Post by Eorl @ 02:33pm 19/09/14 | 31 Comments
The new series will be boasting the very powerful Maxwell chipset, which according to Nvidia "is a major leap in GPU engineering, bringing new ideas to the table that will enhance and improve your experiences in meaningful, impactful ways." The choice to skip the desktop 800 series was made due to perceived confusion over Nvidia's current mobile GPU series, though we aren't quite sure who exactly would be confused.
Here is the quick skinny on the card specs: The GTX 970 has 1664 processor cores running at a base frequency of 1050MHz (boost clock of 1178MHz), while the beefier GTX 980 has 2048 cores running at 1126MHz (boost clock of 1216MHz). The GTX 970 and the GTX 980 both have a 256-bit interface to 4GB of GDDR5 memory running at an effective speed of 7Gbps.
According to PCWorld the card brackets will feature three dual-link DVI connectors for multi-screen use, a DisplayPort 1.2, and a HDMI 2.0 link. The HDMI port is definitely a big one as PCWorld points out, with the 2.0 revision supporting 4K resolution at a refresh rate of 60Hz - the older 1.4b was only able to support 4K resolution at 30Hz.
Of course it isn't like Nvidia to just stop at making games run faster, with the company promising four new features that will make games even more realistic: Dynamic Super Resolution, Multi-Frame-Sampled Anti-aliasing (MFAA), Voxel Global Illumination, and VR Direct. You can find the full writeup on those features at the site's official splash page.
Currently prices for Australia are sitting at AUD$519 for the GTX 970 4GB, and AUD$799 for the GTX 908 4GB. That's a whopping 39.5% markup for the 970 and 38.8% markup for the 980. Youch.
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Posted 03:30pm 19/9/14
Posted 03:32pm 19/9/14
Posted 03:41pm 19/9/14
Posted 04:18pm 19/9/14
Posted 04:28pm 19/9/14
Posted 04:36pm 19/9/14
Though the prospect of lower power usage on the 980 sounds intriguing as GFX cards for PC's, powerful ones, have almost become a parody. As in, they are called things like Titan for both figurative and physical reasons. Too big, and too power hungry.
Posted 06:08pm 19/9/14
America: $559. Australia: $800 - Haha.
Get your cards through Amazon one at a time. My 680's all came from Amazon years ago. If you get EVGA, you deal directly with them for warranty. They let you remove blocks and still cover them.
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As for performance etc, read this. I haven't yet, but these guys normally do a pretty strong review on cards.
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/74849-nvidi
Posted 06:12pm 19/9/14
Totally agree, the power requirements for CPUs is utterly ridiculous as well. Every year there's some newer, faster CPU< yet it achieves this mostly through simply pushing in more power. I wish we had stayed with 230 Watt Power Supplies - if it didn't run a whole system on that, it doesn't count when we're comparing benchmarks.
Posted 06:36pm 19/9/14
Some numbers: I remember the old 3.4Ghz Pentium 4 D. It's a 95 watt chip, 2 cores without hyper threading. It scores 487 'points'. Today's 4790K is a an 88 watt chip and scores 11,355 'points'. That's a bit over 23 times as fast. Keep in mind the 4790K's TDP also includes an onboard GPU. You're lucky to make it draw more than 35 watts on a Prime torture test. With that in mind, the new CPU is about 65 times as efficient, performance to watt.
Posted 06:38pm 19/9/14
tell me more. do u need vpn or us shipping or direct?
Posted 06:48pm 19/9/14
Well back then it was 50/50 on whether you could get them. I don't know if it's been clamped down harder now. Most motherboards for example you can't get, but SSD's, CPU's, Graphics cards etc I haven't had much of a hassle.
For me it was a process of bringing up an item, and where it says "42 new from $500" you can click it and it'll show a list of vendors that are selling it, in price order. I'd then add a bunch of the items to my cart and go through to the final screen (prior to committing to payment, but after it asks for your shipping address) and it would come up showing your cart, with red shipping unavailable errors written under the ones you can't get. Remove all of them except the ones that aren't unavailable then take your pick.
That's for each model of item you'd have to do it for, so Gigabyte, EVGA, Asus, MSI, 980, 870, etc etc. I could buy EVGA reference + classified cards, but not the mid range SC for example. It's a bit of a s*** but once you work out the process it ain't too bad. Don't go over $1000 item value. Shipping isn't included. I've had a $980 item and $250 shipping get through without a fuss. AU Customs do their rate conversion back at the date of purchase.
Posted 06:59pm 19/9/14
Posted 10:01pm 19/9/14
Posted 06:16am 20/9/14
Posted 07:25pm 20/9/14
I have been lucky the past 5 years and never had a warranty issue with imported tech, but then its only going to be a postal delay if I had one - so i would just have to put the old card back in whilst I waited.
Posted 09:15pm 20/9/14
Posted 01:44am 21/9/14
I recently went from a q6600 (~2007) to an i5 4690 (2014) and shaved 20% off my CPU power requirements (105 Watts -> 84 Watts). So, things seem to be going in the right direction in the larger strokes.
Posted 09:27am 21/9/14
I'm thinking it might be to hard to get another 680 OC. My MB is a Gigabyte G1 Sniper so it can sli properly and I have plenty of power with a 1000w PSU. Thoughts?
Posted 09:40am 21/9/14
I'd go with another 680 for now if you can acquire one cheap. Yes, G1 supports 3 way SLI.
If you had a second gamer (kids/mrs?) that needed a new card as well, then of course get a 970/980 and put the 680 in the other computer. That's the route I might be going, waiting to hear more about the bigger maxwell chips.
4K monitors are selling for less than $500 now as well.
Posted 11:35am 21/9/14
I thought that would be the best way to compare the new design, they are showing that while they have roughly the same amount of cores, you can see the performance increase clearly
Posted 12:12pm 21/9/14
I actually have a 680 in my sons computer and a 670 in my daughters. I could pinch his and just get him another. Then I gotta figure out what to get him...Would an sli system be much of a jump for me? or would I be better just grabbing a new one for me and keeping mine for him to sli? damn these choices :)
Posted 12:46pm 21/9/14
Posted 02:16pm 21/9/14
Hell no..
Posted 05:49pm 21/9/14
People with older cards are more likely to buy the 900's that those with newer cards.
Posted 09:36pm 21/9/14
Card: $616.10 AUD
Shipping: $65.40 AUD (2-3 Business Days)
Total: $681.50 AUD
(There is an international return policy, if returned within 7 days, so at least you can avoid nasty DOA surprises...)
As opposed to $800 local... yeah... I know where I'm buying it from.
Posted 09:39pm 21/9/14
Posted 09:58pm 21/9/14
Posted 06:46am 22/9/14
Posted 07:46am 22/9/14
Posted 09:52am 22/9/14
I think it's time you sold Audi while you have the chance to get some money back.
Posted 11:10am 22/9/14
But its is nice to have the raw grunt to run pretty much any game @ 120+fps. So I'll probably just hang onto them until the next generation.