Nvidia GTX980 Maxwell Review

[WYP]

We need to remember one thing here. If your GPU uses less power it it likely cooler, and Quieter (both from a fan speed and electrical noise standpoint) and that the fact your system is using less power also makes your PSU fan run slower.

Maxwell may not be a massive performance gain over the last generation, but TBH are the gains ever that massive?

 

[Dicehunter]

but TBH are the gains ever that massive?

680 to 780 Ti was quite a large performance bump, I saw certain games literally double in frames.

 

[SieB]

It's not about the money you save on electricity, that is such a closed minded view point. It's about the fact that power usage has been going up and up over the years, back in the day a 400W power supply could run a high end PC, now you need 600W to reliably run a GTX780 or R9 290 based system, 650-700 if you use an AMD FX8320 or higher CPU.

Don't you see that's a problem? the higher power usage gets the bigger the power supply we need, that means more components which means more expense which means slower development as manufacturers wait for technology to improve to get more power.

It also means less heat in PC to deal with, that means less likelyhood of getting into the exact same situation R9 290 cards are ALREADY in (i.e. getting to a point where without watercooling or a 5 slot thick heastsink cant even run at reference clock speeds (i have a MSI R9 290 and even with being the aftermarket cooled version which i have undervolted it goes into thermal protection and drops to 900MHz)).

Also the power savings actually aren't even that miniscule, a £20 saving now.. yeah sure, how about in 5 years if that saving was £100 a year, surely you arent going to tell me three whole AAA games (if bought via G2A for example) is a "miniscule" gain?

No one said the lower power consumption is a bad thing but its not anything to be excited about, as Zoot said. Lower power consumption parts are the way forward and it is the way everything is going.

In terms of how much you benefit from it with the 980 and 970, it is very small. And sorry, but £100 over 5 years is nothing, that is half a decade. I spend £100 on crap every month, saving £100 over 5 years is so meaningless it's no even worth thinking about. If you are on a very tight budget where every single penny counts then i'm sure that £100 over 5 years would matter, but for most of us it is nothing.

As for your 290 statment, blame MSI for their inefficient cooler, I have a Sapphire Tri-X that runs at 72*c max while gaming at 1050/1500 and it is no louder than the other fans in my case.

Lower power consumption parts are welcome and Nvidia have done a great job with Maxwell, is it anything to be excited about or enough of a reason to go out and buy one just for that sole reason though? Not really.

 

[Zoot]

It's not about the money you save on electricity, that is such a closed minded view point. It's about the fact that power usage has been going up and up over the years, back in the day a 400W power supply could run a high end PC, now you need 600W to reliably run a GTX780 or R9 290 based system, 650-700 if you use an AMD FX8320 or higher CPU.

Actually no you don't. Tom has a video somewhere running a GTX 780 Ti and i7 system on a 450W Corsair RM PSU just fine. There's no reason an AMD FX CPU is going to change the picture that much.

If power was such a big issue I guess I should upgrade the PSU for my AMD Athlon 5350 Kabini system to 1000W from the 18W adapter it runs off at the minute just to be sure eh?

It also means less heat in PC to deal with, that means less likelyhood of getting into the exact same situation R9 290 cards are ALREADY in (i.e. getting to a point where without watercooling or a 5 slot thick heastsink cant even run at reference clock speeds (i have a MSI R9 290 and even with being the aftermarket cooled version which i have undervolted it goes into thermal protection and drops to 900MHz)).

Also the power savings actually aren't even that miniscule, a £20 saving now.. yeah sure, how about in 5 years if that saving was £100 a year, surely you arent going to tell me three whole AAA games (if bought via G2A for example) is a "miniscule" gain?

I've said it before but heat isn't really that much of an issue. The temperatures of the respective components inside your PC are perfectly capable of operating at 100C+ for extended periods of time so there isn't really an issue with heat. People get too worked up about temperatures too.

And with me, since I tend to upgrade my graphics card every 2 years. A €20/yr saving isn't going to change anything for me. I'd rather a cheaper, higher performing and more power hungry graphics card any day.

