Brace yourself: NEW MAXWELL CARDS INCOMING!

Ugh!! That does not bode well for my bank Here's one out of left field for you. Any idea if a clevo p570wm will be able to support the card with the stock heatsink and everything? I can understand if you wouldn't know or if it's too early.

Thanks

 

As far as mxm compatibility we're ok. Our notebooks can handle the power easily. The die hasn't shrinked. It's only gotten a little bit bigger SMM arrangement however make for a nice heat distribution on the chip itself.
Don't worry, component placement on the mxm card, as far as I know, hasn't changed since the gtx480m. It shouldn't be the case with Maxwell.
What I'm worried more right now is selling my 780m and sourcing a 980m without my wallet getting burned in the process

 

I'll race you.

 

Octiceps my friend, I've been away from Planetside 2 since before the "Spiker" update and it looks like things have gone progressively downhill since then, especially performance-wise (the explanation is they are getting the game ready for PS4 so its ok to leave SLI completely broken). I gave the game another chance when my ROG Swift arrived and having upped the resolution to 2560x1440 I needed SLI to work to render the game at a playable frame-rate, and well now it seems SLI is completely broken again so I just shelved the game, probably for good.

I've been going through a few games I had on the back-burner, Assassins Creed: Black Flag, Bioshock: Infinites's DLC etc. Bioshock: Infinite and Metro: LL looked amazing at 120 FPS/GSync but now that I have tried Nvidia's 3D Vision I much prefer that at 60 FPS over 120 FPS with GSync. If youve yet to experience it, Crysis 3, Batman: AC, Metro: LL and Bioshock: Infinite look insanely amazing in 3D Vision, oh and 3D movies as well.

A few weeks ago I picked up a 750 Ti as a dedicated PhysX card but aside from Batman: Origins which did see a 20 FPS jump in minimum FPS (77 to 96) all of the other games with PhysX saw only a marginal increase in performance with 780 Ti SLI, for example Metro: LL (4 FPS) and there was actually a 4-5 FPS reduction in Assassins Creed: Black Flag. So I took advantage of amazon's excellent return policy and returned it and picked up Nvidia's 3D Vision 2 kit with the difference.

Other than that I seriously considered going with a custom loop as my primary GPU is now hanging out between 70-75 C in Crysis 3 with 3D Vision with 75%+ load nearly constant (of course you know this but for those who don't to render a game in 3D at 60 FPS you need a 120Hz display with the GPU's rendering 120 FPS) but now that Maxwell is out and showing promise and with 980 Ti likely only 2 years on the horizon and presumably on 22nM I'm going to wait it out considering sustained load temps of 75-80 C haven't been prematurely killing reference Kepler cards. By then Occulus Rift will be mainstream as well and I can further justify the upgrade.

That's it on my end, how have you been?

 

Imagine if they release a chip will the same power draw as 780ti that would destroy the Kepler chips!!

 

1 - YES. 3D vision in those kinds of games are *amazing*. I'm glad someone else found the joy of the 3D vision ready games like that. I suggest BF3 (single player at least), Metro 2033, Killing Floor (though the health bars as a commando are rendered in 2D) and Crysis 2 to your list of "must play in 3D at least once" games.

2 - Do you remember if you had the option to disable your 750Ti to force 64x CSAA via NCP? I know mismatched cards can be used for PhysX, but I need someone with mismatched cards to see if they can force the higher AA rendering with the mismatched card XD. If you ever get back another mismatched card, could you let me know?

 

CSAA is gone from Maxwell as MFAA has replaced it.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/698087/very-few-anti-aliasing-options/?offset=9#4153911

 

Nvidia neutered GPGPU even further with Maxwell. FP64 is now 1/32 FP32 instead of 1/24 as with Kepler.

 

What are you guys waiting for? Dump your Kepler 780M/880M before 980M launches!

 

I just want to be sure I can order the 980m from dell with a fan and heatsink. Hopefully I can get it all through them. Then it should be basically plug and play on my Alienware 17 replacing my 880m

 

I thought MFAA sounded like how CSAA worked... So basically they improved the performance drain on CSAA, allowed it to use lower settings than 8x, removed the "Q" setting, slapped on a new name and made a big deal out of it?

