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

[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.

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

[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: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

[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.