To Buy or Not to Buy (a 980 Ti): That is the Question

[Morgan Everett]

A simple question: in your humble and expert opinion, should I buy a 980 Ti (for around £350), or wait for a 1070? 

[Kryptyx]

980 Ti is faster than 1070 so just get it. Of course, everyone will tell you to wait for benchmarks, which wouldn't hurt.

[Djole123]

Lemme quote myself, and everyone here:

Wait for benchmarks pleeeeeeease!

[DioOmicida]

Wait. 

[Morgan Everett]

1 minute ago, Kryptyx said:

980 Ti is faster than 1070 so just get it.

Do you have a source for that? I'm genuinely curious, rather than suggesting you're wrong. 

[App4that]

Wait for the benchmarks, but as a 980ti owner I'll tell you it's more than enough for any game at 1440. 

[Morgan Everett]

1 minute ago, App4that said:

Wait for the benchmarks, but as a 980ti owner I'll tell you it's more than enough for any game at 1440. 

What I'm concerned about is the various mumblings about its DX12 performance. If we weren't in this transitional period, I'd have fewer misgivings. 

[Kryptyx]

2 minutes ago, Morgan Everett said:

Do you have a source for that? I'm genuinely curious, rather than suggesting you're wrong. 

I don't have a source to link, but you'll see soon enough

[App4that]

4 minutes ago, Morgan Everett said:

What I'm concerned about is the various mumblings about its DX12 performance. If we weren't in this transitional period, I'd have fewer misgivings. 

I have yet to encounter any problems in DX12 games. I run Forza 6 maxed out at 4K with a locked 60fps, while the Fury X struggles at 1440 and can't even try the game at 4K because of its memory limitation. Do not believe the fear mongering done by AMD fans. 

[Kryptyx]

1 minute ago, App4that said:

Don't believe the fear mongering done by AMD fans. 

FTFY.

[Morgan Everett]

24 minutes ago, Kryptyx said:

I don't have a source to link, but you'll see soon enough

Very cryptic!

[DildorTheDecent]

31 minutes ago, Morgan Everett said:

A simple question: in your humble and expert opinion, should I buy a 980 Ti (for around £350), or wait for a 1070? 

£350 for a GTX 980Ti in the UK is an absolute steal. 

 

I'd take it tbh. Wait for 2nd gen Pascal. 

[Morgan Everett]

10 minutes ago, DildorTheDecent said:

£350 for a GTX 980Ti in the UK is an absolute steal. 

 

I'd take it tbh. Wait for 2nd gen Pascal. 

The price is what's making it so tempting. But I'll be a bit gutted if the 1070 is released next month for less money and better performance...

[App4that]

Very unlikely a 1070 will beat a 980ti. Remember the 980ti is tested at its reference speed. Mine goes to 1500mhz

[Morgan Everett]

28 minutes ago, App4that said:

Very unlikely a 1070 will beat a 980ti. Remember the 980ti is tested at its reference speed. Mine goes to 1500mhz

Why do you think that's unlikely? 

[Praesi]

350 is a damn good deal for a 980ti. 

[App4that]

3 hours ago, Morgan Everett said:

Why do you think that's unlikely? 

Cuda cores. The 1080 does it through clock speed, not physical performance. Even the memory bus is larger on the 980ti. But the 1070, way down on Cuda cores. It is very unlikely it will catch a overclocked 980ti. Remember they use a overclocked 1080 and a reference Titan X to get the disparity they show. In any other venue that would be called out.

[Bhav]

Tbh though cuda core count doesn't have anywhere close to the impact on performance that GPU clock speed does, so an overclocked 1070 may still outperform a 980 ti.

[Schoolofmonkey]

9 hours ago, Morgan Everett said:

Why do you think that's unlikely? 

Because the 970 couldn't beat a GX780ti out of the box, it needed to be heavily overclocked.

I personally compared a ROG GTX780ti Matrix OC's to a Gigabyte GTX970 Gaming OC'd and the 780ti beat it, it came close to a reference GTX980 which beat it by about 5 - 7%, but couldn't get anywhere near a GTX980ti.

 

Hasn't anyone noticed they left the GTX980ti off the launch graph, there's a reason for that, the 1080 isn't meant to replace the GTX980ti, the 1080Ti is.

This is the same hype train NVIDIA did for Maxwell, and it will be the same for future card releases.

 

I know people who are still gaming with a GTX680 fine, so honestly unless you're gaming at stupidly high resolutions the GTX980ti will last you at least 2 years or until the next NVIDIA architecture drops, this is mainly due most games are console ported.

 

Heck my wife is gaming on a 2560x1080 widescreen monitor with a R9 270, she plays stuff like WWE 2k16, The Sims 4, few older titles like Deadpool, and they all run fine, heck I can max out WWE 2k16.

 

Update:

Just gave Doom a quick run, never dropped below 120fps on my single GTX980ti, so the fact that NVIDIA used that game to showcase the power of the 1080 surprises me...lol..

[App4that]

11 hours ago, Schoolofmonkey said:

Because the 970 couldn't beat a GX780ti out of the box, it needed to be heavily overclocked.

I personally compared a ROG GTX780ti Matrix OC's to a Gigabyte GTX970 Gaming OC'd and the 780ti beat it, it came close to a reference GTX980 which beat it by about 5 - 7%, but couldn't get anywhere near a GTX980ti.

