Nvidia GTX 980 Ti announced: costs $650, available now
Computex, Asia's biggest technology trade show, is about to begin—and Nvidia's kicking it off with the announcement of its newest graphics card, the 980 Ti. Like the 780 Ti of 2013, the new 980 Ti is positioned between Nvidia's high-end option and its flagship Titan. The Titan X, released in March, is based on Nvidia's GM200 Maxwell GPU and offers a slightly absurd 12GB of VRAM for $1000. The 980 Ti is a cut-down version of GM200, with a more reasonable 6GB of VRAM and a more reasonable price: $650 (£550). And it's available now.
Or, at least, soon: according to Nvidia, the 980 Ti should be available shortly after announcing. That $650 price also includes a free copy of Batman: Arkham Knight thrown in. As the 980 Ti enters Nvidia's lineup, the 980 is dropping from its base price of $550 down to $500.
How does the GTX 980 Ti stack up? You can read our full review here, but if you want a quick spec overview, here's a table for your eyeballs.
Specs | GTX 780 Ti | GTX 980 | GTX 980 Ti | GTX Titan X |
GDDR5 RAM | 3GB | 4GB | 6GB | 12GB |
CUDA Cores | 2880 | 2048 | 2816 | 3072 |
Base clock | 875 MHz | 1126 MHz | 1000 MHz | 1000 MHz |
Boost clock | 928 MHz | 1216 MHz | 1075 MHz | 1075 MHz |
Memory clock | 7GHz | 7GHz | 7GHz | 7GHz |
Texture units | 240 | 128 | 176 | 192 |
ROP units | 48 | 64 | 96 | 96 |
TDP | 250W | 165W | 250W | 250W |
Launch price | $700 | $550 | $650 | $1000 |
It's a good time to be in the market for a new graphics card, but we'd recommend biding your time for the next few weeks. AMD's new cards are coming soon, too, and they may outperform Nvidia's or cause some more price shakeups in the near future.
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Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.
When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).