That isn't to say Maxwell isn't seriously impressive, the perf/W numbers are amazing, but Power Consumption on the desktop isn't nearly the issue people make it out to be. One would swear the electricity costs were like $100/kWhr, but they're not.

Now, if we're talking mobile as in laptops/tablets/phones then power consumption is everything since battery life is king, but for gaming desktops it really isn't since the savings are so tiny and nobody cares about battery life on desktops.

Anyway, I don't really have the energy for this kind of debate again tbh (said it all before) so I'll leave it at that. ^_^

 

[Kaapstad]

I've said it before but heat isn't really that much of an issue. The temperatures of the respective components inside your PC are perfectly capable of operating at 100C+ for extended periods of time so there isn't really an issue with heat. People get too worked up about temperatures too.

Very very very bad to even get close to these temps in a case. Those sort of temps will kill your RAM, Motherboard, SSDs and even some GPUs.

 

[Dicehunter]

I wonder if the DSR feature is just software based and can be implemented through drivers ?

 

[RizeAllard]

It's a great review again! Nice to see that Nvidia go a big step forward to efficency. I would really like if AMD follow this way creating the new R9 x3XX series. I have a 290X and will have a twin in some months. I really pleased with it only the power consumption is bother me with that card as i use energy efficency machines and bulbs everywhere. Maybe I saved up enough energy every other side of life to use it for another 290X

 

[Scoob]

I'm actually pretty impressed to see this new, low-power GPU trading blows with the 780Ti - a very impressive achievement. Pricing too is VERY appealing and doubtless will only drop over time.

A reference pair of 980's would make for a marked improvement over my current pair of 680's - once decent water blocks are available of course. However, I feel that my ageing 2500k is the weak spot on my current setup, rather than the GPU's.

Maybe it's time for a fully system overhaul, sorta tempted by a 5960X this time so I can play with 8 real cores and DDR4, however, I suspect something based around a 4790K would, in all practical terms, perform equally as well. We shall see.

Oh, for reference on power usage, my current system only rarely pulls over 400w during gaming - signified by my Corsair 860i's cooling fan only spinning up at this load level on my otherwise silent system.

Scoob.

 

[Zoot]

Very very very bad to even get close to these temps in a case. Those sort of temps will kill your RAM, Motherboard, SSDs and even some GPUs.

Nah, that's not true. SSDs and HDDs, sure. The rest of the stuff on the list ala. CPUs, GPUs etc. - no.

Don't particularly want to get into it, so I'll just link some old posts of mine:
http://forum.overclock3d.net/showpost.php?p=773327&postcount=33
http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=66140&page=3 (came up in this thread too)

Anyway it's off-topic so, start a new thread if you want to discuss it further.

 

[megaspeed2]

In terms of how much you benefit from it with the 980 and 970, it is very small. And sorry, but £100 over 5 years is nothing, that is half a decade. I spend £100 on crap every month, saving £100 over 5 years is so meaningless it's no even worth thinking about. If you are on a very tight budget where every single penny counts then i'm sure that £100 over 5 years would matter, but for most of us it is nothing.

I didn't say £100 over 5 years i said what if in 5 years you are spending £100 more per year...

You're kind of twisting his words dude and calling someone close minded because they aren't that impressed with the "New Tech" is a little out of order.

It's not out of order to say that, thinking only about the money saved on electricity IS a closed minded view point.

Actually no you don't. Tom has a video somewhere running a GTX 780 Ti and i7 system on a 450W Corsair RM PSU just fine. There's no reason an AMD FX CPU is going to change the picture that much.

Yes i know about the video, the max power usage of that system was 439W and it is not a good idea to run a power supply at near 100% load which is why tom actually recommended in that video a 600W power supply (that's why i said 600w in my post...), my 650-700w estimation for AMD isn't something i have tested but with how much more power it is commonly known for an FX8000 series cpu to use compared to the cpu used in that video its a pretty reasonable estimate.

That isn't to say Maxwell isn't seriously impressive, the perf/W numbers are amazing, but Power Consumption on the desktop isn't nearly the issue people make it out to be. One would swear the electricity costs were like $100/kWhr, but they're not.

