,072 cores of the Titan X, but thanks to higher average Boost clocks, performance between the two cards is identical. And at Hot Hardware, another equally positive, benchmark-laden review.

Comments

Meh

[Cedarbridge]

I don't really feel the need to drop $1k on a graphics card. Not when 95% of my needs can be met with an old Radeon 6850. Its not like I need to speed render the surface of Mars or anything.

Re:Meh

[FordenFreeman]

I use an r9 270. I bought it when my old card starting showing age and acting up. For about $150 it runs every game I play on highest settings without batting an eye. That's with an AMD Athlon x2 btw... The whole race to specs domination doesn't add much.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

You can thank LCD manufacturers for not providing any real consumer options beyond 1080p for the better part of a decade. With accessible 1440p and 2160p displays, we return to choosing game resolution in lieu of graphics settings (albeit with less finesse than CRTs).

My only hope is the major review sites resume reviews that explore lower detailed settings at higher resolutions. At the present, I'm not so interested that this card get under 30fps at 4k a/ 4x AA; I'd rather know if it hits 60+fps with 0x AA.

Re:Meh

[arbiter1]

Reason they do that is to push the card to its limit. doing lower settings doesn't do that smartass.

Re:Meh

[Shadow of Eternity]

Sticker shock was my reaction as well. My old HD5870 is only now starting to have unacceptably low performance in some of the games I play, and spending around $300 will probably keep me set for another 4-5 years easily.

Re:Meh

[Shadow of Eternity]

Higher resolutions cost easily as much in performance as 4xaa genius.

Re:Meh

[PhrostyMcByte]

I use an r9 270. I bought it when my old card starting showing age and acting up. For about $150 it runs every game I play on highest settings without batting an eye. That's with an AMD Athlon x2 btw... The whole race to specs domination doesn't add much.

You aren't playing the same games I'm playing. My video card and CPU are considerably faster than yours, and I'm unable to max out my settings in most games without considerable FPS drops.

Re:Meh

[epyT-R]

Sure they do, for those of us who like high framerates. 1080p with maxxed out settings and low/no AA would also be useful.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole race to specs domination doesn't add much.

That's one of the real good arguments for consoles, and you don't have to worry about as much OS overhead or malware or drivers and all that shit, games are optimized for the hardware you have because it is the same hardware everybody else has. Sure it might not be the absolute cutting edge graphics but that usually means fuck all anyway.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

What a lord of horse shit. Must not play any game from the last five years then which makes you not the target audience. Or you are lying which is just as probable. Quite spreading FUD.

Re:Meh

[Shippu]

Hardocp does that.

Re:Meh

[TeknoHog]

It sounds like you only use a GPU for displaying/rendering graphics, not as a general purpose (super)?computer.

Re: Meh

[jblues]

Heh. But is it reality? [Queue 13th Floor opening sequence].

Re:Meh

[smallfries]

Well some of us do render the surface of mars on a regular basis and can't wait to see what this does to the price of the 970.

Re:Meh

[Firethorn]

I'm still 'rocking' a Radeon HD 5870. Looking them up on passmark, I have about 400 points on you.

Personally, my standard for upgrading my video card is that the benchmarks would have to double - which just wasn't happening last year, at least affordably. This year it looks like a GTX 960 might be a good choice.

5 years out of a video card isn't bad at all.

Re:Meh

[khellendros1984]

Well, either that or "every game I play" evaluates differently for him than for you. If I stuck to things that came out before 2000, then I could make the same claim about a Radeon R100 with a Pentium 3 CPU, too.

Re:Meh

[jones_supa]

heh, well a 270 wont do much. he is lying.

Huh? An R9 270 achieves a G3DMark of 4000. Hey, it's not the latest flagship Deluxe Gamerz ReaperJaws Anniversary Edition Moon Commander card, but still an extremely fast one. Should play even new games on quite high settings.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still 'rocking' a Radeon HD 5870. Looking them up on passmark, I have about 400 points on you.

Personally, my standard for upgrading my video card is that the benchmarks would have to double - which just wasn't happening last year, at least affordably. This year it looks like a GTX 960 might be a good choice.

5 years out of a video card isn't bad at all.

5yrs of playing games. Imagine what you could have really *accomplished* in the real world with all that time.

Re:Meh

[DigiShaman]

And the preferred resolution you're running them at? That makes a considerable difference.

Re:Meh

[drinkypoo]

5yrs of playing games. Imagine what you could have really *accomplished* in the real world with all that time.

Yeah, you could have been truly miserable because you didn't have any leisure time! The truth is that most people who don't play video games still accomplish nothing of note... like you

Re:Meh

[TheDarkMaster]

Depends on the resolution you use. Here I have two GTX980 (Gigabyte G1) in SLI and still is not enough to run my Skyrim at 3840x2160 with ENB (4K display user).

Re:Meh

[ArcadeMan]

320x240, why do you ask?

Re: Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

That's amazing because I'm using a 6 cote i7 at 4.4 GHz, 16 gigs of ddr4 and a AMD 290x and while I can max out almost any game on the market at 1080p I can't max out every game. The fact that you can is simply amazing. I need a magic 270 too

Re: Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

God bless for CGA.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

also it looks like cards of 3+ years ago perform for a given price will also perform about the same as cards of current generation at like price.

like wtf.

DirectX and openGl hasnt even updated in that time-frame i don't believe.

Re:Meh

[DigiShaman]

Quake-er

Re: Meh

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

CGA was 320 by 200.

Re:Meh

[NotDrWho]

heh, well a 270 wont do much. he is lying.

WTF are you talking about? I have a 270 and at 1080p it will play almost anything at max settings. I would only get a better card if I were pushing a higher resolution than that.

Re: Meh

[zlives]

yes it is, we dont have the graphic cars for that just yet :)

Re: Meh

[zlives]

cards too !!

Re:Meh

[zlives]

check out starcitizen

Re:Meh

[Cederic]

Yeah, I'd expect 4xAA to be far less costly than going for 4k resolution at approx. four times the resolution - each pixel takes multiple shader passes which collectively add up to far more work than the AA.

Of course, you can also add the AA on top, for added framerate shaftage.

