Rating: 9.5.

1. Introduction 2. MSI GTX980 Gaming 4G 3. MSI GTX980 Gaming 4G (High Res Gallery) 4. Testing Methodology 5. 3DMark Vantage 6. 3DMark 11 7. 3DMark 8. Unigine Heaven Benchmark 9. Unigine Valley Benchmark 10. Grid AutoSport (1080p and 1600p) 11. Grid AutoSport (4k) 12. Thief (1080p and 1600p) 13. Thief (4k) 14. Tomb Raider (1080p and 1600p) 15. Tomb Raider (4k) 16. Metro Last Light Redux (1080p and 1600p) 17. Metro Last Light Redux (4k) 18. Thermal Dynamics 19. Acoustics Performance 20. Power Consumption 21. Overclocking 22. Closing Thoughts 23. View All Pages

Since the Nvidia GTX970 and GTX980 launch last month, we have looked at a wide cross section of partner solutions. Today we review the MSI GTX980 Gaming 4G – the big brother of the formidable MSI GTX970 Gaming 4G, which we reviewed back on September 19th. Should you be treating yourself to an MSI GTX980 upgrade before the end of the year?



The MSI GTX980 Gaming 4G is a stunning looking product, the Cameron Diaz of graphics cards. The two tone red and black colour scheme is eye catching, and we love the red vertical ‘flashes’ over the black section of the cooler. The attention to detail is commendable.

A quick recap over the Maxwell architecture, in case you have missed all the details of the GTX970 and GTX980 in the last month. You may already have studied our multiple analysis of the lower level GTX750Ti solution throughout the year however.

The GTX750ti has been one of the most exciting cards that Nvidia have released in recent years – performance is close to the HD7850 while consuming half the power at the socket – and all without the need for a PCIe power cable. It produces such a modest heat emission that the Asus GTX750Ti Strix OC we reviewed recently didn’t need to spin the fans most of the time, even when gaming.



AMD really are so far behind now when it comes to power consumption that they will need to release a new architecture to compete. Not an easy thing to do overnight, but we hope they can become competitive again in the coming months. Competition is good for us – the consumer.

The Maxwell architecture has been designed to deliver twice the performance per watt of previous generation Geforce hardware. It sounds easy enough on paper to achieve, but the real world challenges for Nvidia have been complex.

GPU GeForce GTX 680 (Kepler) GeForce GTX 980 (Maxwell) Geforce GTX 970 (Maxwell) Streaming Multiprocessors 8 16 13 CUDA Cores 1536 2048 1664 Base Clock 1006 mhz 1126 mhz 1050 mhz GPU Boost Clock 1058 mhz 1216 mhz 1178 mhz Total Video memory 2GB 4GB 4GB Texel fill-rate 129 Gigatexels/Sec 144.1 Gigatexels/Sec 109.2 Gigatexels/Sec Memory Clock 6000 mhz 7000 mhz 7000 mhz Memory Bandwidth 192 GB/sec 224 GB/sec 224 GB/s ROPs 32 64 64 Manufacturing Process 28nm 28nm 28nm TDP 195 watts 165 watts 145 watts

The new GM204 GPU is very efficient. The Maxwell SM has been rebalanced so that the CUDA cores are fully utilised more often. Doing so saves power and enhances overall performance. The L2 cache size in the GM204 is 2MB, or four times larger than the GK104. The addition of extra cache means that fewer requests to the GPU memory are needed – again reducing power consumption and pushing more performance.

The Geforce GTX 980 is equipped with 7Gbps memory. Those of you with higher resolution monitors, or running in a multi screen configuration will also be pleased to hear that there is 4GB of GDDR5 memory on the card, not 3GB – this memory will push 224 GB/s sec. Nvidia have added a new compression engine to reduce the demand on DRAM bandwidth.

The MSI GTX980 Gaming 4G has received a core clock enhancement to 1,216mhz, from 1,126mhz on the reference design. The GDDR5 memory is running at the default clock speeds of 1,753mhz (7Gbps effective).

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