NVIDIA launches GeForce GTX 980 Ti for 649 USD

NVIDIA officially introduces new graphics card in GeForce 900.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti — Big Maxwell for the masses

GTX 980 Ti becomes the fifth unanswered GPU launch: GTX 970, GTX 980, GTX 960, GTX TITAN X, GTX 980 Ti — all these cards were not met with any response from AMD. However, next month AMD is planning to unveil its new Fiji silicon, hopefully causing some disturbance in enthusiast segment.

What’s interesting is that Fiji already made NVIDIA change its policy towards TITAN-X custom cooling solutions. Are custom TITAN-Xes and custom GTX 980 Tis enough to compete with Fiji XT and Fiji PRO respectively?

The GTX 980 Ti is not the flagship card. It’s a cut-down chip with 256 CUDA cores missing from the Maxwell GM200 silicon.
It is not a huge difference, NVIDIA even left the same number of ROPs (96), so they took a different path from GTX 970, were some ROPs turned out to be disabled (few months after it was released). With only 256 CUDA cores and 16 TMUs missing the difference should only be observed in ultra-high-definition tests.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti comes with the same reference cooling solution as GTX 980. I am not aware of any changes in design, other than adopting it for PG600 board.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti specifications

GTX 980 Ti is equipped with GM200-310 GPU with 2816 CUDA cores, 176 TMUs and 96 ROPs. The base clock is set to 1000 Mhz and boost clock to 1076 MHz, although boost clock will easily hit much higher levels. It should hit around 1190-1200 MHz at stock.

The major difference between TITAN X and GTX 980 Ti is the memory capacity. Unlike TITAN-X, GTX 980 Ti only has memory modules on one side. In other words, there are no dual-sided modules, so the capacity is cut in half to 6GB. Review samples ship with Hynix modules rated at 1750 MHz (7 GHz effective). It is possible to overclock them to 1900-2000 MHz, depending on how ~~crazy~~ desperate you are. The interface is 384-bit wide.

The card is powered by two power connectors, 6pin and 8pin. The TDP is 250W (judging from the datasheet I saw), and let me remind you, it has nothing to do with the actual power consumption.

GeForce GTX 980 Ti has four display outputs: DVI-I, HDMI 2.0 and three DisplayPorts 1.2.

The official price for GeForce GTX 980 Ti is 649 USD. Also, GTX 980 is now cheaper at 499 USD.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Specifications (June 1st 2015)
	GeForce GTX TITAN X	GeForce GTX 980 Ti	GeForce GTX 980
Picture
GPU	28nm GM200-400	28nm GM200-310	28nm GM204-400
CUDA Cores	3072	2816	2048
TMUs	192	176	128
ROPs	96	96	64
Core clock	1000 MHz	1000 MHz	1127 MHz
Boost Clock	1089 MHz	1076 MHz	1215 MHz
Memory Clock	1753 MHz	1753 MHz	1753 MHz
Memory Bus	384-bit	384-bit	256-bit
Memory	12GB GDDR5	6GB GDDR5	4GB GDDR5
Bandwidth	336 GB/s	336 GB/s	224 GB/s
TDP	250W	250W	165W
Power Connectors	1x 6pin; 1x 8pin	1x 6pin; 1x 8pin	1x 6pin; 1x 8pin
Display Outputs	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 3x DP	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 3x DP	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 3x DP
MSRP	999 USD	649 USD	499 USD NEW