Nvidia representatives claim up to a 50% increase in performance at high tessellation factors per engine due to architectural improvements. But that changes with the GM204's upgraded third-gen PolyMorph engine design. The company's PolyMorph engine 2.0 design was leveraged across Kepler and even the Maxwell-based GM107. We should mention GM204's upgraded tessellation performance, too. We'll see if this is enough to allow GeForce GTX 980 to stay competitive with the formidable GeForce GTX 780 Ti. Nvidia claims that this increases effective memory bandwidth from 224 GB/s to approximately 300 GB/s compared to the GeForce GTX 680 Kepler-class cards.

Successfully compressed blocks save even more bandwidth every time the memory is read. If 2:1 compression isn't doable, that block isn't compressed. Using 8x8 blocks of 64 pixels, compression analysis is performed on 2x4 blocks in order to achieve the best compression possible in 8:1, 4:1, and 2:1 steps. GM204 sports an improved third-generation delta color compression mode that provides more options to the hardware. Nvidia mitigates this deficit by implementing an improved memory compression scheme. Regardless of Maxwell’s more efficient graphics architecture, the GeForce GTX 980 suffers a 33% drop in peak memory bandwidth compared to the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. If these new GeForce cards can deliver performance on par with their predecessors, Nvidia has accomplished something special. The GeForce GTX 970 is even more of a power miser with a 145 W TDP. Consider that this second generation Maxwell GPU is home to 5.2 billion transistors vs Kepler's 7.1 billion. The GM204's 398 mm 2 die size is less than 80% the size of GK110, despite being built on the same 28 nm fabrication node. It's been a long time since we've seen a sub-200 W performance leader in the graphics card world. That's not a typo, and it's almost 100 Watts shy of the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. Have a look at the GeForce GTX 980's thermal design power limit of 165 W. That should give GM204 an edge when it comes to high resolutions (like 4K) and anti-aliasing.īefore we go on, though, let's touch on Maxwell's focus on efficiency. Compare this to the GeForce GTX 780 Ti's 48 ROPs per clock and 44 Gpixels/s. The GeForce GTX 980’s raster processing appears particularly well-endowed, with 64 full-color ROPs per clock and 72 Gpixels/second of fill rate. The point is that we expect GeForce GTX 980 to compete on the 780 Ti's level, maybe even beating it. For a quick refresher, you may want to have a look at our GeForce GTX 750 Ti Review: Maxwell Adds Performance Using Less Power. But keep in mind that Maxwell is a more efficient architecture able to do more with fewer resources. Every one of those attributes (except for ROPs/clock) overpowers the GeForce GTX 980's specifications.

The 780 Ti has 2880 CUDA cores, 240 texture units, 48 ROPs, and a 384-bit aggregate memory bus with 336 GB/s of memory bandwidth. It probably makes the most sense to compare GM204 to the Kepler-based GK110 in Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 780 Ti, even if we know it probably won’t go down in history as the most potent GPU based on Maxwell.

Benchmark test gpu gtx 970 vs gtx 750