Noone is saying that electricity is the most expensive thing in the world... the whole point my post was that there are many OTHER reasons why energy efficiency is important... you can't just say that because your specific graphics card runs fine that it doesn't matter...

You see where my "closed minded" accusation comes from guys?...

 

[MrKambo]

question is has anyone got one yet??

Im personally waiting for after market cooking solutions before i get mine

 

[Zoot]

Yes i know about the video, the max power usage of that system was 439W and it is not a good idea to run a power supply at near 100% load

Do you have real-world data to actually say that a power supply is more likely to fail when ran at near 100% load as opposed to 60% load?

I'm betting you don't, and I can tell you that the manufacturer will guarantee their performance at 100% load 24/7 for 100% of the warranty duration, which in the case of Corsair is 7 years. Every electronics manufacturer has to be sure the system will work at the worst case scenario for the max amount of time, otherwise they can't guarantee the warranty duration.

There's no disclaimer from the manufacturer saying "Oh, you can only use 100% load for 2minutes per month", I've yet to see one anyway after doing this whole DIY PC thing for nearly a decade now.

Again, like I said, it's off-topic, so if you want to get into PSU loads, start a new thread.

 

[megaspeed2]

Do you have real-world data to actually say that a power supply is more likely to fail when ran at near 100% load as opposed to 60% load?

I'm betting you don't, and I can tell you that the manufacturer will guarantee their performance at 100% load 24/7 for 100% of the warranty duration, which in the case of Corsair is 7 years. Every electronics manufacturer has to be sure the system will work at the worst case scenario for the max amount of time, otherwise they can't guarantee the warranty duration.

There's no disclaimer from the manufacturer saying "Oh, you can only use 100% load for 2minutes per month", I've yet to see one anyway after doing this whole DIY PC thing for nearly a decade now.

Again, like I said, it's off-topic, so if you want to get into PSU loads, start a new thread.

Are you just here to argue? It was you who brought up toms PSU video and fact is in that video a 600W power supply was recomended which is what I said. Don't bring something up and then disagree with it again when it suits your pointless arguing.

(FYI I didn't say a power supply is likely to fail if run at 100% load, so if you go by what I actually said which is simply that it isn't a good idea to run a power supply at 100% load constantly there IS real world data to support that and you just have to go to the corsair website and look at the datasheets which show that above 80% load the efficiency of the power supply drops off and therefore it is recommended to buy a power supply that has enough headroom to max out around 80% load.)

 

[Zoot]

Awww... I just post pointless arguing and have a totally closed mind. I didn't know that.

Whatever dude... If you want to get your panties in a twist over power consumption when it's really not an issue then that's your prerogative. It's not my job to think for you, carry on.

 

[megaspeed2]

Awww... I just post pointless arguing and have a totally closed mind. I didn't know that.

Whatever dude... If you want to get your panties in a twist over power consumption when it's really not an issue then that's your prerogative. It's not my job to think for you, carry on.

hey at least i'm not scampering to make any argument I can even disagreeing with my own statements just to try and win an argument...

 

[Zoot]

question is has anyone got one yet??

Im personally waiting for after market cooking solutions before i get mine

Are they even listed anywhere around here yet?

I'm not seeing them on any of the places I normally go to for PC hardware.

 

[barnsley]

It's not about the money you save on electricity, that is such a closed minded view point. It's about the fact that power usage has been going up and up over the years, back in the day a 400W power supply could run a high end PC, now you need 600W to reliably run a GTX780 or R9 290 based system, 650-700 if you use an AMD FX8320 or higher CPU.

And the problem with that is?

If you're going to worry about power usage, get something truely efficient, like a low end system

 

[megaspeed2]

I explained what the problem is, more power means more heat means less performance, prime example is the r9 290.

 

[MrKambo]

Are they even listed anywhere around here yet?

I'm not seeing them on any of the places I normally go to for PC hardware.

overclockers have some, for immediate dispatch

 

[Kaapstad]

overclockers have some, for immediate dispatch

question is has anyone got one yet??

Im personally waiting for after market cooking solutions before i get mine

Gibbo sold over 100 in the first half hour or so and a lot of the guys should get them tomorrow.

I also saw some bench figures Gibbo did and he got some very big overclocks on air.