Pros & Cons
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- Fastest single-chip card available.
- Runs cooler and quieter than comparable AMD cards.
- Requires much less power than comparable AMD cards.
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- Requires two six-pin power connectors.
- 4K gaming on some games at maximum settings will still require multiple cards.
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 ($549 as tested) is the company's most powerful consumer-class graphics card to be released. It's also one of the first built on the company's Maxwell architecture, the successor to Kepler. The other two Maxwell-based GPUs, the Zotac GTX 750 and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti, were midrange models released earlier this year.
The GTX 980's raw performance is impressive. The card performed significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti and the fast, power-hungry AMD Radeon R9 290X on most of the gaming-oriented benchmark tests. Even more impressive is the GPU's power efficiency. According to Nvidia, the GTX 980's thermal design power (TDP) rating is just 165 watts. That's 85 watts less than the Nvidia GTX 780 Ti and 30 watts less than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680.
The GeForce GTX 980 supports several forward-looking features. These include a new type of anti-aliasing, a new dynamic lighting effect, and a technology called Dynamic Super Resolution, which is meant to deliver higher image quality on lower-resolution screens. It does so by rendering at higher resolutions and down-sampling what the card is rendering.
In real-world performance, the GTX 980 is a bit disappointing. While it outperforms the higher-priced Nvidia GTX 780 Ti and Nvidia GTX Titan Black, the performance gains aren't huge. For gamers looking for a card with no-compromise performance, especially as 4K Ultra-High-Definition monitors starting to come down in price, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 still isn't it. Still, its improved performance and impressive thermal controls will definitely keep avid PC gamers happy.
For more details, check out the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 review on our sister site, Computer Shopper.
Final Thoughts
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980
Nvidia's high-end, Maxwell-based card delivers the best performance available from a single-chip gaming graphics card to date, while sipping much less power than the current competition. Just as nice: Its price is competitive with AMD's hotter Radeon R9 290X.