And now a bunch of desktop users are fighting down how CSAA was garbage, worthless and they're glad it's gone. Man I don't understand desktop gamers. What happened to loving choice? What if MFAA only goes up to 4x? >_<

 

Judging from the chart they will release a 980ti that will top it soon enough. 780ti seems a long way ahead perhaps the gtx is simply a gaming card while TI is for enthusiast/professional users?

 

There won't be a 980 Ti. 980 is the full GM204 part. GM200/210 will be in a Titan II (speculated name ofc) and some other models in the next series.

Ti stands for Titanium, it's a standard Nvidia naming convention to signify a card that's slightly above another one (e.g. 560/560 Ti, 660/660 Ti, 780/780 Ti). All GeForce cards are gaming cards except Titan which is a cheaper prosumer Quadro.

They didn't include a Titan in that chart, but it obliterates everything else: AnandTech | Bench - GPU14

 

So I'm guessing since the benchmark has 'Fold@Home' in the title that it's a benchmark depicting a value that is relevant to F@H performance? Does this mean the new Maxwell cards wouldn't be a good match for someone doing F@H?

 

If you're not itching to buy GM204 I'd wait until November.

 

^Are you telling yourself that?

Because that's what I'm telling myself, "no way I'm getting a 980 or 970 and paying for last-gen performance at this point."

November seems a little too soon for GM200 as it would have to be on a smaller node, but I want to be pleasantly surprised.

 

Anything using FP64 basically.

 

Nah I was just too lazy to link to that site again so just quoted myself

I'm going to wait another 2-3 weeks for more reviews on non-reference 970 to come out, and I'll probably buy 2 of them. At this point EVGA's 970 FTW is looking very promising as long as it's priced right and the fan isn't too noisy. 95% of stock 980 performance for $400 (I hope)? YES PLEASE. Hexus did a review on it but seems like site is down atm

If GM200/210 looks promising enough I could always sell the 970 to recover some costs. I foresee the 970 will hold value better than the 980 because big Maxwell will likely rip 980 a new one, but 970 won't be much affected unless nVidia releases a cut down version of GM200/210, which I find unlikely.

 

Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 And 970 Review

Maxwell showing it's muscle. Gaming performance is top notch, even at 4k, and power consumption during gaming is VERY low. So low that I feel nvidia will pursue a full GM204 as a rebrand just as 780m. Power consumption when doing GPGPU though... it is monstrous haha.

970 looking great for the sub 400 price. Definitely the best value so far, but I am impressed at 980 overcoming 780 ti in general.

 

My TLDR takeaway and opinion on the maxwell launch and the technologies that were presented.
______________________________________________________

DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution):

Spoiler

translation easy to use semioptimized
Downsampling : nothing really new, but should make it easier to use and work
on many games it wouldn't before.

For newer games 3/10 : almost never have enough power to truly make use of it
for games over 2-4 years old 7/10 : very nice for using all that extra
processing power to make them look a bit better

VR Direct : used to reduce latency for VR gaming

Spoiler

6/10 : most likely VR headsets won't be widespread and truly high quality for
at least 1-2 more years, this is great technology on the VR game development
end of things to get games ready for use when the headsets are actually ready.
In a year or two this technology may still be the thing to use, or there
might be something new. For now though if you are the 1-2% using these cards
and VR tech, then this is probably awesome.

MFAA :

Spoiler

Rather efficient looking AA method with likely few drawbacks, probably
will make for a 25%-33% lower performance hit from using AA in most games
taking advantage of it.

7/10 : useful for most people immediately, in the future may be less useful as
4K+ seems to require less and less AA as resolution goes up. It has other
technologies it replaces that its not as much better than, compared to the
ones they are comparing it to.

VXGI : voxel based light physics

Spoiler

Allows for real time reflective lighting that is fairly high quality. Maybe
66% the quality of high quality ray traced reflective lighting, at probably
only 1% the computational cost.

8/10 or 10/10 : if it can be enabled in a game that was not programmed for it
its a 10/10. Technically its all based on light source and rendering of
objects, so theoretically it could be designed to be able to be used on any 3D
rendered scene. Realistically this may cause problems in present games as
they often use invisible ambient light effects to emulate such things. Doing
both at once would likely cause even weirder lighting. That said it may make
modding games such as skyrim to make use of it fairly easy if this is
possible.