Re:Meh

[Cederic]

This is why I don't own a 4k monitor. As lovely as it would be for photo editing I'd still end up gaming on my 2560x1440.

Re:Meh

[JazzLad]

My GTX680 pushes my 4k just fine* in games.

*Obviously for varying degrees of 'just fine' - I set my AA really low (like 2x) or sometimes even off because doubling/quadrupling (depending on how you're counting) the resolution (over my 1080p) I find it still looks way better than 1080p + 8-16x AA. My 4k is also 24" (price came down since I bought it, dang it!) so that helps, I'm sure. Oh, and yes, it is gorgeous for Photoshop :)

Re:Meh

[Cederic]

My borrowed GTX970 doesn't have problems with games at full settings (other than AA) at 2560x1440 but I'm still not confident it'd handle full prettiness at 4k.

But I'm picky and want decent framerates too.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, either that or "every game I play" evaluates differently for him than for you. If I stuck to things that came out before 2000, then I could make the same claim about a Radeon R100 with a Pentium 3 CPU, too.

If found out that my CPU limited the framerate. Didn't expected such a big jump in framerate by switching CPUs and keeping the R9 270X. Neither World of Warships or World of Tanks drop below 70fps@1920*1200 now with max settings while decoding a video on the other screen (for some reason I need the noise background). At least for these two games an upgrade is only necessary if I upgrade my display. But my windows installation is pretty clean and I have seen plenty people with apparently better systems getting less fps.

Re:Meh

[sonicmerlin]

I have a Radeon 6950 and I can't get 60 fps in DA Inquisition at 1080p unless I turn the settings down to medium.

Re:Meh

[armanox]

For shame too, because most of these cards are pretty good at doing science.

Re:Meh

[wallsg]

It really does depend on your games. What works for one gamer may be completely unsuitable for another.

I'm playing Guild Wars 2 with two crossfired 7870s with the highest graphics settings and I'm CPU bound (OCed i5-3570K) in most cases (except where there's really, really heavy particle effects). Most MMOs are like that. If I played Tombraider or Bioshock Infinite (installed and waiting to be played for over a year) on highest settings then I'd likely be GPU bound.

Re:Meh

[K10W]

Depends on the resolution you use. Here I have two GTX980 (Gigabyte G1) in SLI and still is not enough to run my Skyrim at 3840x2160 with ENB (4K display user).

I get a gtx770 to push skyrim with enb, sweetfx, massive higher poly mesh and texture packs etc etc in 1440p so you should be able to handle that. Skyrim tweaked doesn't look the best compared to other things IMO, it just looks the most dramatically different from the stock versions highest settings from most games. Don't forget post can only add so much, and that is a dx9 games (hence enb ans sweet work for it well as the dx11 versions are not working properly last i tried, and it has very poor optimisation for pc. The latter point may be your issue, you seeing microstutter from SLI. Made worse due to lack of optimisations and one card will be doing all that pp, just a guess. Add to that you can hit texture limits quick as I notice from starcitizen and GTA V 1440p will hit those limits so you will have similar thing depending on texture packs. No card can make piss poor implementations efficient and give the best looking possible. PC GTA V maxed comes close with the lighting and shadows from dynamic lights such as headlights to that, faaaaar closer than skyrim so give that a shot see what you think, enjoy.

Re:Meh

[TheDarkMaster]

I think I should add details. in 1440p works perfectly for me, but as I said I am aiming at the goal of 4K @ 60fps (I do not really like to try to play at 30fps). Without ENB works (4K @ 60fps using my rig), but with ENB the framerate drops to around 30~40fps. And funny enough, that with or without heavy effects activated like SSAO, somewhere in the ENB code there is a large loss of performance when you increase the resolution to 4K.

Re:Meh

[K10W]

Ah I got the wrong end of the stick so apologies for the mixup, I thought you meant that dual gtx980's was too limited and not enough when it sounds more like ENB can't utilise that power past a certain range more like. I wonder if you would get it to manage it if chucked more power or if there is some other issue when the higher you go the more inefficient it would get. By the sound of it is doesn't sound like enb does those things in a linear way and you are hitting some limitation and are at the envelope of its capabilities.

Probably more money than it is worth to try but I'd love to see a stream if you did get it to manage it with everything turned on. Not sure I'd drop for 4 x titans or 4 x 980ti's to try it but it would be sweet to see. I tend to try and aim for 60fps myself, I know skyrim in particular used to have weird physics at varied framerates or over 60 (I have vsync on anyway) so that is another reason to keep it stable which is probably part of your reason I imagine.

Re:Meh

[FordenFreeman]

I'm sure my system would cry if I tried to play crysis or something. But, playing Borderlands2, SC2, LoL, HotS, Diablo 3, Mirrors Edge, etc... everything runs just fine.

This isn't surprising

[rsilvergun]

AMD hasn't been able to offer serious competition in quite some time. Driver stability has been a nightmare for them (partially because of nVidia's shenanigans, but that hasn't made games any more stable...). The trouble is nVidia is in such a strong position they can just drop their pants and buy AMD. What I'm wondering is if they're making enough from the consoles to push back. I'm inclined to say no since nVidia turned that contract down...

Re:This isn't surprising

[im_thatoneguy]

ATI/AMD has had shit drivers since the 90s. This whole "Nvidia is stabbing us in the back!" doesn't carry water since they've *never* had reliable products.

Re:This isn't surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Their architecture may be to blame. What makes them attractive to bitcoin miners is they have less powerful cores but have many more of them. When you have an embarrassingly parallel problem to solve that is attractive. Maybe it causes stability problems when solving actual graphics problems like screen tearing? Just from a parts failure perspective, you have a higher probability of getting a bad core since failure is normally a Boolean condition and failure probability doesn't scale linearly with power....

Re:This isn't surprising

[Pubstar]

Funny, I've had zero problems with my drivers form AMD cards for the past 5-6 years. Of course, prior to that, it was a nightmare. Also, go look up GameWorks. It actively fucks AMD in that they cant optimize anything that runs GameWorks.

Re:This isn't surprising

[arbiter1]

If AMD didn't screw over tessellation performance for opencl wouldn't be in such a spot but hey, Nvidia is USING a standard like AMD fanboyz all wanted.