 

Hasn't anyone noticed they left the GTX980ti off the launch graph, there's a reason for that, the 1080 isn't meant to replace the GTX980ti, the 1080Ti is.

This is the same hype train NVIDIA did for Maxwell, and it will be the same for future card releases.

 

I know people who are still gaming with a GTX680 fine, so honestly unless you're gaming at stupidly high resolutions the GTX980ti will last you at least 2 years or until the next NVIDIA architecture drops, this is mainly due most games are console ported.

 

Heck my wife is gaming on a 2560x1080 widescreen monitor with a R9 270, she plays stuff like WWE 2k16, The Sims 4, few older titles like Deadpool, and they all run fine, heck I can max out WWE 2k16.

 

Update:

Just gave Doom a quick run, never dropped below 120fps on my single GTX980ti, so the fact that NVIDIA used that game to showcase the power of the 1080 surprises me...lol..

Great break down. My wife games on a 970m, she has a blast. I really can't wait for the benchmarks to hit. My only concern honestly is numbers AMD can't match. If Nvidia runs away with it nothing good can come of it.

[mark_cameron]

11 hours ago, Schoolofmonkey said:

Because the 970 couldn't beat a GX780ti out of the box, it needed to be heavily overclocked.

I personally compared a ROG GTX780ti Matrix OC's to a Gigabyte GTX970 Gaming OC'd and the 780ti beat it, it came close to a reference GTX980 which beat it by about 5 - 7%, but couldn't get anywhere near a GTX980ti.

 

Hasn't anyone noticed they left the GTX980ti off the launch graph, there's a reason for that, the 1080 isn't meant to replace the GTX980ti, the 1080Ti is.

This is the same hype train NVIDIA did for Maxwell, and it will be the same for future card releases.

 

I know people who are still gaming with a GTX680 fine, so honestly unless you're gaming at stupidly high resolutions the GTX980ti will last you at least 2 years or until the next NVIDIA architecture drops, this is mainly due most games are console ported.

 

Heck my wife is gaming on a 2560x1080 widescreen monitor with a R9 270, she plays stuff like WWE 2k16, The Sims 4, few older titles like Deadpool, and they all run fine, heck I can max out WWE 2k16.

 

Update:

Just gave Doom a quick run, never dropped below 120fps on my single GTX980ti, so the fact that NVIDIA used that game to showcase the power of the 1080 surprises me...lol..

Great post.

 

I'm on triple 1440p surround. One 980Ti isn't going to cut that.

So I'm going for two 980Ti Strix OC'd (and soon for three!)

 

I'm not rushing out to buy a 1070. Or a 1080.

 

My next buy will be 1080Ti and not before.

[BenjaminBoost]

23 hours ago, Morgan Everett said:

A simple question: in your humble and expert opinion, should I buy a 980 Ti (for around £350), or wait for a 1070? 

I had to do a conversion to USD (which is $500). Given that the 1080 is $599 MSRP, I'd say this is a good deal. However it might drop a little bit more. 

The 1070 will be $379, and if the 780ti vs the 970/980 is any indication, the 1070 will be a little slower / on par with the 980ti at an aggressive price. In an ideal world, it would go 1070 > 980ti > 1080. This is close to what it is, so regards to price, I feel $400-$450 to be the correct price for 980ti.

I have the 980ti and I'm still happy with it, even at 1440p it gets over 60fps in most games (unless you turn on nvidia works in games like the division). An overclocked 980ti is probably within 10-15% of a 1080, but then again you can overclock the 1080 to obscene heights, apparently.

The marketing mumbo jumbo about "50% faster" is misleading. its 50% faster in VR. in normal 3D gaming its 20-30%, possibly more, but we'll know when benchmarks drop in the coming weeks.

TLDR; Great deal, Great card, it couldn't hurt to wait a little for a price drop. I suspect the 980ti to be a little faster than the 1070.

 

[Morgan Everett]

1 hour ago, evilsliwa said:

I had to do a conversion to USD (which is $500). Given that the 1080 is $599 MSRP, I'd say this is a good deal. However it might drop a little bit more. 

The 1070 will be $379, and if the 780ti vs the 970/980 is any indication, the 1070 will be a little slower / on par with the 980ti at an aggressive price. In an ideal world, it would go 1070 > 980ti > 1080. This is close to what it is, so regards to price, I feel $400-$450 to be the correct price for 980ti.

I have the 980ti and I'm still happy with it, even at 1440p it gets over 60fps in most games (unless you turn on nvidia works in games like the division). An overclocked 980ti is probably within 10-15% of a 1080, but then again you can overclock the 1080 to obscene heights, apparently.

The marketing mumbo jumbo about "50% faster" is misleading. its 50% faster in VR. in normal 3D gaming its 20-30%, possibly more, but we'll know when benchmarks drop in the coming weeks.

TLDR; Great deal, Great card, it couldn't hurt to wait a little for a price drop. I suspect the 980ti to be a little faster than the 1070.

 

Thanks for this. Bear in mind that since GPUs cost more here (RRP is much higher), it's actually probably an even better deal than it appears to you.

[Ryan Kazzy]

I would say wait for benchmarking to come out, nvidia claims the 1070 also outperforms the titan so it might be less powerful than the 980ti but it will still have more Vram, we can only speculate until we see benchmarking with temps and clock speeds.

[Morgan Everett]

Eh, I couldn't wait a month. Got it for 350. And I too only have a 1080p monitor!