On the other hand if it is only usable in games programmed to make use of it,
it still will be a very good thing, as it should make programming of a games
lighting far far easier and give better quality all at the same time. This
should especially help small to medium size game studios make their games be
closer in graphic quality to the AAA games.

_______________________________________________________

Turf : realistic grass physics

Spoiler

5/10 : (good for the future of gaming not the present) : fast rendering of
grass and similar things (hair, fur, rug fibers, etc...) with ability for them
to have physics interaction with objects (your feet can crush the grass,
driving a car will leave flatten it at the tires type things).

This will certainly require programs to be programmed to take advantage of it,
but could add a lot of realism to many games if they do so. It will have no
affect on games already existing though, and probably won't start appearing in
games for 1-3 years.

Unified Physics (forget the name they gave it)

Spoiler

Essentially it makes it so all the different physics effects can work with
each other. Makes it easier to have things like a log floats, and a rope can
tie a knot, thus you can tie a bunch of logs into a raft and sit on it, or
strands of spiderweb have different stickyness to different materials thus a
spider can walk on its web, but it will stick to trees and rocks and your
character (and if you cut down the tree it might take down the web). These
types of interactions are the basic building block or true near realistic
sandbox gaming. On the otherhand programming such a game may or may not
happen in the near future, but at least this tool makes such more possible.
Even outside of that games may be able to make use of it for cool more
specific effects.

7/10: requires programs to be designed to use it, will not affect present
games. : However has a very high potential for a major improvement in certain
game genres if it is utilized. Likely 1-5 years before any games make use of
this though and may be new technology by then to replace it.

___________________________________________________________

Performance per watt :

Spoiler

depends on how you measure it, in theoretical bench
marks and formulas its around 2 : 1 improvement. In real game benchmarks its
closer to 3 : 2 based on benchmarks. We still have beta drivers for those
benchmarks though so it may get closer to that 2 : 1 Ideal.

10/10 : very good improvement especially for Mobile GPUs, desktop gains a
little from it, but only a little.

Performance per mm^2 :

Spoiler

980 is about 380mm ^ 2 and slightly more powerful than
a 780 ti which is around 561mm^2. This calculates to approximately 3 : 2
performance per mm^2.

This has minimal improvement for mobile, since it ironically is primarily
limited by power per watt though it may start to give a benefit once 20nm or
smaller processes begin to be used.

For Desktop it could be pretty huge though the 980m being on a smaller die
than the 780ti prevents it from being much more powerful, it is very possible
a larger chip will be realeased in 2-6 months as a 990 or Titan 2 or such and
be up to 150-170% the power of a 780ti.

8/10: very good improvement but it has not yet really been taken advantage of
with the GPUs being released over thenext few days.

Overclocking :

Spoiler

appears to be truly excellent, tests using the reference 980
have normally been able to hit 1400+ mhz stable without any changes to its
cooling or anything, thats around a 25% increase in clock speed, the highest I
have seen reported on the reference card is 1500 mhz. These are truly
outstanding figures, and if anything the 970 may overclock even a little
better.

9/10 : appears to be better than even hoped for, though the reference 980
coming with only 2x6-pin connecters is limiting if it had a 6-pin and an 8-pin
this would be a 10/10 rating. Luckily for those that really care, there are
custom versions with the 8-pin you can get to try for even higher speeds.

_________________________________________________________

Overall:
980 :

Spoiler

7/10 its a very good Side-grade of the 780ti for cheaper and a few bonus
features, still not cheap though and unless you have cash to spare, its
probably not worth getting. I doubt you will regret it too much though as it
is awesome, its just people wanting an epic system likely already have a 780+
and hopefully within 3-6 months a 990 or Titan2 will come out that will truly
stomp it into the dust. Estimated prices are $550 in the US.

970 :

Spoiler

10/10 an upgrade of the 780 at the price of the 770 + bonus features,
great overclocking, and lower power costs (also not as big of PSU needed).
Estimated cost of $330 US makes this around 60% theprice of the 980, but it
gets around 90% the performance. Almost everyone that is starting to see
there game performance suffer in newer games should seriously consider this as
an upgrade.