Re:This isn't surprising

[Pubstar]

It's not even the tessilation. Its when AAA games use GameWorks, it screws AMD's performance. They cannot see how the graphics engine is making calls to the APIs. Its also in the listening agreement between the developers and Nvidia that the code used for the engine CANNOT be shared without outside sources. Well, it can be, in some cases, but it specifically excludes AMD from ever seeing what is really going on behind the curtain.

Re:This isn't surprising

[Dog-Cow]

What's stopping AMD from buying a few copies of something using the GameWorks engine and profiling it? I am sure AMD developers are quite skilled with kernel-mode debuggers and would have no problem figuring out what the engine is doing. This is not illegal, no matter what crap is in the EULA of the game.

Re:This isn't surprising

[ShanghaiBill]

What makes them attractive to bitcoin miners is they have less powerful cores but have many more of them.

Bitcoin mining moved to ASICs years ago. Mining on GPUs is not cost effective.

Re:This isn't surprising

[0123456]

When I worked on 3D drivers, oh, how we used to laugh when some idiot developer put in code that deliberately broke the game when run under a debugger. Yet they still expected it to work well on our cards...

But, yeah, it wasn't at all unusual for developers of little clue to do completely retarded things that worked on other hardware, but not ours. Often because we actually implemented the feature they were using in hardware, whereas the other drivers simulated it in software.

Re:This isn't surprising

[dbIII]

I thought it moved to distributed malware? Make someone else pay for the watts powering your attempt to come in late to a pyramid scheme.

Re:This isn't surprising

[Pubstar]

The damage would still be done as they would have to wait until after the launch of the game to do any optimization for the game. All the benchmarking and testing would already be done and published.

Re:This isn't surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

We just finished a project with a high-end ATI/AMD R9 290X so we could use their EyeFinity tech to make a single desktop span over multiple monitors and be adjusted for bezels etc.

While the card itself runs very fast and it finally worked as intended, the Catalyst Control Center (CCC) is an absolute joke. It's embarrassingly bad, some of the settings make almost no sense, the bezel adjustment is totally broken (on the latest stable drivers) to the point where the on-screen display during setup is meaningless and forget about editing any settings you just set up. You have to retry and retry until you finally get what you want. It saves the EyeFinity setups each time in a configuration you can name, but then you can't find it anywhere, edit it, copy it to other machines, etc. so what's the point? If you further adjust the bezels it's a total stab in the dark as to which way the screens will move using the arrow buttons. Total crap. If you know you want say 14px between each monitor you might expect to be able to enter this somewhere. No, wrong. It's all set up by eye, but that's broken. Their forums are littered with complaints about this sort of thing but there are no answers anywhere.

Even getting a straight answer about what monitor connections will allow the EyeFinity tech to work is a nightmare. Various vendors claim different things, but ultimately no-one we talked to knew if it would work or not without just hooking it all up. Pretty bad documentation on their site and vendor sites, just shiny logos and a few buzzwords and you're expected to trust them and hope it works. There are too many bulletpoints with multiple asterisks and fineprint attached about all these great sounding features that just don't work in all manner of fairly common-sounding use cases.

Who the hell writes this stuff? Who the hell tests this stuff? I can only assume they all use nVidia cards internally because it's so bad they can't possibly be looking at or using it.

nVidia should be crushing ATI/AMD given the state of their hardware and software.

Re:This isn't surprising

[jones_supa]

Maybe it causes stability problems when solving actual graphics problems like screen tearing?

Why would that cause any problems? A proper graphics stack can easily deal with VSYNC. I'm sure that even AMD hardware isn't so crusty that it couldn't handle such a basic feature.

Re:This isn't surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes sure, blame the user of the API. You sound like a wonderful API developer.

Re:This isn't surprising

[Mashiki]

ATI/AMD has had shit drivers since the 90s. This whole "Nvidia is stabbing us in the back!" doesn't carry water since they've *never* had reliable products.

Kinda funny, since I switched from nvidia to amd a year and change back, finding the exact opposite. Compared to nvidia where we've had drivers that nuked fan profiles and burned out cards, caused TDR problems where they blamed users--and later it was found out to be all nvidias fault because they dumped the voltage down on the cards so low that it caused instability, or the repeated whql drivers that cause hardlocks across 400/500/600 series cards.

Pretty sure the amd didn't nuke my card with shitty drivers, pretty much sums it up. The last 5 years nvidias drivers have been right down shit, and that's their own fault because as soon as they launch a new card they move their star driver team to only optimize for that card and then use the B team to continue support.

Re:This isn't surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I've said this here over the years, I get modded down for some reason.

Over the past 15 years, I've had 5 different ATI cards. (I stopped buying them before the AMD acquisition) All of them suffered various issues ranging from improper multi monitor display to obvious texture errors in commonly played video games. I spent a great deal of time trying to troubleshoot and resolve these issues, to no avail.

I've also had 4 different NVidia cards, and all of them have performed exactly as they should with zero issue whatsoever.

I can't understand how all these people can claim ATI/AMD has never had driver issues; the experience above is pretty clear cut.

Re:This isn't surprising

[Wootery]

What makes them attractive to bitcoin miners is they have less powerful cores but have many more of them.

That's part of it, but there's also that only AMD had hardware support for 32-bit integer right rotation.

Re: This isn't surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Ive never had any issues with drivers on my 290x aside from GameWorks issues but even then I can generally turn GameWorks features on without any issues

Re:This isn't surprising

[Jerry Atrick]

My memory of Nvidia before I dumped them was of terrible drivers and broken and removed features. CCC is indeed a clusterfuck but Nvidia have rarely been far behind them.

I dropped Nvidia thanks to their eagerness to just drop features in new drivers (like usable PAL TV support years ago) and a really shitty attitude to fixing user reported problems, you really have to be an AAA developer before they care. Don't have this years new card and you can forget getting support.

Re:This isn't surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

What is STOPPING GameWorks from working with AMD to fix the f*** engine and drivers to work together?

