NVidia GM204 Maxwell GTX 980 and GTX 970 Launches! First Thoughts!

OKAY! Let's do a little follow up discussion with the Desktop GTX 980 and GTX 970 released yesterday.

Now I digress on some of the specs that I originally post the last time. So let's go through these quick.

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GTX 980
Core Config: 2048:128:64
Core Clock: 1126, 1216 Boost
Mem Clock: 7000 MHz
Memory: 4GB GDDR5
Bus Width: 256
TDP: 165

Launch Price: 549 USD

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GTX 970
Core Config: 1664: 104: 64
Core Clock: 1050, 1178 Boost
Mem Clock: 7000 MHz
Memory: 4GB GDDR5
Bus Width: 256
TDP 145

Launch Price: 329 USD

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QUICK SUMMARY

We know that these cards perform really good, and overclock really good, power consumes really good, overall excellent cards from both board partners and even just the reference card.

I'm not gonna post any benchmarks because you can just find a whole chunk at Guru3D and Tom's Hardware. Those are where I source my info everytime new tech launches out. Moreover I don't have the cards and neither do I have the money till at least someone can sponsor me a build! But definitely I can say are the following:

- Power Consumption totally blows the competition. Even SLI Configs of Both GTX 970 and 980s (which I'll quickly touch later) does match or trade blows with a single R9 290X which is pretty sad for AMD. Yup, that's right, I checked. This can save potentially a lot of money off the power bill if you leave your rigs on 24/7 compared to any of the flagship cards before it.

- Impressive enough is the performance at 4K  despite running at a narrower 256 Bit Bus-width. The larger Maxwell L2 Cache and the additional 1GB GDDR5 Memory over the GK110 does well to compensate it.

- Direct X 12 Ready, that much is certain. As to how Direct X 12 works yet remains to be seen.

BUYERS GUIDE!

Why GTX 980? As I found after various reviews, a single GTX 980 is more than good enough for 1080p, 1440p and decent 4K gaming. Though it is cheaper than the 780 Ti at Launch and still currently cheaper now, it's still slightly high a bit. The efficiency however more than makes up for it especially in the long run over the Kepler Based 600 and 700 Series. You pay a slight premium now but you pay less on power later. Even if you overclock which the card can take happily and gain some pretty nice gains, that shouldn't be any problem. Speaking of overclocks, Maxwell happily takes it no issues, with many board partner GTX 980s coming impressively close to the Titan Z. Should you want something a little cheaper, there are also alternatives.

Why GTX 970?
The GTX 970 is also a good card, and a very palatable and very nice price tag to boot at 329 USD which is currently cheaper than the R9 290X by a considerable amount while trading blows and beating R9 290X in terms of performance. Whack a hefty overclock in, and the GTX 970 comes surprisingly on par with the more expensive GTX 980. Cooling from just the reference cooler still can handle this though IMHO requires abit of bling update. :)

All around, still beats the R9 290X while being cheaper and factor in power savings.

But then comes SLI which IMO brings the GTX 970, (in all honesty, Not the GTX 980 but still makes an admirable combination) into its own. With a total price tag of 660 USD (only 110 more than a standard 980), it blows the R9 290s / 290Xs in Crossfire, R9 295X2, Titan Blacks in SLI, and the Titan Z. All these competing cards (except the 290 but bearing in mind power, cooling and noise) all cost a lot more. Some of the highest end 780 Tis and the R9 290Xs still cost the same as 2 GTX 970s. Factor that and it's probably no brainer there.

BOTTOMLINE! 

As of now, it's more of the GTX 970 than the 980 that will spell nightmares and headaches for AMD because it is the perfect counter for the R9 290 And the 290X in almost every possible aspect; performance, power efficiency, heat and acoustics, all for 329 USD. The GTX 980 isn't bad too, don't get me wrong, it's a great card indeed too! But it's more the GTX 970 shining for its sweet spot value for money. And I quote Darryl, a friend who owns a R9 290X I made in my Top 5 GPUs:

970 hits the sweet spot at 329usd...thats how much my 290X is worth now *cries*

Yup, AMD, you guys just got your ass kicked. However personally, it's no fault of AMD because nVidia did play their cards well. AMD had their dominance for a while for performance per dollar value. Also the Bitcoin and litcoin Mining craze are still the main reasons why AMD GPUs are still good for what they are. I loved the R9 290Xs for its initial value-for-money option till this came by!

Generally again guys, you don't need the cards from board partners to do the graphics work for you. Well to each his own, you can use those dual fan/tri-fan cooling cards if you want. Even so the base Reference GTX 980 and 970s are still good in their own right if you want to cut down cost a tiny bit more for these cards really overclock well, well over 1.4 GHz and some tip beyond 1.5 Ghz on Core and 8GHz on Memory which is really nice. So give these cards a shot. But my full recommendation for value is the GTX 970 in Single or SLI configurations.