Maxwell Hype?

[anon3na]

If you're one of the people, who have bought a 970/980 why did u buy it (regular upgrade cycle, better perf per wat, etc) and did the fact that maxwell was a new architecture, influence your decision. I'm asking this cause personally I'm not that impressed with the current release of maxwell cards, but I think it's largely due to the distorted pricing in Australia where 780s and r9 290xs are cheaper than 970s and the premier 780 Tis (such as the ghz edition) are $100 cheaper than the reference 980.

From most benchmarks it seems that the 970 Trades with the 780 and r9 290x (keep in mind Linus' sample is pathetic) and the 780ti and 980 are pretty much equal with the 980 generally coming out on top slightly (frame rates u won't really notice in the real world).

In the end preformance per dollar really doesn't make much of a difference in costs, unless you want to do SLI in which nvidia cards can get away with small power supplies. I think the Maxwell architecture has impressive potential, but I think nvidia deliberately matched the preformance of a 980 to a 780ti and a 970 to a 780, but I think supply and demand has twisted their aims to output these cards at a better preformance per frame, since there release has managed to undercut both the 780 and 290x (I'm guessing this is the reason why nvidia discontinued the two 780 cards). I think big things can be expected from the maxwell architecture, but rather in the next refresh cycle, rather than this one. Saying that as far as sales go nvidia is doing extremely well right now as the 970 probably comes at a much more reasonable costs outside Australia.

[Bhav]

Aren't there already enough of these threads?

[Tagiau]

I am almost positive we have hundreds of these threads. 

[Real_PhillBert]

If you went from a 570 to a 980 like I did, you would be impressed.

 

I will concede that if you are already using a 700 series card, it may not make a lot of sense to upgrade. But usually the X70 being equal to the previous generations Y80 is pretty much the norm. You cant expect an enormous performance difference from one generation to the next. Baby steps.

 

Welcome to the forum @anon3na You may want to follow your thread to get a notification on what people are saying. there is a "Follow This Topic" button near the upper right of the window.

[BrianPena]

It might be just because of where you live. I personally don't have a GTX 970/980, but I do know that the 970 is priced really well for what it offers.

[TheMcSame]

To me it seems like it's just supposed to be a more efficient architecture rather than a huge overall improvement, it doesn't really surprise me that they are just barely better than the 700 series. Pascal will be where a large improvement will come with stacked DRAM and NVLink.

[Snadzies]

Picked up an MSI 4G 980.

I wanted a decent upgrade from my 760 and also something that was absolutely silent at idle and very, very, quiet under load.

So far the highest recorded temp with Afterburner is 66c and 50% fan speed.

[Samfisher]

Went from 2x 7950's to 1 GTX 970 cos Crossfire/SLI don't work with borderless windowed mode.

[Vedge]

To me it seems like it's just supposed to be a more efficient architecture rather than a huge overall improvement, it doesn't really surprise me that they are just barely better than the 700 series. 

 

Until they release GTX 980 ti or Titan 2 (or whatever they call it!). I bet they could have done better if the competition was there

[PirateCoffee]

Sigh..

 

We've got too many of these threads.

[TheMcSame]

Until they release GTX 980 ti or Titan 2 (or whatever they call it!). I bet they could have done better if the competition was there

It's no different than saying AMD could have done better with efficiency, they could have but they want to do their own thing. It's no different in this case, Nvidia is just doing their own thing. I mean, you're expecting a huge improvement from an architecture that was out when kepler was still big. You wont see a big difference until something big happens like Pascal.

[Real_PhillBert]

hmmm a very new member posts a pretty controversial topic and doesnt return to it... This seems sketchy...

[CostcoSamples]

I ordered a GTX 970 because of great performance per dollar, and the timing coincides with my regular upgrade cycle.  I agree that upgrading from a 700 series card is not worthwhile, but I think the improvements in efficiency are pretty awesome. Also AMD cards are also a good price right now, but I wanted Game Stream for my Shield.

[anon3na]

Sorry for dupe thread, i should have checked before i posted, sorry guys

I guess I probably just expected too much from Maxwell and the 900 series considering im looking to build a system soon

I did not mean to raise controversy, Im just curious as to why people are so excited over the launch, when perhaps it hasn't been as good as i expected. I am not a fanboy to any company, and i guess I didnt truly consider the influence that my context, "living in Australia" had on the impact of hardware costs. I was also too narrow minded to consider the preformance jump from Pre 700 generation to the 900 series. Perhaps my memory fails me but i think that the 600 to 700 series offered a bigger preformance delta, but looking at the pricing in the USA, I can see that this is the first time that nvidia has priced so aggressively on launch.... Oh well hardware costs have always sucked here anyway

Sorry once more if i came across as flame baiting i sincerely didnt mean to

[Bigdaddy5414]

The Folding@Home performance is way over the 700 series. And the ability for Shadowplay to record at 4k instead of being capped at 1440p. I'm still using 1440 monitors but that may change soon.

