The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Review: Maxwell Mark 2
by Ryan Smith on September 18, 2014 10:30 PM ESTThe Test
For the launch of GTX 980 we are using NVIDIA’s press beta drivers for the card, release 334.07 beta. This is the first (semi) public release of the R343 driver set, and coinciding with the release of the Maxwell 2 architecture it also marks the end of support for NVIDIA’s D3D10 GPUs: the 8, 9, 100, 200, and 300 series. Beginning with R343 these products are no longer supported in new driver branches and have been moved to legacy status.
Meanwhile as noted earlier, due to time constraints and hardware problems today we are focusing our coverage on the GTX 980. Next week we will be looking at GTX 980 SLI (hint: it’s fast) and GTX 970.
And on a testing note, as is standard for our reviews we are using our reference Radeon R9 290X for our 290X benchmarks. For this reason we are including both the standard and uber modes for the sake of clarity and completeness. The temperature throttling that the reference 290X suffers from is basically limited to just the reference 290X, as the non-reference/custom models use open air coolers that have no problem dissipating the 290X’s full heat load. Both modes are included for this reason, to demonstrate how a reference 290X performs and how a custom model would perform. At this point you can still buy reference 290X cards, but the vast majority of retail cards will be of the non-reference variety, where the 290X Uber mode’s results will be more applicable.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon R9 290X AMD Radeon R9 290 AMD Radeon HD 7970 AMD Radeon HD 6970 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA Release 344.07 Beta AMD Catalyst 14.300.1005 Beta |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
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Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
As noted in the article, we had a problem with our 970 sample that was not able to be resolved in time for this article. Otherwise I would have very much liked to have a 970 in this review.Sunrise089 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
"Focus on quality first, then timeliness second. There's value in both but there's more value in one." :(extide - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Yeah guys, seriously just make the article live a little bit late!hpglow - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
The boss quits and all you guys around running around the office with your shirts off screaming at the top of your lungs? The review could have waited and hour or two so that it was done, now I'm not even going to finish reading it.iLovefloss - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
They've been doing this since forever. If you look at the comments from the R9 290X launch review, people were complaining about the same thing for example.Sunrise089 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Including me. It was unacceptable clIck-baiting then and it still is. Interestingly enough it's not a site-wide issue. Surface Pro 3 and Devils Canyon both had long waits for ultimately excellent reviews. iPhone 6 will no doubt be a very popular review and yet Joshua or whoever didn't push it online at midnight. For whatever reason though GPU reviews get this weird 'rush to publish, fill in content later' pattern.djscrew - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
diva much? jeez give it a restnathanddrews - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
This is not the first time AT has done this, there have been many other incomplete reviews published over the years (decades).chizow - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
@hpglow, in Ryan's defense, it was a short turnaround from the press briefing and this has happened in the past. Usually AT's articles focus heavily on the technical aspects also (which is greatly appreciated throughout the industry) and he also gets help from the rest of the staff to stitch the review together, so it is understandable that it is sometimes uploaded piecemeal.I would rather have something that is eventually updated that stands the test of time, vs. something that is rushed out hastily.
SodaAnt - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
You think that it would only take an hour or two to get a gpu somehow, run dozens of tests on it, put those tests into tables, put those tables onto pages, then write another few thousand words on those tests?