Conclusion
Whether such speed will be good enough to hold on to the single-GPU crown in the face of imminent upcoming competition from the Fiji-infused Radeon R9 390X is one of the more interesting debates in the premium PC graphics space.In a logical move that pre-empts AMD's soon-to-be-released GPUs in the high-end graphics space, Nvidia has re-engineered the GeForce GTX Titan X for a more palatable price point.
The new GPU, GeForce GTX 980 Ti, uses almost all of the capabilities of the headline card. There's a minor snip in shading ability through the removal of 256 of the Titan X's 3,072 cores, while the memory buffer is reduced from a gigantic 12GB to a more than reasonable 6GB - neither of which have a meaningfully negative impact upon benchmark scores at high resolutions.
Our sample reference card is specified with the same core and boost clocks as Titan X yet routinely matches its performance through a more vigorous real-world implementation of the GPU Boost 2.0 technology. We expect Nvidia's partners, who weren't allowed to tinker with the Titan X, to innovate by strapping on larger coolers and efficient, effective heatsinks.
Within two weeks we'll bear witness to partner-clocked cards that tease the most out of the second-generation Maxwell architecture, and we fully expect the cream of this crop to be faster than the reference Titan X in every regard. Whether such speed will be good enough to hold on to the single-GPU crown in the face of imminent upcoming competition from the Fiji-infused Radeon R9 390X is one of the more interesting debates in the premium PC graphics space.
Nvidia has laid down a very firm marker with the GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB card. Effortlessly quick at lower resolutions and making a good fist of 4K gaming with the bells and whistles on, AMD's challenge has just been amped up a notch. Lucky enough to have a bag of cash to spend on a top graphics card? The month of June will prove to be a very interesting one.
Ideally suited for 4K
Decent power consumption
Overclocks well
Relatively quiet
Practically a Titan X
Buying choice muddied by R9 390X
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti
HEXUS.where2buy
The GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics card will be on pre-order from selected retailers starting Monday, June 1.
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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
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