Reports are emerging that Nvidia is planning to reveal its
own GeForce GTX 980 Ti at the
very same Computex event in Taipei that AMD is scheduled to launch its Radeon
R9 300 family of graphics cards. If Nvidia does push out the 980 Ti then it’s
certainly going to take the wind out of AMD’s sails, offering performance
lodged somewhere above a GeForce GTX 980 and in a
similar territory to the GTX Titan X.
A lot has been made of AMD’s upcoming flagship model, the
High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) equipped Radeon R9 390X. This is
expected to debut at the same show, and comes packing the 2.5D memory offering
lightning-quick performance. Nvidia’s clearly concerned if these rumours are
true, turning the GeForce GTX 980 Ti around for release in rapid time to combat
AMD.
In terms of what to expect from the GeForce GTX 980 Ti,
you’re looking at the same GM200 GPU used in the GeForce GTX Titan X, according
to reports. That means the full 3,072 CUDA Cores on 128 SMMS, with 192 TMUs and
96 ROPs. The difference between the two cards is a halving of the available
GDDR5 memory, down to 6GB from 12GB on the titan X, and possibly slightly
higher clock speeds.
Pricing is anybody’s guess, but reports emerged earlier this
week AMD was planning on charging a premium for its R9 390X, possibly in the
region of $850. It’s also thought AMD is planning entirely new series branding,
along the lines of Nvidia’s Titan range. If this is true then this could give
Nvidia plenty of wiggle room for the GTX 980 Ti, where it can slot in anywhere
between the RRP of $550 for the GTX 980 and $1000 for the GTX Titan X. If
Nvidia can undercut AMD with only slightly worse performance then it could be a
better pickup, particularly based on the strength of Nvidia’s drivers and
optimisations.
Things are shaping up for an interesting battle between AMD
and Nvidia this summer. Do you think the GTX 980 Ti is going to be a worthwhile
pickup? How much do you think it’s going to cost?
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