Guru3D.com
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • Channels
    • Archive
  • DOWNLOADS
    • New Downloads
    • Categories
    • Archive
  • GAME REVIEWS
  • ARTICLES
    • Rig of the Month
    • Join ROTM
    • PC Buyers Guide
    • Guru3D VGA Charts
    • Editorials
    • Dated content
  • HARDWARE REVIEWS
    • Videocards
    • Processors
    • Audio
    • Motherboards
    • Memory and Flash
    • SSD Storage
    • Chassis
    • Media Players
    • Power Supply
    • Laptop and Mobile
    • Smartphone
    • Networking
    • Keyboard Mouse
    • Cooling
    • Search articles
    • Knowledgebase
    • More Categories
  • FORUMS
  • NEWSLETTER
  • CONTACT

New Reviews
Hitman III: PC graphics perf benchmark review
TeamGroup CX2 1TB SATA3 SSD review
EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra review
Corsair 5000D PC Chassis Review
NZXT Kraken X63 RGB Review
ASUS Radeon RX 6900 XT STRIX OC LC Review
TerraMaster F5-221 NAS Review
MSI Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming X TRIO Review
Sapphire Radeon RX 6800 NITRO+ review
Corsair HS70 Bluetooth Headset Review

New Downloads
AMD Radeon Adrenalin Edition 21.1.1 driver download
CPU-Z download v1.95
Intel HD graphics Driver Download Version: DCH 27.20.100.9168
HWiNFO Download v6.41 (4355 Beta)
GeForce 461.33 hotfix driver download
Prime95 download version 30.4 build 7
AIDA64 Download Version 6.32.5620 beta
3DMark Download v2.16.7117 + Time Spy
Crystal DiskMark 8.0.1 Download
Corsair Utility Engine Download (iCUE) Download v3.37.140


New Forum Topics
RTSS 6.7.0 beta 1 Intel DG2 GPU To Get Released This Year features Ray Tracing support natively Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 21.1.1 Download & Discussion Solution for stuck VRAM mem at max clocks on AMD Navi10 1080TI Performance - Drivers making it worse or better regarding FPS? GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 461.33 RDNA2 RX6000 Series Owners Thread, Tests, Mods, BIOS & Tweaks ! Resizeable BAR support issues CRU (Custom Resolution Utility) Tips, Tricks and Monitors OC (LCD/LED/CRT) Windows 10 - Tips and Tweaks




Guru3D.com » Review » GALAX GeForce GTX 980 HOF review » Page 4

GALAX GeForce GTX 980 HOF review - Maxwell Graphics Architecture

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 12/02/2014 08:51 AM [ 5] 39 comment(s)

Tweet

Technology & Specifications (Reference)

The GeForce GTX 970 and 980 are based on the latest iteration of Maxwell GPU architecture, the cards use revision A1 of GM204, as explained the 20nm node is not yet ready and these products are based on a 28nm fab node. That will make the chips relatively large in size. Maxwell is an advanced design, it has 5.2 Billion transistors tucked away in a S-FCBGA chip. It has a 398 mm² die size. GeForce GTX 970 comes with 1664 CUDA (shader) cores while its bigger brother the GeForce GTX 980 has 2048 shader processors. The change in shader amount is amongst the biggest differentials together with ROP (64!) and TMU count.

  • GeForce GTX 970 has 1664 shader processors and 4 GB of gDDR5 graphics memory.
  • GeForce GTX 980 has 2048 shader processors and 4 GB of gDDR5 graphics memory.

The product is obviously PCI-Express 3.0 ready, it has a max TDP of around 165 Watts with a typical idle power draw of 10 Watts. That TDP is a maximum overall, and on average your GPU will not consume that amount of power. But let me show you the coolest photo of the GPU die:
 

NVIDIA GM204 Maxwell architecture GPU - you can see the SMX clusters.road. Also, occasionally, Turbo Boost was used to allow KITT to accelerate to incredible speeds in excess of 200 mph (322 km/h). The boosters could fire forward and backward.

