980 ti or Pascal?

[Phinbar]

Title says it all, the gtx 980 ti is really tempting but do you think it would be wise to wait for the next generation of cards to come out. I would normally say that if you keep waiting for the next thing, you'll never get anything but the rumours say Pascal is going to be really big so what do you guys think?

[niofalpha]

It's not coming out for atleast a year so I would just got 980 Ti.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Rumours can't be trusted. Pretty much every GPU series is rumoured to be a massive jump in performance. 

 

It depends on what you have right now. If you're building from scratch, you'll be waiting until sometime next year to get a GPU. If you have something like a 770, I would wait. 

[doublehelix]

What is pascal?

[Phinbar]

Rumours can't be trusted. Pretty much every GPU series is rumoured to be a massive jump in performance. 

 

It depends on what you have right now. If you're building from scratch, you'll be waiting until sometime next year to get a GPU. If you have something like a 770, I would wait. 

good guess with the 770 

 

It's not coming out for atleast a year so I would just got 980 Ti.

thats my thoughts, this '10x the performance' is actually per watt and i dont really care about that to be truthfully honest!

 

What is pascal?

Nvidia's next lineup of graphics cards, supposedly very efficient

[Oshino Shinobu]

What is pascal?

Nvidia's next GPU architecture. The current 900 series is Maxwell, and the next will be Pascal. 

[MaximusX]

Title says it all, the gtx 980 ti is really tempting but do you think it would be wise to wait for the next generation of cards to come out. I would normally say that if you keep waiting for the next thing, you'll never get anything but the rumours say Pascal is going to be really big so what do you guys think?

I would get a 980ti, but maybe wait if you want to always get 60fps in 4k.

[Dinkleberg]

I say keep the 770, wait for both AMD and Nvidia to release Arctic Islands and Pascal respectively, see which card is the sweet-spot for the resolution you want to play at, and get the card, repeat process every generation or two and you'll be maxing out games will not spending as much as getting a generation's best card and expect it to max out all games for three or four years, because with games becoming more and more demanding, especially when it comes to VRAM, it won't.

PS: Keep in mind that AMD has priority access to HBM2 which I reckon will be on GTX x70 and up, and R9 x80 or x90 and up (depending on if AMD keep the Fury branding or no) so AMD's sweet-spot card, which is the R9 x80X or x90 (again, depending on the Fury branding's future) will come out sooner than Nvidia's sweet-spot, which is the GTX x70;

[AngryGoldfish]

The 980ti is twice as powerful as a 770. The performance boost will be very much worth it. The 980ti is set up for DX12 games when they are released and has enough VRAM and horse power for any game at 1080p or 1440p. I can't predict there will be a need for a more powerful GPU than the 980ti until 2017. Although it is based on assumptions and stipulation, I personally predict a 980ti will be fine until Pascal's 'Titanium' GPU comes out in 2017—I doubt it'll come out in 2016. The '980 of Pascal' will probably only slightly surpass a 980ti or Titan X. I am basing this off of the massive gap between the 980 and the 980ti that was not shared with the 780 and the 780ti. The gap between those two cards was not as high as the 980 and 980ti. The 780ti was also more expensive than the 980ti. Another reason for my thinking is the minimal performance gain when upgrading from a 780ti to a 980. The only real reason to upgrade was immediate support for newer architecture, an extra gigabyte of VRAM and its excellent overclocking headroom that excelled in benchmarks. Otherwise there was no point in buying a 980 (unless you picked up two). You may as well have waited for the 980ti or Titan X.

[bomerr]

The 980ti is twice as powerful as a 770. The performance boost will be very much worth it. The 980ti is set up for DX12 games when they are released and has enough VRAM and horse power for any game at 1080p or 1440p. I can't predict there will be a need for a more powerful GPU than the 980ti until 2017. Although it is based on assumptions and stipulation, I personally predict a 980ti will be fine until Pascal's 'Titanium' GPU comes out in 2017—I doubt it'll come out in 2016. The '980 of Pascal' will probably only slightly surpass a 980ti or Titan X. I am basing this off of the massive gap between the 980 and the 980ti that was not shared with the 780 and the 780ti. The gap between those two cards was not as high as the 980 and 980ti. The 780ti was also more expensive than the 980ti. Another reason for my thinking is the minimal performance gain when upgrading from a 780ti to a 980. The only real reason to upgrade was immediate support for newer architecture, an extra gigabyte of VRAM and its excellent overclocking headroom that excelled in benchmarks. Otherwise there was no point in buying a 980 (unless you picked up two). You may as well have waited for the 980ti or Titan X.

i think you're wrong. 

 

1st the stock 980 was only slightly better than a 780 TI HOWEVER it has massive OC potentional; to the point that a 980 OC hits the same performance as a reference 980 TI.

 

So if Pascal has the same OC headroom as Maxwell:

 

980 Ti = 1080 stock

1080 OC = 1080 Ti

1080 TI OC > Titan XX 

 

Mathematically an OC on Maxwell gives about a 20% performance gain so a 1080 TI would be equal to 2 980 TIs in SLI depending on scaling. 

 

Pascal + 4k = 60fps killer upgrade.

[Lethal Seraph]

It's gonna be awhile for Pascal (Q2-Q3 2016) but that's not set in stone... I'd get the 980Ti and then maybe resell it later for a Pascal.

[AngryGoldfish]

i think you're wrong. 

 

1st the stock 980 was only slightly better than a 780 TI HOWEVER it has massive OC potentional; to the point that a 980 OC hits the same performance as a reference 980 TI.

 

So if Pascal has the same OC headroom as Maxwell:

 

980 Ti = 1080 stock

1080 OC = 1080 Ti

1080 TI OC > Titan XX 

 

Mathematically an OC on Maxwell gives about a 20% performance gain so a 1080 TI would be equal to 2 980 TIs in SLI depending on scaling. 

 

Pascal + 4k = 60fps killer upgrade.

 

I have not seen any overclocked 980 hit the performance levels of a 980ti without LN2. Have you got a reference for me to look at? Not because I love being right or something petty like that. I genuinely want to see a 980 overclocked (1550/8000Mhz) hit reference 980ti performance levels. That would be very cool. I don't see how it's possible, though.

 

Here is a Classified 980 with a 1651/2041Mhz overclock, which is an extreme overclock that will be practically impossible to replicate for an average user.

 

Fire Strike GPU score: 16684

 

And here is a reference 980ti Fire Strike GPU score with no overclock: 17042

 

The majority of 980's will top out at 1550/2000Mhz if you won the silicon lottery; 1500/7800Mhz if you just got an average chip. That will be nowhere near a 980ti reference. You will be looking at 15300-15800 graphics score with that kind of overclock, which is not guaranteed anyway. That's a long way off from being a 980ti, and Fire Strike loves overclocking more than games.

 

Regarding Pascal, we have no way of knowing overclocking will be as prodigious as Maxwell. Pascal will not only be shrunk down to 16nm but will also be using HBM2, which as everyone knows is a very new technology. This might cause the overclocking headroom to be throttled, I don't know. Usually with a die shrink, we can see an increase in frequency, but it's not always at the inception. It can take a generation or two to develop a process that uses such new hardware efficiently with extremely high frequencies. There are no guarantees we will see a repeat of Maxwell with Pascal.