[Doughnutnator]

I'm upgrading from a 760 to a 970, I don't feel that it's a ripoff because where I live a G1 Gaming GTX 970 costs almost the same as a quality Asus/Gigabyte GTX 770. But I don't want to be an idiot that bought something just because is "DA NEW TECH".

[zwilliamson]

As soon as I can find somewhere to buy the 970, I'm going to get one over my 760. I need a 4gb card to drive my new LG 34um95 over the 1200p monitor I had before. For productivity and photo/video editing the 760 is fine, but I'm holding off playing any games until I can max them out at 3440x1440.

[Swndlr]

As soon as I can find somewhere to buy the 970, I'm going to get one over my 760. I need a 4gb card to drive my new LG 34um95 over the 1200p monitor I had before. For productivity and photo/video editing the 760 is fine, but I'm holding off playing any games until I can max them out at 3440x1440.

off topic from the thread, but is the 34blahblahblah an ultrawide monitor? and if so hows it been?

[anon3na]

I'm upgrading from a 760 to a 970, I don't feel that it's a ripoff because where I live a G1 Gaming GTX 970 costs almost the same as a quality Asus/Gigabyte GTX 770. But I don't want to be an idiot that bought something just because is "DA NEW TECH".

Where I live there has always been a massive jump between the X70 to X80 cards (Arround $200), and an even bigger jump from the 780 to the 780 TI. However the release of maxwell has made the prices of the 780, 780 TI, r9 290x and r9 290 drop to values which pretty much make them better value for the money, and the demand for these cards isn't that high, while maxwell cards disappear from stock which really does confuse me.

My biggest scare is this will turn out a bit like the 770 where originally the 780 was overpriced, but upon amd releasing competition, the 780 dropped to 770 prices and the full gk110 core was released in the 780 TI (nvidia has got to do, what they have to do to get a profit eh) But still if I bought a 770 I would feel quite rotten as the card isn't up to scratch for 1440p IMO, which is my desired resolution. I think the gtx 980 is fully enabled gm 204 core from what I've heard from lurking on other forumns (not the most reliable resource), but I'm still nervous about diving into maxwell to build my own personal rig.

[Schoolofmonkey]

Well I went from a ROG GTX780ti Matrix to a Gigabyte GTX980 G1 Gaming, and all I can say is I'm happy I did.

Yes the GTX980 reference is only slightly faster, but after having a string of horrible different branded/models GTX780ti's I gave up.

(I've had 8 GTX780ti cards since January this year)

 

The Matrix card was ok, but still ran hot, loud and had a strange quirk with my 144Hz monitor.

Never wanted to game on it due to the noise and heat, even after using a Kraken G10 on it, I still wasn't happy with it at all.

Sold it 2 weeks before Maxwell dropped, only lost $100.

 

I first tried a Gigabyte GTX970 G1 (I was impatient waiting for custom GTX980's), I could overclock it past my GTX780ti Matrix's Heaven results.

It beat the Matrix in every benchmark, yes this was with the Matrix's factory stock overclock, but its still impressive.

 

Haven't even bothered overclocking the GTX980, no real need to.

 

Now I can just sit down not have to worry about temps and noise, and just play a game.

I have noticed a visible (to my eyes during gameplay, not synthetic benchmarks) improvement in gaming, and yes the 4GB vram does help.

[maizenblue]

I pretty much agree that these cards are mostly hype. Now that AMD has responded by dropping the price of the 290 and 290x, the 970 isn't quite as impressive to me. AMD has retaken the price/performance crown. I can get a sapphire tri x 290 or pcs+ 290 for 75 to 100 less and it offers pretty much the same performance unless you overclock the shit out of the 970. The 290x can be found for about the same price and seems to be a slightly better more consistent card to me anyway. It also seems like some of the companies releasing the 970 went cheap on their cooling system and missed the mark.

 

I can get two PCS+ 290s for less than the price of a single 980, and they would destroy a single 980, and beat two 970s at higher resolutions(the reason for dual cards). Even if your an Nvidia fanboy you can get a 780 ti for less than 400 now, so the 980 seems pointless to me.