980m :

Spoiler

not yet released, evidence points to a 8/10 : probably going to cost a
pretty penny, but give true desktop performance in a laptop, possibly even an
ultrathin laptop if you are willing to accept the loud fans and not quite
adequate cooling. In more traditional size gaming laptops it will provide a
truly massive performance increase over even the 780m, and even a single 980m
may be able to handle some modern games at 3k or 4k resolutions and maxed out
settings. Likely going to be the go to GPU for people that can afford it.

970m :

Spoiler

not yet released, evidence points to a 10/10 : still not going to be
cheap, but likely similar price to the 870m with power far surpassing the 880m
while running cool and using fairly low power. Still probably won't be able
to game much on a battery yet though its not quite that efficient. Will
likely become the mainstay of thin gaming laptops which even then will be a
bit toasty, but not as much as before, and now will truly be able to handle
the top games. If your laptop is no longer performing up to your standards,
and either you can't afford the 980m, or you need an ultra-portable, then this
is likely the GPU to look for. If they release a 960m soon that might be
better for some ultra-thins though Ultra-thin laptops are just not going to be
cool and quiet while gaming yet no matter what GPU you use, maybe after
Skylake and Pascal come out.

________________________________________________

If you went through the trouble of reading this all (impressive :thumbsup and you think I got something wrong, or mis-rated something please tell me so I don't misinform others, and am not misinformed myself when I buy a new laptop soon

 

But reviews say 970 is 15-20% slower than 980 stock-for-stock? Still better price-to-performance though.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 and 980 reference review - Ultra High Definition 4K - 3840x2160 Performance

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 and 980 reference review - Ultra High Definition 4K - 3840x2160 Performance

Also less robust power delivery and doesn't overclock as high. 970 is still a great card, but this is the largest performance gap I've ever seen between Nvidia's flagship and second tier. If I were a betting man, I'd wager Nvidia will release another GM204 card (970 Ti/975?) that slots in right between 970 and 980.

Nvidia will release cut down versions of big Maxwell, I have no doubt about it. Every generation since G80, when they started this trend, they've had no less than 3 different parts, and GF110 had 4.

 

No doubt they will release middle and higher end products. While the 980-970 gap in performance is notable, so is the price difference, and I think the gap between 770 to 780 was even bigger or similar in magnitude. All in all, pretty great gpus and I think we saw the magic in maxwell being great power management. if AMD can tune their power management in their architecture, we can expect big gains too.

980 seems like a great GPU, even at 4k. I am definitely looking forward 970 and 980m. Specially since maxwell overclocks so well.

 

To me this is the least exciting GPU launch since GeForce 9 Series which was nothing more than die shrink of GeForce 8 Series with same performance.

 

Stock for stock yes, but that 970 FTW card comes with a pretty hefty factory OC on the core - 1216 MHz compared to 1050 MHz stock. The result is it closes the gap to within 5% of a stock 980. And even with that +166 MHz core, Hexus was still able to squeeze another 130 MHz or so without adding extra volts, and the result is Hexus' 970 FTW sample achieved performance parity with 980.

EDIT: HOLY FARTING BATMAN 970 FTW is only $369.99!! That's my next purchase right there unless there are some serious noise issues.

I'd provide a link but Hexus is down unfortunately. The big question really is how much does EVGA plan on charging for that top of the line 970 FTW (and how noisy it runs). If it's below $400 and not ear-deafening loud I'd gobble it up in a hearbeat.

I guess the 600 and 700 series were an outlier then in terms of not having cut down big chips, or maybe you consider the GK104 to be a cut down GK110?

 

But 980 can be overclocked even more and pull away. I'm seeing that 1500/8000 is pretty common.

Kepler had a big die with parts disabled just like every other generation. Full GK110 is 15 SMX/2880 cores (780 Ti & Titan Black), below it is Titan with 14 SMX/2688 cores, and lastly 780 with 12 SMX/2304 cores. GK104 is the mid-range part, it's a different ASIC altogether.

