NVIDIA Maxwell GTX 980 Performance - 15% Faster Than R9 290X, GTX 970 10% Faster Than R9 290

This first performance review of NVIDIA’s Maxwell based GeForce GTX 980 and GeForce GTX 970 graphics cards have been leaked. The review was leaked over at Expreview however it has since been removed but we were able to grab most of the performance slides to show you the performance comparisons between NVIDIA’s new and improved Maxwell core architecture versus GK110 and Hawaii.

[Ka7be]

And 50% more expensive than R9 290X....

I will wait for the R9 390x
http://videocardz.com/52302...

[FlyingFoxy]

Tempted to wait for the 390/390x myself, would be nice if they came before xmas but it's looking like it maybe just after now.. Maybe same with 980 Ti?

[KTF26]

more likely AMD will release 390/390x before 980ti
nvidia waited for 290x to release 780ti right after it
I expect them to do the same with the 250w monsters of maxwell

@sam889
no they will release it with $500/$550 price tag to make AMD pay for R9-295x2 because this monster killed TITAN Z
if you forgot nvidia did something similar with GTX680 when they released it $50 less than HD7970

[gamernova]

To be fair, the 290x prices were inflated far beyond nvidia because of the coin mining craze. Maybe more expensive but honestly, with the ability to capture gameplay, to be able to stream with the card, lower temps, and awesome driver support, it's worth the price tag. AMD can't match Nvidia as it stands.

[brainfart]

I have to add if you have a amd hd 7000 series card or above you can capture game play, record and play back your game with dvr if you have amd game evolved app!!!

[badz149]

ONLY 15% faster than last year's flagship? kinda disappointing isn't it? especially for the price they are gonna ask for it.

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

Given that they make less noise, use less power, run cooler and surprisingly fairly priced I'd argue the improvements at leaps and bounds better. Also more VRam.

[badz149]

Power saving is great and all but I don't think enthusiasts would really care too much about it. Just 15% faster won't attract many to upgrade. Too miniscule imo.

[kingduqc]

the 970 is 150$ cheaper and withing 10% performence...

[Ka7be]

10% performance? lol get your head out of your ars mate.
http://s27.postimg.org/paua...
GTX970 performance is same as 290 without the X. and the 290 cost the same.
But i like the 970 because of its low consumption. Im waiting for the New AMD cards. But i will be getting the 970.

[kingduqc]

@Sam

how about you read some real reviews and stop nitpicking benchmarks.

http://www.techpowerup.com/...

Boom, faster then a 290x in an average of 17 games and the most expensive 970 is 120$ cheaper then the cheapest 290x on newegg canada.

Oh, and don't forget the power consumption, noise, heat outputted into the room is also much much lower...

"lol get your head out of your ars mate."

[SteamPowered]

Sweet. If the 980 holds steady for around $600, its gonna be some happy holidays at my house.

[Magicite]

Ill buy PS4 and bunch of games...and HD7950 INSTEAD.

[SteamPowered]

Hey, maybe you will get more bubbles for Xmas so you can troll Pc articles even harder!

[lfc_4eva]

The newer nvidia cards might not seem like a massive improvement over the previous generaton. However they are much more power effecient and cooler so quieter as result too.

Its not always performance where we need improvements!

[Roccetarius]

Pretty much this, while the competition's cards continue to be power hungry. That's just another reason to choose these cards.

[bsmith61]

That's to be expected of newer hardware. I'd like to see if they'll do a 980ti.

[stiggs]

***Benchmarks show that the GTX 980 has a significant gain over the GTX 780Ti***

But the GTX 780Ti has a larger memory bus, higher memory bandwidth, higher Texture Fill Rate, more Texture Mapping Units, CUDA cores and SM units than the GTX 980. It just HAS TO be faster!

Higher numbers ALWAYS mean better performance, right guys??? /s

[BVFTW]

Maxwell cores vs Kepler cores (Nvidia claims a 128 CUDA core SMM has 90% of the performance of a 192 CUDA core SMX), larger L2 cache reduces the need for a bigger bandwidth, higher clocks helps giving a boost to the texture fill rate so the 128 TMUs are not an issue, I guess the increase in Raster Units is there to help with bigger resolutions and last but no least the lower TDP which means less heat, so there is a lot of room for "OC", even on air! XD

[KTF26]

the micro-architecture is different
It depends on how they organized the components inside the GPU

you have more than one micro-architecture
each one do the work using its own way
and you have hundreds programs
each program needs to do its own work
with different architecture you can't tell which one is better unless you test all of them on multiple programs and take the average

[stiggs]

Apparently the "/s" wasn't a strong enough indicator.

[xtremexx]

seems like we are getting closer to 4K being more and more viable for people who arent fully enthusiasts or atleast dont have the budget of one.

[dmeador]

I just can't wait for the dust to settle in a few days when the prices/power info is all out, and pick whether I want the 900's or 700's

[--bienio--]

Anybody known price?

[Nerdmaster]

I hope I can find one in the final days of October or in the beginning of November, because that's when I'll be in USA.

In these tests they usually put high levels of anti aliasing even in very high resolutions (e.g. 2560x1600). Does anybody think AA helps at these resolutions?

[traumadisaster]

At 4k I don't need any aa, I see no jaggies. Yet I try it at 4x and I think it looks .00001% sharper maybe.

[bumnut]

AA is needed at 2560 x 1440, but if I set it to higher than 4X I struggle to notice the difference.

[kainslayer]

it will all boil down to the overclocking factor for me if i can squeeze 200~300mhz out of them i will consider them as good if on the otherhand are like 290x which are poor overclockers then sorry nvidia

[FlameWater]

The upgrade from a 560 to a 960 is gonna be good

[Raider69]

580 to 980 for me!My eletric bill is going to come down;im loving it!

[ATi_Elite]

Looking to go from 560ti sli to 960 sli the low power conumption is great.