Re:This isn't surprising

[sg_oneill]

Don't be so eager to chant for AMDs downfall. Competition from AMD (Both to intel in processors and Nvidia in GFX cards) keeps intel and nvidia honest. Without competiton they'd have no incentive to innovate and keep prices down. The browser wars prior to firefoxes rise showed what happens when a market is without competition, it stagates, and thats bad for everyone.

Re:This isn't surprising

[serviscope_minor]

We just finished a project with a high-end ATI/AMD R9 290X so we could use their EyeFinity tech to make a single desktop span over multiple monitors and be adjusted for bezels etc.

Honest question, but why do you need eyefinity for that? On X, I can place physical screens pretty much wherever I like on an arbitrary grid with whatever arbitrary gaps I want, and that's spanning multiple physical cards with chipsets (though not with 3D support in that case). Do other windowing systems not gennerally support such features?

Re:This isn't surprising

[Shatrat]

Because it's an nVidia product and it's sole purpose is to break compatibility with AMD hardware.

Re:This isn't surprising

[0123456]

Yes sure, blame the user of the API. You sound like a wonderful API developer.

Microsoft and the OpenGL group developed the API. We just had to make the software that used the API work, when the people who called it had no idea that repeatedly allocating hardware buffers on every single frame, or not locking buffers when they wrote to them directly, was a really bad idea idea ('but it works fine on my machine!').

Re:This isn't surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Amd is just plain fucked.

The new arch in the 970s and 980s is a full 2 generations ahead of AMD's best offerings.

The 970s and 980s were launched rather conservatively to boot. They use comparatively little power than their contemporaries and the architecture has massive headroom for speed/power increases and tweaks.

To keep up with AMD they simply have to release higher clocked/power consuming SKUs. Like they always planned to do. And this doesn't even take in to account the inevitable die shrinks and arch improvements.

Nvidia had AMD's next product line beat a year ago. The 980ti was probably ready to go when the 980 launched, but they had no need..

Re:This isn't surprising

[Zeromous]

>code that deliberately broke the game when run under a debugger

I'd never heard of this unless you are talking about SECUREROM

Re:This isn't surprising

[T-Bone_142]

Bitcoin mining on GPUs may no longer be cost effective, but altcoin mining on GPUs is still alive and well.

Re:This isn't surprising

[americanpossum]

I've had much the same problems and concerns as the original poster running Eyefinity, so I'll expand a bit on the subject. For a quick summary, trying to configure Eyefinity correctly on multiple systems makes me long for the days of manually typing in Xorg.conf, and that's saying something!

When you're trying to play a game under Windows, the game will see each of your monitors as a separate physical device, and performance will range from being fine to horrible to not at all. Under Eyefinity, the ATI driver essentially tricks your application into thinking that it has access to one huge monitor up to almost 8K on a side. You get all the benefits of a single monitor like homogenous DPI, color matching, and performance. This was the original purpose for Eyefinity. If you're looking for 3D support, nice VDPAU playback, and all of the other capabilities that a modern video card has across multiple monitors, you need Eyefinity or NVIDIA Surround. There's no subsitute.

What about Linux? I've only experimented a bit under Linux due to the fact that many games don't have a Linux version, but to be frank, outside of the binary NVIDIA blob, support for advanced features really suck, no matter if you're talking about 3D gaming or accelerated playback. I wish Valve the best, because SteamOS is the one thing that I can see that might give AMD a push to work on their Linux drivers. I said back in 2003 that it would be really nice to be able to ditch Windows and to play all of my games in Wine. We're a lot closer now than back then, but there's still a sizable gap to catch up.

Re:This isn't surprising

[FlyHelicopters]

You weren't using a nVidia card in Jan 2007 on a Vista machine then, were you?

Their drivers sucked. AMD wasn't perfect, but their launch drivers were better than nVidia.

Both companies have had periods of issues, at the moment, both are doing pretty well.

Re:This isn't surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes sure, blame the user of the API. You sound like a wonderful API developer.

Microsoft and the OpenGL group developed the API. We just had to make the software that used the API work, when the people who called it had no idea that repeatedly allocating hardware buffers on every single frame, or not locking buffers when they wrote to them directly, was a really bad idea idea ('but it works fine on my machine!').

Sounds like there will be a docker image available soon.

Re:This isn't surprising

[Chalnoth]

It'll be interesting to see how AMD does this time around. Apparently they're making use of HBM (see here for an in-depth description). If they make good use of this technology, which seems likely, they could produce a pretty dramatic increase both in performance and performance per watt. It seems unlikely that nVidia will be able to compete with older-generation GPU's (nVidia will be using similar memory technology next year, so if AMD pulls ahead, it probably won't be for all that long).

Re: This isn't surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly have not had as many problems with my amd gpu as with an nvidia gpu. this is a load of crap.

Same performance different Memory Capacity

[im_thatoneguy]

Sure, it performs exactly the same until you run out of memory and then its performance goes to 0% since it can't do anything. You're getting 12GB of RAM with the TitanX vs the 6GB on the TI. The Titan is essentially cheap Tesla for compute heavy tasks like Adobe Premiere or 3D Rendering. I wish though that Nvidia would embrace Titan's position and enable GRID virtualization. AMD has enabled at least GPU pass-through on their entire high end line. I guess Virtual GPUs are still so niche that it's not a high priority. But with the Xbox One running 2 virtual OSes on the same Box it would be great if Microsoft embraced virtualization more broadly.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Luckyo]

That's not how GPU memory management works. When you max out GPU's onboard RAM, GPU starts calling to shared system memory located in system RAM. This limits performance a lot since PCI-E throughput is about 1/10 of GDDR5 speed, but it most certainly is not zero.

Regardless, TitanX, unlike previous Titan series is crippled for compute to the point where Nvidia itself officially recommended previous Titan cards for it over TitanX. It was clearly aimed at gamers who have more money than sense, and now that they collected that money, they are releasing a more sensibly priced card for the same weight class.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Scutter]

$650 is "sensibly priced" for a gaming card? That's almost double the cost of a current-gen console and you still have to buy the rest of the computer.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a new, high-end, card. Those are never cheap since they're meant for the early adopters (more money than brains).
The only time high-end GPUs might compete with consoles is when a new console is launched so I don't know why you'd bring it up.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[rwa2]

Yeah, well, you have to pay a premium to get on top of the list:
http://videocardbenchmark.net/...
(BTW, very useful resource for making rough sense of the alphanumeric soup)

For my part, I'd be happy with the $200 GPU that gets me in the top 20... (GTX 960). I'm guessing that will get the Ti treatment next.