 

Some other things to note in his stable over-clock that was equal performance, the minimum FPS numbers were better, but the maximum were worse, overall having the minimum be better is more important though so it actually as far as gaming quality outperformed the 980, by a tiny amount. On the negative it used significantly higher power consumption and the fan was louder. Also the 980 can over-clock too so. (not disagreeing with you just adding info.)

 

Yes 980 can be overclocked too and the gap opens up again yes I'm aware of that. All I'm saying is that if you're content with stock 980 performance, then grabbing a 970 FTW for $370 makes the most sense instead of shelling out $550. Especially more so for me since 970 may only be a stop gap card as I wait for GM200/210. Yeah if you want the latest and greatest and the best performance at whatever cost then go ahead and grab the 980. I don't care for that so I'm sticking with 970.

OK now I remember what I wanted to say. Yes GK110 had cut down parts, but none of them were intended to compete with the midrange GK104 chip as none of them were marketed as "second tier" or "midrange". But again Kepler might be an odd exception since it seems cut down big Fermi did produce several midrange cards that competed with GF104/114 albeit at a slightly higher price point.

 

I predict the same events as with Kepler. 600 series had the GK104 as flagship. Titan was then released with GK110. Then 700 series joined the GK110 party.

So, by that logic; 900 series gets GM204. GM200 is introduced with the 3rd Titan early next year. Then it'll appear with the 1000 series later next year (if they keep the same naming scheme - and for all our collective sanity, let's hope they do).

 

Question is, do you value warranty or do you value a performant card? If it's the latter, get this: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card (GV-N970G1 GAMING-4GD) - PCPartPicker

Seems like a winner in all the performance metrics, be it temperature, noise, or overclocking. Guru3D's sample was already clocked at 1329/7000 out of the box. Only GTX 970 I've seen so far OC to 1500+/8000. I've a feeling they were completely power limited as 8-pin + 6-pin + PCIe = 300W and the WindForce 3X cooler on there is rated for 600W of dissipation.

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming review - Graphics Card Temperatures

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming review - Graphics Card Noise Levels

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming review - Overclocking The Graphics Card

There's a price to be paid for that beastly cooler though as it's much longer than any non-reference 970 so far (over a foot), so watch out for case clearance.

I think I've made it clear in the past that I've never been been a fan of EVGA's ACX cooler and plasticky shroud, and now I'd simply avoid them on moral grounds and that there are IMO better alternatives out there.

GK110 simply wasn't cut down to the extent that GF100/110 were.

 

That Gigabyte card is basically a wash with the EVGA card out of the box. OC is indeed fantastic but notice they also overvolted by 0.087V, while EVGA's card OC'd less at +99 core/+325 mem but without needing any additional juice, so true potential could be much higher.

That said, the Gigabyte card is one of only two 970s thus far that comes with 8+6 pin connectors (the other being the MSI GTX 970 gaming) while everyone else is doing 6+6 or a single 8 pin (Asus). The MSI card would've been a viable alternative in addition to being much shorter, but MSI's retarded decision to put a warranty void sticker on the backplate screw pretty much ensures I will never be buying an MSI GPU. Really you're gonna void my warranty if I just want to repaste?

Asus would've been my top choice actually because of their traditionally strong build quality and use of quality power supply components, but so far their Strix 970 is nothing exciting, except for the 0db passive cooling.

Ideally I'd like a 970 with Asus' quality and components, Gigabyte's cooling and power delivery, and EVGA's warranty. But of course that doesn't exist.

Which again begs the question whether it's just an outlier or the start of a new trend.

 

You are trolling right?
They have increased compute performance over GK104 by a great deal.

GTX 680: 195W TDP
GTX 980: 170W TDP


GTX 980: 50% better in double precision


Single precision:
100% better than GTX 680.
50'% better than the 250W GTX 780 Ti


OpenCL:
192% better than 195W GTX 680
54% better than 250W GTX 780 Ti


In summary, Nvidia have greatly increased OpenCL performance with Maxwell. They are whopping AMD now, not just performance but also performance/watt by miles.
Single precision is lightyears ahead of GK104 and even beats the GTX 780 Ti by a ton. Double precision is still behind GTX 780 Ti but the midrange chips got a ton more compute performance.

