Most gamers have heard of the Titan X, the graphic card that has set the benchmark for what one can expect from a single graphic card. What people did not expect soon after it's launch was a card to reduce the gap between the Titan X and the rest of the 900 series. This has happened in the form of the GTX 980 Ti, a graphic card based on the same GM200 chip as it's big brother Titan X.

The 980 Ti is for those gamers that want to make the leap to 4K and the card packs the right amount of power to give players what they want without having them shell out as much as they would have to for a new Titan X.

Power

The 980 Ti packs a punch with 22 streaming multiprocessors and 2816 CUDA cores while having a 6GB memory buffer, 2GB more than what you find with the standard GTX 980. The card also features 176 texture units, which powered by a frequency of 1000MHz, output a texture filtering rate of a whooping 176 Gigatexels/sec, which is more than twenty percent higher than the standard GTX 980. You also get 3MB of L2 cache and 96 ROPs.

People wanting to play at 4K will find this card especially appealing because of the 6GB memory buffer that allows for gaming without the worry that they will run out of memory. The base clock speed of the 980 Ti goes neck to neck with the Titan X, with both the cards being at 1000 Mhz and Boost Clock speeds of 1075 Mhz.

Build quality and design

The GTX 980 Ti looks great. It has an aluminum cover like the 980 and the Titan X, and has a really premium feel to it. In terms of cooling, it has a copper vapor chamber that cools the GM200 chip and goes with a dual-slot aluminium heatsink. There's also a fan to exhaust the hot air released after cooling the chip. The fan is designed keeping in mind the demanding games present in the market today and manages to run very quietly despite the immense load.

The GTX 980 Ti doesn't include a backplate on the reference card, just in case you need to set up 3 or 4-way SLI, which I cannot see why you would need right now, but it's always better to be prepared in case there is a new Crysis around the corner.

Benchmarks

As the numbers reveal, the Nvidia GTX 980Ti is enough for most video games available in the market today without really needing 2-way SLI or anything more. The card delivers a smooth 60-90 frames per second on all the games tested at maximum settings while at a resolution of 2560x1600. When you ramp the resolution up to 4K and throw in a recently released graphically demanding title like the Witcher 3, the card still performs pretty well with an average of 35 fps. If you happen to have a 2K monitor, the card will be able to run everything maxed out at over 60 frames per second at native resolution, which is pretty good and if you want to exceed 60 fps on a 4K monitor you can always build for 2-way SLI which works out to only Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 more expensive than the Titan X offering a much higher performance.

Verdict

With the Titan X being priced between Rs 85,000 to 95,000 depending on which version of the card you get, a 2-way 980 Ti SLI would make a lot more sense if you have that kind of money to spend. While it is no doubt that the Titan X is slightly more powerful, the 980 Ti offers just slightly less performance at 53,000 to 62,000 price point. I honestly cannot see any way that the Titan X can be a sensible option for anyone unless all you’re looking for is bragging rights or you have a special scenario that requires the additional power on a single card. For most of us, The 980 Ti is a much better option just because of the value for money.This card is great for people who want to game at anything higher than 1080p and have the monitor to display it. If you don’t then a GTX 970 or GTX 980 may be a better choice. The GTX 980 Ti has a bright future ahead with features like DirectX 12 support which means you can run games at higher qualities for the next couple of years. Overall, this card presents a lot more value when compared to Titan X and is your best bet when looking for a top of the line graphic card.