Though I'm still pretty happy with my 560 Ti, which is still pretty decently placed at roughly 1/3rd the speed of the top card. I think the last couple of generations have been skippable, though I'm now starting to get interested in the triple-monitor capability of the GTX 900 series... once I go out and buy 2 more monitors. My only fear, of course, is that VR headsets will make peripheral monitors pointless soon, though it doesn't seem like any of them really tickle your peripheral vision the same way.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Kjella]

$650 is "sensibly priced" for a gaming card? That's almost double the cost of a current-gen console and you still have to buy the rest of the computer.

And you're playing at most 1920x1080x60 Hz, from what I understand often less. This is the kind of card you want if you're looking for 2560x1440x144 Hz or 3840x2160x60 Hz gaming on say an Acer XB270HU or XB280HK, pushing at least 4x as many pixels. For games that only run at 30 fps or 720p/900p make that 6x-8x as many pixels. Sure, it's like comparing a soccer mom car to a $100k+ sports car, it's not "sensibly" priced. It has terrible MPG with a 250W power consumption. But when you put the pedal to the metal, it's seriously fast.

The Titan X was clearly a "because we're the fastest, charge double" card. I guess you're always looking at it from your point of view and saying the others are the insane ones, "Paying a $1000 for a graphics card? That's crazy, I'll settle for a $650 GTX 980 Ti". Next guy says "Paying $650 for a graphics card? That's crazy, it'll settle for a $199 GTX 960" and so on. Basically you spend relative to your interest and the amount of money you can comfortably spend. Don't go to a five star luxury resort if the budget says a hostel, but if you can afford the resort do it. YOLO and all that.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[MrDoh!]

One Summer Steam Sale seems to shift the PC > Console price argument.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm currently looking into a Nvidia card for a developer. While the server will probably run Keplers, this seems excessive for the developer. But it would be nice if the 64 bit FP performance of the GPGPU would be at least better than that of a Core i7. So, do I get an old Titan, or this new 980 Ti ?

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[jittles]

And you're playing at most 1920x1080x60 Hz, from what I understand often less. This is the kind of card you want if you're looking for 2560x1440x144 Hz or 3840x2160x60 Hz gaming on say an Acer XB270HU or XB280HK, pushing at least 4x as many pixels.

Both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 support 4k output. I don't know what the performance is like, but I can easily play a game at 2560x1440 without any sort of issue with performance. I don't have anything higher than that, so I can't speak to its performance at higher resolutions.

Re: Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

Herpa PC master race derp

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[PPalmgren]

All outputs are not created equal. First, most consoles target 30 FPS. Second, like the old consoles at 1080p, this output is likely just an upscale. They simply do not have the horsepower to render content at that resolution. Equivalent GPUs can be had for $100 or less in computers.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[CronoCloud]

You do know that PSN and the Xbox Marketplace have sales as well, right?

I'm not personally familiar with the Xbox ecosystem, but PSN has WEEKLY sales/discounts, then there are holiday sales, and themed sales (had a star wars one a few weeks back) and seasonal sales.

https://store.playstation.com/...||price~asc

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[bongey]

YOLO ? Your geek card has been revoked.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're playing at most 1920x1080x60 Hz, from what I understand often less. This is the kind of card you want if you're looking for 2560x1440x144 Hz or 3840x2160x60 Hz gaming on say an Acer XB270HU or XB280HK, pushing at least 4x as many pixels.

Both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 support 4k output. I don't know what the performance is like, but I can easily play a game at 2560x1440 without any sort of issue with performance. I don't have anything higher than that, so I can't speak to its performance at higher resolutions.

You are an idiot

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

Scaling to 4k and rendering at 4k are not the same thing.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

Xbox Live has the same types of discounts...usually a little better deal than PSN but that might just be on games I find interesting. Xbox has also been giving a couple games a month...many are just crap arcade games but there have been a few good ones.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Luckyo]

If you need a cheap double precision GPGPU, you need one of the older Titans (i.e. Titan Black). Titan X is just as crippled for it as gaming cards, unlike older titans that weren't.

Wikipedia has a pretty good list of all nvidia cards which includes among other things, GFLOPS/W performance by both single and double precision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L....

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

When the monitor cost 850, yes, this is sensibly priced. Back to the hole, peasants!

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Zeromous]

Agreed, in a year or two, the Nvidia card will show its age.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[netsavior]

As a PSPlus subscriber and a Steam fanboy, I can tell you they don't even compare. In summer sale I can get all the AAA titles I missed for 50-75% off, and catch up on DLC for exceptional games for pennies. Now, I do get occasional "free" casual/sega genesis/old arcade ports for my $5.99 PS+ monthly subscription, and sometimes big name games are cheap, but it can't even compare to the 2x a year discount salepocalypse that happens on Steam.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[im_thatoneguy]

I can't think of a single application which actually tries to swap memory off of PCI-E. Because you not only have to load the new memory, you also then have to *reload* the old memory. Especially with something like raytracing where you never know which memory is going to be called on the next ray. You would be pathetically and uselessly slow. So ok, fine technically "that's not how GPU memory management works" but back in the real world there are few practical applications where a single task is useful when memory swapping comes into play.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[jittles]

All outputs are not created equal. First, most consoles target 30 FPS. Second, like the old consoles at 1080p, this output is likely just an upscale. They simply do not have the horsepower to render content at that resolution. Equivalent GPUs can be had for $100 or less in computers.

Well that is true. I don't whether or not it scales at that resolution. I have a 5 year old desktop card that can do Kerbal Space Program at 2560x1440 with no problem. You'd think the latest gen console could at least do that without scaling, but I don't know.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[HornWumpus]

How many years ago was the latest console designed?

You realize consoles aren't even competitive with high end graphics when they are brand new?

Build a ship with 3 or 4 hundred components and watch the frame rate crash in KSP.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[jittles]

How many years ago was the latest console designed?