Just wait til GM200 comes out. Then we will see double precision out of this world

 

when do you believe the gm200/210 will be released for mobile? If there's something better than a 980m coming out early 2015 I may just buy a couple 970m's to hold me over. Do you anticipate them to be much faster than this release?

 

Mid-2015 (Q2) seems about right for the next set of mobile GPU's. It may be around the same time the 880M was launched to replace the 780M. Look up that date.

 

I think it is unlikely they will make a mobile gm200/210 chip. If they come out with a desktop gm200/210 however, they may release a full gm204 chip for mobile, 980m only has 13 of 16 SMM available. It also has lots of mhz headroom.

980m :
SM Count: 13 | cores 1664 | GPU Clock: 1032 MHz |
Memory Clock: 1253 MHz 5012 MHz effective | Memory Bus: 256 bit | Bandwidth: 160 GB/s

theoretical 980mx(or 990m or whatever):
SM Count: 16 | cores 2048 | GPU Clock: 1232 MHz |
Memory Clock: 1753 MHz 7012 MHz effective | Memory Bus: 256 bit | Bandwidth: 224 GB/s
expected performance upgrade of approx 50% over 980m

I just don't see why they would bother going to a gm200/210 in mobile when they have so much room on the gm204.

 

Well then, if the 970m can OC to within about 90% of the 980m @ stock then i'll get a couple of those. That should last a good year or two. Maybe we will get 16nm by then, with the 3d memory and have a quantum leap in performance. I'm thinking sli 970m's will be able to play any game on the market for the next few years.. Just maybe not with SSAA.

 

GM200 won`t come for mobile.
Ningyo is right, a full GM204 will come out next year. It should be 20% ish faster than GTX 980M and still run close to 680M in thermal.

Nvidia`s plans are looking like this:
GM200 for desktop very late this year or early next year to replace GTX 780/780Ti. GM206 will also arrive around the same time to replace GTX 860M and GTX 760 and other midrange chips.
GTX 970M and GTX 980M will be the kings until May ish next year. Then a full GM204 arrives and a card thats between 970M and 980M called GTX 975M and will be the king until Pascal in 16nm FinFET (20nm) takes over the year after.

 

I`m thinking about going GTX 970M SLI as well. Should run very cool and can withstand a lot of overclocking. Should have zero issues maxing out any game out there in 1080p.
That or go GTX 980M. Depends on which notebook I buy.
But 980M SLI + DSR sounds extremely temptinig as well. Choices

 

I just want a decent 13-14" with 970m that doesn't overheat like crazy and throttle. The performance improvement over the 860m will be ridiculous and more than sufficient for my needs. I really don't *need* something faster, but my OCD inside will just be agitated knowing that I could have something significantly faster that runs nearly as cool as my 860m...

Any word on the 940m, 950m, 960m?

 

Unless an ultra HD 17"+ screen laptop comes out (might want 980m SLI then), I plan to go one of 2 routes probably.

Aorus x7 v3 970m SLI, get it and undervolt it. Maybe see if there is anything else I can do to squeeze a bit more cooling out of it too, then enjoy till I get VR and decide its just not quite good enough

or maybe if they fixed the cooling, the Asus GX500, only 15.6" but it has a really nice display and sounds like a single 980m expected in it which will only be able to sometimes handle 4k gaming, but will SOMETIMES be able to handle 4k gaming

I know both ultra-thin really wish they were both an extra 5mm thicker but they both really have no thicker equivalent unless you go a Alienware 18 58mm thick SLI to compare with the Aorus, but that is way too thick lol (give us some 30mm thick gaming laptops already)

 

I think the 900m series is going to come around a lot sooner than most think.

1.) Nvidia skipped the 800 name for their desktop GPU series because the name was sullied by so many of the 800 series mobile cards just being rebrands of the 700 series.

2.) Nvidia likely wants to keep the same series name for their GPU's across both desktops and laptops to keep consumers from getting confused and fragmenting.