[BirdyTheMighty]

4 reason

1.cant run skyrim flawlessly(outside drops to 15 on my 7950 with all my mods which includes texture mods like 2K texture,unbelievable 2K grass, skyrim floura overhaul, 970 got it up to 30-40-ish FPS

2. the extra Vram helped in skyrim peaking at 3.2 Vram for now

3. lower power consumption for the performance it gives out

4. cheaper then the 780 and better at price to performance

[Doughnutnator]

Where I live there has always been a massive jump between the X70 to X80 cards (Arround $200), and an even bigger jump from the 780 to the 780 TI. However the release of maxwell has made the prices of the 780, 780 TI, r9 290x and r9 290 drop to values which pretty much make them better value for the money, and the demand for these cards isn't that high, while maxwell cards disappear from stock which really does confuse me.

My biggest scare is this will turn out a bit like the 770 where originally the 780 was overpriced, but upon amd releasing competition, the 780 dropped to 770 prices and the full gk110 core was released in the 780 TI (nvidia has got to do, what they have to do to get a profit eh) But still if I bought a 770 I would feel quite rotten as the card isn't up to scratch for 1440p IMO, which is my desired resolution. I think the gtx 980 is fully enabled gm 204 core from what I've heard from lurking on other forumns (not the most reliable resource), but I'm still nervous about diving into maxwell to build my own personal rig.

You're lucky. It seems that AMD doesn't care about my country. A GTX 970 costs 30-40 USD more than a 280X. That's right, a freaking 280x. I'm also not sure about going in the Maxwell Hype, AMD is working right now in 20nm (Nvidia is also working on that too without doubts). We've been getting GPU's on the same 28nm fabrication process. So the jump from 28nm to 10nm will be HUGE, but I don't know if the wait will be worth. Also I just sold my 760 for a nice price. If I waited I wouldn't get so much money like I did. Anyways I could wait and game with the Intel HD 4000, but the G1 Gaming 970 seems like a nice deal, but i'm not 100% sure yet.

[Schoolofmonkey]

Don't forget temps, the AMD 290/x are heating elements for your case, I don't care what after market cooler you have on them, they are hot...

 

Clearly the OP isn't seeing Maxwell for what it is, a step in the right direction, a smaller and cooler die that matches and more often than not BEAT's the larger hotter dies of the GTX780ti's.

 

Not one of the companies went cheap on the GTX970 beside eVGA (now fixed), the Gigabyte GTX970 G1 is one of the coolest cards out there, and if I can overclock one to beat a GTX780ti with a already major factory overclock

it's going to kill any 290/290x out there that isn't on water.

 

[anon3na]

Don't forget temps, the AMD 290/x are heating elements for your case, I don't care what after market cooler you have on them, they are hot...

 

Clearly the OP isn't seeing Maxwell for what it is, a step in the right direction, a smaller and cooler die that matches and more often than not BEAT's the larger hotter dies of the GTX780ti's.

 

Not one of the companies went cheap on the GTX970 beside eVGA (now fixed), the Gigabyte GTX970 G1 is one of the coolest cards out there, and if I can overclock one to beat a GTX780ti with a already major factory overclock

it's going to kill any 290/290x out there that isn't on water.

You actually have a really good point about running temperature which I hadn't even considered. I do think maxwell is indeed a step in the right direction but i dont think the 900 series has much value in Australia, considering how it has undercut prices of older gen cards which have pretty much the same preformance. Non reference desings seem to be 500+ while the 290x windforce is only 469. Rather I think the next refresh cycle of maxwell will be far more interesting than this.

I think from benchmarks from various sites the 290x seems to have an overall lead over the 970 (I think Linus got a really bad sample). But in hindsight of making this thread, I have to say its probably my fault for expecting too much, and im kinda sour cause I need to build a system for myself within the month or 2 and I was really hopeful that maxwell would blow 7XX out of the water with raw preformance. That probably coloured my view with bias, as after watching a few videos I have to admit it is impressive to reach max overclocks before temperature becomes the limiting factor. Saying that though I think Maxwell gets roughly the same preformance boost as other cards when ocing, despite the higher overclocks but that is probably due to the cut down ammount of Cuda cores

As far as the 980 goes I think that card makes little sense in Au with pccasegear selling the ghz edition of the 780 to for 599, along with other retailers selling cheaper 780 tis Arround 620~650, since reference 980s are Arround 700 and non reference are all 800+ from what I've seen(That being said I can understand ur decision considering your bad experience with the 780 TI, but in general I've heard the card seems quite solid)