You realize consoles aren't even competitive with high end graphics when they are brand new?

Build a ship with 3 or 4 hundred components and watch the frame rate crash in KSP.

I do realize that they do not use the latest and greatest hardware in consoles. The current console generation has been on the market for less than two years. The GPU in there is based on a 2011 model from AMD. I just checked and my desktop card is based on a 2009 product line. I've not built anything with more than about 200 components, but it has not been an issue so far at that resolution.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Luckyo]

Highly unlikely that it will because of how game development is linked to console generations.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Luckyo]

That would probably be because application doesn't get to make the choice in the first place.

Decision on what goes where is up to the driver. Unless you have some weird "down to the metal" GPGPU software. That's why Nvidia made 970 the way it is - it knows that no matter how shitty of a code devs write, it's their driver that decides when to go to 3.5 GB of fully featured VRAM, when to go to system RAM and when to go to that crippling 0.5 GB of separately mapped VRAM.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[DocSavage64109]

*Real geeks don't have lives.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[CronoCloud]

As a PSPlus subscriber and a Steam fanboy, I can tell you they don't even compare.

I find it hard to believe you're a PS+ subscriber because:

Now, I do get occasional "free" casual/sega genesis/old arcade ports for my $5.99 PS+ monthly subscription,

It's much more than that. Either you aren't paying attention, or you are intentionally understating the PS+ freebies because you're a PC Master Race type.

This is the master list of ps+ games;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

There also serious discounts during the seasonal sales. Some PSone classics have been under a buck.

but it can't even compare to the 2x a year discount salepocalypse that happens on Steam.
In summer sale I can get all the AAA titles I missed for 50-75% off, and catch up on DLC for exceptional games for pennies.

But "is pennies" a good thing. If everyone waits till the game is "pennies" that might make developers less likely to favor the PC as a platform...which has already happened. Steam is a race to the bottom. It may feel good to you to pick up AA games for pennies, but it's not entirely a good thing for the PC as a platform. Besides, can you really play them all or are all those cheap games like an "action figure collection", just something to spend money on that you don't really use.

Maybe you should spend full price on games sometimes and perhaps then the PC versions won't be an afterthought. I am not like some cheapskate PC gamer in the UK/Europe who feels entitled to "games for pence" and lots of piracy thanks to his Spectrum/Amiga days.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Zeromous]

We're already two years deep in this generation.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Luckyo]

More than two, as development for games started at least two years before console releases. But if you look at costs sunk into current consoles, and how long previous generation lasted, you'll understand that current generation is highly unlikely to start showing its age as long as it can perform fine in the handful of PC exclusives that will actually put it under serious load like Star Citizen.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[HornWumpus]

1.0 made most of the giant ridiculous things unworkable anyhow.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Zeromous]

I've been following videogame industry since the early days. I simply disagree on your assessment of anything > 5y AAA cycle, and > 10 year overall lifecycle.

I have access to the latest in 3d tech, these consoles will be gone just as quickly as the last batch.

Re:Same performance different Memory Capacity

[Luckyo]

I don't want to sound dismissive of your insider information, but trend has been that each console generation lasted longer than previous one, and previous generation lasted almost 10 years (360 came out in November 2005, PS3 in November 2006).

Because it's not the "latest 3d tech" that dictates the speed of game development and console technology, but the cost of development (both in terms of games and hardware) and the cost of hardware to end consumer.

Considering just how little speed improvement current GPU advancement has been bringing lately in comparison to old times and how game studios are screaming about increasing costs involved in making games, I would not be betting on this generation lasting less than previous one.

It's summer-time, no need to heat your office!

[B.Stolk]

Nah... the sweet spot is still on the 750Ti, which is a nice 60W GPU that has plenty oompf and costs just $180,-
Why would you want to heat your office with an extra 0.25KWatt heater if you don't live in Alaska?
Top Tip: Pass on this one, and take the 750Ti.

Re:It's summer-time, no need to heat your office!

[sayfawa]

Yeah, I don't actually see why people put so much weight on what the card can do when we live in this age of console ports. For me, the max TDP is a much bigger factor (for fan noise reasons more than electricity). And Nvidia seems to be winning on that score also.

Re:It's summer-time, no need to heat your office!

[Nemyst]

I know Slashdot isn't really up to date on gaming, but I'll just drop a hint: if someone's looking at the 980Ti, they are NOT the target market for a 750Ti.

Re:It's summer-time, no need to heat your office!

[Firethorn]

Why would you want to heat your office with an extra 0.25KWatt heater if you don't live in Alaska?

Electricity prices are high enough up here in Alaska that you don't want to be using a space heater either. Oil/Gas is much cheaper.

Re:It's summer-time, no need to heat your office!

[MarkRose]

Markets do change though. For the longest time, I was a non-gamer. Then Steam for Linux came out. Two years ago I bought a GTX 760, which was many times the cost of the GT 430 I bought before that. I bought the 760 because it was the best card I could get without upgrading my power supply (which split 12 volt rails). But I've found that the 760 is under powered for driving my 1440p display at reasonable framerates (I have the display for productivity purposes). It's time to build a new computer this year, and I'm probably going to go with a GTX 980 Ti.

Re:It's summer-time, no need to heat your office!

[Cederic]

Price/performance metrics put the GTX970 as a clear winner right now.

It's good enough for 1440p for current generation games. May struggle over the next couple of years so if you're buying for the future then.. well, it's a bad time to build. Although you're always only a year away from a new graphics architecture Nvidia will soon be dropping 16 or 20nm fabrication which should seriously improve performance/power ratios and that opens the door for a noticeable performance boost.

Makes it a tricky choice for you, but I'd be tempted to go with the 970 then sell it on once that shiny newness is available to upgrade.

thanks for the link

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, I don't think it will fit in my computer case. I only have a 10 inch long clearance in my case.

I'm voting with my money

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia fuck you

Some stuff some people use

[dbIII]

Turns out the difference is some stuff some people use and are willing to pay more for but others don't need at all. See also the earlier Tesla cards.

This is why I stick with mid level cards

[Karmashock]

They can typically do what the top level cards did only a year ago.