3.) (and this one is kind of just speculation, but imo, it makes sense) Nvidia is not exactly the most restrained company when it comes to trying to squeeze as much money out of customers as they can. They know when they update their GPU series, regardless if its the desktop one, or the laptop one, there is a pretty large number of people who are going to upgrade immediately regardless of cost, and if the performance jump is great enough from the last gen (which it is in the 900 series case apparently) then lots of regular consumers will follow in the next few months. In this case they could easily explain away an "early" release by simply saying they wanted to put out a true next gen mobile GPU generation.

Not to mention Nvidia wants to say as far ahead as possible to keep AMD pulling cool stuff out of the hat from wooing customers away.

 

Know what I just wish they'd do? Make adaptive vSync force-able for windowed mode.

 

What about temperature and noise? I don't think anything can touch the WindForce at the moment. Ironically, the most common issue I've heard about with Gigabyte cards is that they're unstable out of the box because their factory overclocks are so much higher than other non-reference cards, yet they're still the quietest and coolest.

Disable Aero/desktop composition in Windows 7? You're out of luck if you're using Windows 8.

 

so no 20nm gpus even in 2015? so 20nm coming in early 2016 or mid 2016? I am really excited to see gtx 970m sli in action ...hopefully runs cooler and 30% faster than gtx 780m sli...so when is gtx 960m/970m/980 coming?

mid october? I really want to see gtx 960m vs gtx 780m also

 

Probably 16nm with Pascal in late 2015, early 2016.

 

Probably won't see those until some time after the GTX 960 releases.

 

So far Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI's non-reference 970 all keep temps around or under 70C when gaming, so that's a non-issue. Noise-wise the Asus Strix 970 with its 29-32dB of noise AT LOAD ( KitGuru: 31.2 dB; TechPowerup: 29 dB) is simply unbeatable. Of course this does translate to higher temps (68-71C), but set the fans manually to 50% instead of the default profile, and the card tops out at 37.5 dB while maintaining a 61C temp under Furmark. Now that is some crazy stuff right there.

You know what, after seeing the reviews from Ocaholics and KitGuru I take back what I said about the Strix 970. Both TPU and KitGuru were able to OC it to within an inch of stock 980 performance, and the noise/cooling ratio is the best I've seen so far. AND it's $30 cheaper too at $340. I'm sold.

 

seems like SLI 980M is my next machine regardless it is full GM204 or not
performance wise, it is less improvement compared to the jump between GTX 580M to GTX 680M
but it is still gonna last and a beast, because GTX 680M Did

 

Still slower than factory OC on the Gigabyte 970.

I'd take any reviews of thermal and acoustics performance with a grain of salt since they are affected by ambient temps, fan speed, and how/where noise level was measured, which are not always reported. Acoustics especially is subjective as different coolers have different sound signatures. Gigabyte wins in terms of absolute cooling performance and overclocking/power headroom though.

My last two cards have been DirectCU II and WindForce, you can't go wrong either way.

 

I think Pascal will be launched Q2 2016, bringing everything back on track, "re-balancing" the universe of graphics cards (thanks, Intel ). I also think 2015 will be a re-brand year for Maxwell, perhaps with some nice boost in performance.

 

Gigabyte factory OC is 1178 MHz base/1329 MHz boost. TPU pushed that Asus to 1290 MHz base while KitGuru managed 1284 MHz, so boost exceeds 1400 MHz in both cases, definitely not slower than Gigabyte's factory OC.

Overclocking headroom is a given since Gigabyte uses 8+6 instead of a single 8 pin on the Asus. However the MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G that also uses 8+6 is pretty much toe-to-toe with the Gigabyte card when OC'd. Acoustics is pretty much identical to the Asus Strix 970. (both cards reviewed at KitGuru, so a direct comparison is fair here)

Thermal and acoustics will have variation sure but at least all 3 reviews of the Strix 970 do the acoustics test from 1 meter away, and thermals under Furmark was pretty much identical between KitGuru and Ocaholic. Putting a 600W cooler on a 300W card (when pushed to its limits) is overkill and winning in absolute performance by way of brute force isn't very elegant IMO.

Honestly were it not for MSI's retarded warranty sticker, the MSI 970 would've been my top pick. You get Gigabyte's OC headroom without having to contend with that ridiculous cooler length, and with the acoustics of the Strix 970 to boot.