Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review - Introduction

Bigger, Better, Rougher and Tougher
Nvidia's GeForce GTX 980 Ti Benchmarked - Tested - Reviewed

Yes ladies and gentlemen, big Maxwell for the consumer is here! We review, test and benchmark that all new GeForce GTX 980 Ti and include a very nice overclock I might add. In this review we look deeply into the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. You'd expect a product with '980' in it to have a similar slightly tweaked GPU, but no Sir. Nvidia shifted a thing or two around, the 980 Ti is based on the BIG Maxwell GPU, the same GPU that is powering the Titan X.

Obviously the product has been trimmed down a tiny bit, but trust us when we say, there's plenty performance to be found. This product comes with a luxurious six Gigabytes of graphics memory and with these specs, the GTX 980 Ti should be fetching a lot of interest for the true gamers among is. The GPU empowering the GeForce 980 Ti is big, this one has a massive transistor count; it is a slightly revised GM200 A1 GPU that currently feeds the Titan X its horsepower. So yes, a slightly different iteration of the GM200. The card has five display outputs: three DisplayPorts, HDMI and DVI-I. 

Where the GTX 980 has 4 GB, this product has a nice 6 GB frame buffer, and close to a third more shader processors when compared to the GeForce 980, accumulating up-to 2816 of them playing the binary game in a GPU that has a whopping 8 Billion transistors (GeForce GTX 980 has 5 Billion). The card looks pretty identical to previous models with subtle changes here and there and with that familiar cooler shroud. Memory wise NVIDIA equipped its GeForce GTX 980 Ti with 7 Gbps memory, the fastest GDDR5 memory you can find on a graphics card today, that's until HBM (stacked memory) is released by the competition in the near future.

Combined with GPU Boost 2.0 you will see this product is advertised in the 1076 MHz range on its dynamic clock, but we've see it hover close to 1.2 GHz in most scenarios we fired off on it. The reference base clock for 980 Ti is 1 GHz. It's not that the card can't go any higher, but it is done to keep the product in line power consumption wise. With a 250W TDP, we are not complaining at all, no Sir. For the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, monitor outputs include DVI, HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort, this will vary a little with board partner products that are bound to get released after Computex, based on their own design and cooling.

With a card like the GTX 980 Ti you will be able to play the hottest games including the Witcher 3 and Grand Theft Auto V at that whopping Ultra HD 8.2 Mpixels at a 3840x2160 resolution with a single card, in fact we are going to check that out in this review. The maximum allowed board design power draw is roughly 250 Watts, not bad considering the caliber of this product.

But let's say hello our new friend, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti with an introductory photo.  Look below, expensive technology, but impressive, very impressive. Before we fire up this article a small advice, grab a cup of coffee as this review is in-depth and extensive. Next page please. 
 

GeForce GTX 980 Ti