To really keep your edge with a top level card you have to buy a new one every year.

So look at that price and think of paying it annually. I upgrade frequently. But I do so in the mid levels. You keep pace and don't break the bank.

Re:This is why I stick with mid level cards

[Firethorn]

So look at that price and think of paying it annually. I upgrade frequently. But I do so in the mid levels. You keep pace and don't break the bank.

I buy a good upper mid-grade card and use it until I'm no longer satisfied with it. I'm currently at 5 years with my current card, but am looking at upgrading now.

However, given Alaska's budget situation(currently a state employee)*, I might be out of a job in a couple weeks. So I'm holding on.

*We're having the same thing on a state level as has happened on the federal level several times. Due to the drop in oil prices, our income has gone from about $6B down to $2B. Our budget was about $5B. Being smart lads, our congress had been socking money away, but per the constitution it takes a 75% majority to tap that money. They voted a $5B budget, but didn't manage to vote to tap the reserve. Ergo the Governor did what he had to do and line item vetoed $3B out of $5B in spending. The police and emergency services are the only ones funded after mid-June. My section is looking at a 60% cut, mostly due to us being partially federally funded.

Re:This is why I stick with mid level cards

[Karmashock]

The oil price will recover somewhat over time. It will be unlikely to go as high as it was though. It was those high prices that triggered the fracking boom. And now that Saudi Arabia has given up trying to destroy the fracking industry... which is why the prices went so low... They're just accepting the new competition and the new lower price.

You can expect prices to hang out around 2.50 to 3.00 dollars a gallon at least. Your revenue should improve as a result.

that said, Alaska is overly dependent on that money.

I am not sure what other industries you have, but consider relying upon a more diversified income stream. You can't control that of course... just saying.

You want to depend on lots of things at once. Nothing should be make or break for you.

What kind of state employee are you? What do you do? Forget the department... like what do you actually do? I'm sure there is some other job that needs whatever that skill is...

Re:This is why I stick with mid level cards

[sexconker]

I thought all Alaskans were owned by the Discovery channel and worked on reality shows.

Re:This is why I stick with mid level cards

[Firethorn]

that said, Alaska is overly dependent on that money.

No Kidding. Remember the 'socking away' part? Given sufficient time with the high prices, we would have had enough to cover the government on the interest alone.

I am not sure what other industries you have, but consider relying upon a more diversified income stream. You can't control that of course... just saying.

Some limited amounts of farming. Fishing is fairly big. Tourism. Other resource extraction. Believe it or not, some people like retiring up here as opposed to Florida. The military is huge, which helps drive federal spending up here.

Worst case, along with cutting spending in various ways, we may have to implement a state-wide income or sales tax. It's that or jack up the property tax *A LOT*.

What kind of state employee are you? What do you do? Forget the department... like what do you actually do? I'm sure there is some other job that needs whatever that skill is...

1. Student employee at the state university at the moment. I'm not actually too worried about the job. My job security consists of 'He's literally 1/5th the cost of anybody else!'.
2. Mostly fix up web pages*, some script programming, emails lists. It's actually relaxing compared to my last job.
3. I'm actually security+ certified, and have a wide field of experience, but I have this wonderful scholarship from my last employer that pays as much as what I could get elsewhere. So I'm going for a higher degree.
4. Going back to college has been fun. The student position is mostly to widen my resume, provide some spending cash(so I don't have to tap into investments during the summer), etc...

*The department reps who create them do great, mostly. I fix up things like 509 compliance, make sure they're not putting in multi-megabyte images unless necessary, etc...

Re:This is why I stick with mid level cards

[Karmashock]

there is another alternative to jacking up taxes... cut spending. Just saying.

How did your budget balance before the high oil prices? I have to assume the spending level was lower. Why not go back to the old budget adjusted for population?

Absent that... yes, your taxes go up.

Re:This is why I stick with mid level cards

[Firethorn]

Budget balance: First, the pipeline opened when I was ONE. I literally don't remember a time when the pipeline(and therefore oil money) wasn't flowing in. Still, from what I've been told, during that time we did have an income tax.

Old budget adjusted for population:
1. It's been well over 30 years since we had to do a budget without oil money. It wouldn't be valid anymore
2. It still wouldn't balance because we cut other taxes in response.
3. We ARE cutting spending. Quite severely. 2013 Budget? 9B revenue, 8B spent, 1B saved. 2014 was 7.6B revenue, 7B spent. 2016? Like I said, $5B was what our congress authorized, but with only $2B of income, that would mean $3B from the reserves, which needs that 75% vote. Spending is half what it was 3 years ago.

The main point is that it takes time to properly wind down spending and spin up new sources of revenue.

PT Barnum

[Anonymous Coward]

...A fool and his money...

are they trying to outsell themselves?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, the text sounds like NVIDIA released a new card to compete with the sales of another NVIDIA card?
So who would now buy the Titan X?

Re:are they trying to outsell themselves?

[zlives]

those that need 12GB of render space

Not yet

[malx]

Despite advances, these figures show that FPS in 4K is still not ready for prime-time even on top-class cards.

When there are cards that can handle it, I'll think about upgrading my 1920x1200 monitor. Until then, I'll wait it out, and so can my aging graphics card.

Part of the problem is that at higher resolutions it becomes more important to use high graphics settings (high res textures, better lighting effects, further draw distance), not less. So if you're interested in 4K gaming, you'll want to do it with everything turned up to 11. The exception to this rule is anti-aliasing, which decreases in value the higher the resolution.

Re:Not yet

[TheDarkMaster]

You can do 4K now, but you will need SLI. But it depends on the game too, if I do not make any changes in Skyrim for example, then I can run it in 4K with a single GTX980 easily.

Re:Not yet

[Nyder]

Despite advances, these figures show that FPS in 4K is still not ready for prime-time even on top-class cards.

When there are cards that can handle it, I'll think about upgrading my 1920x1200 monitor. Until then, I'll wait it out, and so can my aging graphics card.

Part of the problem is that at higher resolutions it becomes more important to use high graphics settings (high res textures, better lighting effects, further draw distance), not less. So if you're interested in 4K gaming, you'll want to do it with everything turned up to 11. The exception to this rule is anti-aliasing, which decreases in value the higher the resolution.

