I really, really liked Nvidia’s Titan X. Yes, it carries an exorbitant price tag of $999, but it remains the most powerful single-GPU graphics card on the market and it integrates nicely into everything from super towers to compact mini-ITX builds. But would I sacrifice a paltry 3% of performance and choose “only” 6GB of VRAM if it meant paying $350 less for a nearly identical part? Absolutely! And that’s what makes Nvidia’s new 980 Ti so appealing. (It also means Nvidia’s GTX 980 will see a price reduction down to $499.)

The GTX 980 Ti is a significant step up over the GTX 980, boasting 2816 CUDA Cores. This adds up to 38% more than the GTX 980 for only a 30% higher price tag, but the clincher is how it compares to Titan X. It’s 35% cheaper and only reduces its CUDA Core count by 8%. A few other interesting specifications: The 980 Ti packs in 6GB of VRAM and a 384-bit memory interface running at an effective memory clock of 7GHz; exactly the same as the Titan X.

In my testing, the 980 Ti is between 54% and 62% faster than the 780 Ti (and launching at a cheaper introductory price), which makes Nvidia’s latest flagship a compelling upgrade. For those of you who prefer to wait two generations to upgrade and are likely rocking a GTX 680, the 980 Ti delivers 3x the memory and 3x the performance.

I had originally planned an exhaustive review of the 980 Ti, similar to my 960 and Titan X reviews, but a few time restrictions reared their ugly head this week. That’s why you’re seeing a short and sweet article versus the usual 2000 word monsters.

That’s OK, because honestly the verdict is incredibly straightforward. The 980 Ti is effectively a Titan X with 6GB of VRAM instead of 12GB and – at most — a 3% performance drop in real-world gaming benchmarks. The reality is that 6GB is still a more than adequate frame buffer for 4K gaming (and certainly for 1440p), so for the vast majority of enthusiasts this shouldn’t be a deal breaker. For those upgrading from the 780 Ti’s 3GB of VRAM, of course, it’s probably a deal maker.

Augmented by the power efficiency of Nvidia’s Maxwell architecture, the 980 Ti also has the same 250W TDP as the 780 Ti, giving it a relative performance per watt boost of 2.3x.

Here’s a visual look at just how similar the gaming performance is between the 980 Ti and Titan X:

The performance similarities remain consistent with synthetic benchmarks such as 3DMark’s FireStrike:

The good news for Nvidia fans is abundant, especially if they’re rocking older generation GeForce cards. If you’ve had hardware lust over the Titan X, you can consider picking up a card that exhibits a negligible comparative performance drop for $350 less — and I cannot wait to see how the 980 Ti performs in SLI.

Plus, this addition to the product stacks means the baseline GTX 980 sees a $50 price drop.

As 4K gaming continues to find rapid adoption (sales of 4K displays have doubled in the last year according to Nvidia), the 980 Ti is perfectly positioned to be one of the first considerations for would-be 4K gamers.

Nvidia’s GTX 980 Ti launches on June 1 for $649 ($50 cheaper than the 780 Ti’s introductory price if I recall correctly) and as usual, Nvidia’s board partners like MSI, EVGA, PNY, and Asus are expected to eventually have their own unique variants. The card will also ship with a free copy of Batman: Arkham Knight.

For those keeping score, this is Nvidia’s fifth unanswered graphics card release, and its price and performance put the company in a strong position against the expected imminent launch of AMD’s Radeon 390x.



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