The GM204 is based off the Maxwell architecture, as such you will get the pre-modelled SMX clusters of what is now 128 shader processors per cluster (used to be 192 on Kepler). There are 16 active clusters for the GTX 980, times 128 shader processors which thus offers you 2048 shader processors. The reference GeForce GTX 980 has a core clock frequency of 1126 MHz with a Boost frequency that can run up to 1216 MHz. The GTX 970 on the other hand has 13 of these clusters available x 128 = 1664 shader processors, there the base clock frequency is 1050 MHz with a boost frequency up-to 1178 MHz. As far as the memory specs of the GM204 Maxwell GPU are concerned, these boards will feature a 256-bit memory bus connected to 4 GB of GDDR5 video buffer memory, AKA VRAM AKA your framebuffer AKA graphics memory for the graphics card. On the memory controller side of things you'll see that the reference memory clock (effective data-rate) is now set at 7 GHz / Gbps. The GeForce GTX 900 series is DirectX 11.3 and 12 ready, with Windows 8, 7 and Vista also being compatible to take advantage of DirectCompute, multi-threading, hardware tessellation and the latest shader 5.0 extensions. The latest revision of DX12 is a Windows 8 feature only, yet will bring in significant optimizations. DirectX 12 - Direct 3D 12 (low overhead – cross-platform – ready now).

  • Features: Rasterizer Ordered
    Typed UAV load
    Volume tiles resources
    conservative raster
  • Low overhead – Reduce CPU overhead – increase scalability across platforms – Superset of DirectX 11 rendering functionality.
  • Cross Platform

For your reference here's a quick overview of some past generation high-end GeForce cards. Yes, the Maxwell products might seem slower if you look at the specs, but they are heavily optimized and are running at fairly high clock frequencies.
 

GeForce GTX 780 Titan 780 Ti Titan Black Titan Z 970 980
Stream (Shader) Processors 2304 2688 2880 2880 5760 1664 2048
Core Clock (MHz) 863 836 875 889 705 1050 1126
Boost Clock 900 876 928 980 876 1178 1216
Memory Clock (effective MHz) 6000 6000 7000 7000  7000 7000 7000
Memory amount 3072 6144 3072 6144 12288 4096 4096
Memory Interface 384-bit 384-bit 384-bit 384-bit 384-bit 256-bit 256-bit
Memory Type gDDR5 gDDR5 gDDR5 gDDR5 gDDR5 gDDR5 gDDR5
HDCP Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Display Port Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
HDMI Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes


With 4 GB per GPU on the GTX 970 and 980 you will have a very nice amount of graphics memory available. The hardware engineers at Nvidia reworked the memory subsystem quite a bit, enabling much higher memory clock frequency speeds compared to previous generation GeForce GPUs. The result is this; memory speeds up-to 7 Gbps. Combined with some clever advancements in color compression Nvidia can claim even more bandwidth as Maxwell cards now use 3rd generation delta color compression. (ex. 7 Gbps *1/75%) = 9.3 Gbps effective bandwidth thanks to enhanced color compression and enhanced caching techniques. 

 

The GALAX GeForce GTX 980 HOF edition graphics card runs at faster clocks; 1304 MHz GPU with a 1418 MHz Turbo Boost and memory at 7.0 GHz (effective) 

 

The Hoff's (Michael Knight) card was called KITT - and has a Knight Industries Two Thousand microprocessor (SKU code AD227529) with "self-aware" cybernetic logic module. (editor: Did it sound like a good idea?). Much like Nvidia offers these days, KITT had a Mobile Unit as well, it was called F.L.A.G. and had an Aerodynamic Sleeping Cab (something Nvidia still has not implemented even in 2014). The reaction time of KITT is one nanosecond, and his "memory" capacity was an amazing 1,000 megabits (125 MegaByte). KITT's future capacity is unlimited. KITT is armored with "Tri-Helical Plasteel 1000 MBS" (Molecular Bonded Shell) back plating whereas the HoF card uses only an Anodized aluminum backplate.

KITT has Turbo Boost, a duo of rocket boosters mounted just behind the front tires that lifted the car, allowing KITT to jump into the air and pass over obstacles. The Galax HOF also has a turbo boost, running at 1418 MHz. KITTs Turbo Boost was used to allow KITT to accelerate to incredible speeds in excess of 200 mph (322 km/h).




28 pages « 3 4 5 6 next »



Related Articles
GALAX GeForce RTX 3080 SG review
In this review, we benchmark the GeForce RTX 3080 SG (short for Serious Gaming) from none other than GALAX. Armed with a triple fan based blade wing cooling design this card is to seriously out some...

GALAX GeForce RTX 2070 Super HOF AE review
The name is so long that we have to shorten it here and there, but we review the GALAX GeForce RTX 2070 Super HOF (Hall of Fame) 10th Anniversary Edition. The product is big, massive and all-white in...

GALAX GeForce RTX 2070 Super WTF review
We review the new GALAX GeForce RTX 2070 Super in the WTF edition, and yes that is a playful way of wording in many regards. WTF is short for Work The Frames, which realistically you would have never...

GALAX GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER EX review
We have GALAX in the house, and they brought along their EX edition of the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, NVIDIA has launched graphics cards in their new Super series, as in super-charged. And the RTX 2060 c...

© 2021