All 4k'rs I know use SLI. (They have have nvidia cards,980's). I wouldn't be surprised if some of them got the new card. Me, i'm cool with my 1080p and my 970.

Re:Not yet

[StikyPad]

Define "handle."

Developers decide the level of detail and effects they want to be the max settings in their games, and they can always make this higher than the current state of the art, regardless of what that state is. Generally, they're going to be targeting 1920x1080 displays, since that's what the overwhelming majority of users have right now, even with the best video cards. And this has *always* been the case. Back when I had a 21" CRT with "MultiSync," I would never be able to run the latest games in 1600x1200 (max res) on the latest hardware. It was unthinkable. 1280x1024 was usually the best I could do.

If you, as a user, want higher resolution, you're going to have to either make a tradeoff in detail/effects, or wait a few years for hardware to exceed the performance that was available when the developers wrote the game. As 4k becomes more popular, developers may change their performance targets as well (at the expense of improvements in quality other than resolution), but probably not until adoption exceeds 50% of the market.

By the way, you can safely improve performance without sacrificing any quality by reducing anti-aliasing by 1/2 in 4k, since the resolution is twice that of 1080p. Granted, it would look even better to keep AA maxed, but the picture will still be sharper than 1080p because you will be viewing actual pixels instead of virtual pixels.

Re:Not yet

[Anonymous Coward]

4k is four times the resolution of 1080p, not twice.

Until they fix the LINUX drivers, it's moot

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some serious bugs in the latest nVidia drivers for Linux. In my case it ends up locking up the screen for about 15-20 seconds. Others have not been as lucky. Until it's fixed buying more nVidia product is a non-starter.

Re:epyT-R why'd you "Run, Forrest: RUN"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but where in the bloody hell am I going to find a 200 year old juniper?

R9 380X is faster

[edxwelch]

AMD are about to release the 390x (with HBM memory) which already has been benchmarked faster than the Titan X, but consumes more power.
http://wccftech.com/stacked-hb...
The thing is Maxwell is much more power efficient than GCN, but it does so by crippling double prescision performance.
That means AMD could see a lot of sales from the FirePro version of the 390x.

Two kinds of gamers...

[theendlessnow]

1. Those that want to win. That is those that don't have to by extremely expensive graphics cards or need ulta-mega-high resolutions with 24 monitors, etc.. These use single monitors so that have full range of view without moving their head and use lowest possible settings in order to accelerate game play and responsiveness. They often uses other pieces of antiquity like keyboard/mouse cords and ethernet cables. These people often save hundreds of dollars (sometimes more) by using "lesser" graphics capable systems.
2. Those that want to lose in very pretty ways. These like to die while seeing and possibly even smelling every drop of blood spilled. These prefer obstacles like fog to obscure their vision and often assume they can hide in such things while playing against a more savvy opponent from #1 above. These also prefer the latencies of "cordless" items and performance lags of WiFi in order to reduce "clutter"... again, all while bleeding is very pretty ways.

3. I suppose there could be a 3rd type that spends over $1000 on their gaming setup and then realizes that they need to "simplify" everything so that they can "win"... perhaps "foolish" is the best way to describe these.

Re:Two kinds of gamers...

[Anonymous Coward]

.....or, there's multiplayer enthusiasts, that are more likely to be ultra-competitive, and single player enthusiasts, where winning isn't so important as it's more about the experience (and eye-candy is nice to have, too).

Since the vast majority of people I met online were total shitlords, I find single player to be much more to my liking these days. Having a pause button is a major benefit, too.

Re:Two kinds of gamers...

[zlives]

thank you for reiterating why MMO's are to be avoided at all cost.

Re:Two kinds of gamers...

[Cederic]

These people often save hundreds of dollars (sometimes more) by using "lesser" graphics capable systems.

No, these people buy as high quality a card as they can afford and then turn the detail levels down anyway.

Framerates are king and shitty graphics cards don't give you guaranteed top end framerates.

Tempting?

[Grizzley9]

NVIDIA has decided to pull no punches and release a seriously tempting GTX 980 Ti at $649

Only the slimmest of demographics (pun intended) would this appeal to. Let me know in 6-12 months when this gets down to the $100-$150 range.

Re:Tempting?

[DocSavage64109]

According to https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/video-card/#gpu.chipset.geforce-gtx-980 the 980 GTX has maintained the same price for nearly a year now.

The real Q: Price Drops??

[WillgasM]

I'm hoping this spurs some price drops on the rest of the 900 series. I've been itching for a good GPU sale. I'm still running an old 465 and it has become the bottleneck on my system. I'll probably settle for a 960 since that would be ~400% improvement on my current card (well, maybe not quite since my current mobo doesn't support 3.0) and wouldn't break the bank, but I'd really like to see the 970 come down a bit more in price. The 970 is probably overkill for what I do since I don't think I'll be moving to 4k any time soon, but I do run dual monitors and often keep a movie playing whilst I'm gaming so the extra RAM would be appreciated. It would be nice to know I have a card that should carry me all the way through my next build. Also, for anyone considering getting into an Oculus Rift, remember that a 970 is the minimum required spec. I really doubt there'll be any drastic price drops any time soon, but a boy can dream.

Re:Spending good money to waste valuable time

[Anonymous Coward]

its only 650 bucks... that is one good meal with decent wine.... whats the big deal.

Re:epyT-R why'd you "Run, Forrest: RUN"

[GrumpySteen]

I know that was a joke, but juniper trees can easily live over 500 years and 1,000 year old trees have been found. It's easy to find 200 year old juniper trees.

Re:Spending good money to waste valuable time

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the entire food budget for 1.5 months for my family of 5 ... it's almost as if we all have different situations!

That said, I applaud people that spend this on graphics cards because in 3-5 years I will be able to buy this card used for a song! :)

Re:epyT-R why'd you "Run, Forrest: RUN"

[Anonymous Coward]

Will editing the Host file allow me to get at least 60fps on a 4k moniter with my old Nvidia 8800GT?

What about FP64?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the Titan like 10x the double precision performance vs. the 980?