Just over two months from the launch of the massively powerful GeForce GTX Titan X, Nvidia has released the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, which can be seen as the junior version of the high-performance and high-priced GTX Titan X.
The GTX Titan X costs $999.99 while the GTX 980 Ti costs only $649.99, but the lower price does not mean that the new GPU should be underestimated. In fact, save for less CUDA cores at 2816 from 3072, less texture units at 176 to 196, and halved RAM at 6GB from 12GB of GDDR5, the GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti are identical in their specifications, including the all-important clock speeds.
On paper, the GTX 980 Ti looks to be a steal at its price. Reviews are also now coming out regarding the actual performance of the graphics card.
Eurogamer: "The new GTX 980 Ti is a mildly cut-back version of the (GTX Titan X), offering around 98 percent of the raw performance at 65 percent of the price... There's just a 0.79 per cent variance from the target frame-rate between the new card and the more capable Titan X... So, should you buy a GTX 980 Ti? As Ferris Bueller might say, 'if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up'."
AnandTech: "GTX 980 Ti may be intended to be GTX Titan X's junior, but with the excellent performance it delivers, GTX 980 Ti may as well be GTX Titan X itself... Thanks to the combination of a couple of factors GTX 980 Ti ends up coming much closer to GTX Titan X than what the specifications tell us to expect. In the end what we find is that it delivers 97% of GTX Titan X's performance."
ArsTechnica UK: "Performance-wise, the 980 Ti is almost identical to the benchmark-topping Titan X... Stepping down to 6GB of memory does little to harm performance... Given how close its performance is to the GTX Titan X - just a few frames in many cases - I'm honestly surprised that Nvidia has priced it so aggressively."
ExtremeTech: "On paper, the GTX 980 Ti packs virtually all of the Titan X's punch into a much lower $649 price... The GTX 980 Ti is so good, in fact, one wonders if there's any reason (beyond bragging rights) to buy a Titan X at all..."
Forbes: "In my testing, the 980 Ti is between 54% and 62% faster than the 780 Ti, which makes Nvidia's latest flagship a compelling upgrade... The 980 Ti is effectively a Titan X with 6GB of VRAM instead of 12GB and - at most - a 3% performance drop in real-world gaming benchmarks."
PCWorld: "The GeForce GTX 980 Ti is an utter beast when it comes to PC gaming... 6GB is more than enough to handle today's games even at 4K resolution... There's little reason to spend $1000 for a Titan X over a $650 GTX 980 Ti even if you've got cash spilling out of your pockets."
Reviews on the GTX 980 Ti are overwhelmed by the performance of the new Nvidia GPU, with users needing a good reason to have to pay $350 more for the GTX Titan X when the GTX 980 Ti is performing at such a high level for a much lower price.
