This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of utilise.

GTX980-Ti

Yesterday, we wrote about the limited numbers of GTX 1080 and 1070 cards currently on the market and noted that users should look to buy these cards until prices come dorsum down to sane levels. Meanwhile, Nvidia's higher-end Maxwell hardware has seen some significant toll cuts since Pascal debuted — and so much then that it may be worth considering some of these cards, depending on the prices you lot find.

The GTX 970 has fallen to equally low as $239 on NewEgg, downwards from a pre-Pascal price of ~$320. Zotac currently has the least expensive GTX 970 on the market, but there are cards from Asus at nearly the aforementioned price. While AMD'southward RX 480 is coming to market place in the virtually-term future, the GTX 970 is nevertheless a formidable carte at that cost point — particularly if y'all're already a Team Green fan, and specially if you lot already own one GTX 970 and are curious about using SLI. Nvidia will presumably release a Pascal-based GTX 1060, only we don't know anything about that menu's specifications or cost yet.

If yous do opt for a GTX 970, be aware that the card's split memory pool of three.5GB+512MB makes it a good fit for games at 1440p or beneath. While information technology'southward comparatively rare for the memory puddle to crusade bug in shipping titles, there accept been some documented cases of unusual behavior when running in SLI mode at loftier resolutions and detail levels.

Side by side up, there'southward the GTX 980, which is currently priced every bit low as $379. This, to be perfectly blunt, isn't a very proficient deal. Users who already own one GTX 980 and want to add together a second for SLI may benefit from grabbing the second bill of fare, since ii GTX 980's should generally outperform i GTX 1070, but y'all may be better off grabbing a used card off Ebay and saving even more money. As always, be aware that multi-GPU support can vary from game to game, though Nvidia's implementations are commonly pretty solid.

Given that the GTX 1070 is supposed to be a $379 carte du jour, I strongly recommend waiting for that GPU's cost to come up down instead of ownership a GTX 980.

Finally, there's the GTX 980 Ti. At but $429 (and $409 with mail service-in rebate), information technology's cheaper than any GTX 1070 you tin can really buy today (assuming you can find ane), and meliorate positioned than the GTX 980 with its 6GB RAM buffer. Setting aside the SLI question (once again, calculation a second GTX 980 Ti to your existing system will certainly outperform a unmarried GTX 1070), should gamers consider opting for Nvidia's terminal-gen, penultimate Maxwell GPU?

Maaaaaaaaybe, but it'south a pretty thin argument. At $330, the GTX 980 Ti would be a compelling GPU, but the $429 cost point is higher than the GTX 1070 should be in one case things settle down. The gap between the 1070 and the 980 Ti isn't huge — roughly x% across all games and resolutions, co-ordinate to Ars Technica — simply the GTX 1070 offers meliorate support for features like asynchronous compute and stronger overall DX12 functioning, along with an 8GB frame buffer instead of 6GB. An overclocked GTX 980 Ti might obviate the GTX 1070's 10% advantage, just the 1070 family unit is expected to overclock fairly well.

As of today, I'd say the GTX 970 is the strongest overall deal, followed by the GTX 980 Ti and the GTX 980. If you absolutely need a high-end GPU today or have an SLI rig, all iii are worth consideration. Gamers willing to purchase Team Blood-red or Greenish depending on which ane has the all-time overall toll/performance ratio may want to wait for the upcoming debut of the AMD RX 480 before deciding to pull the trigger on the GTX 970, but if you're a Team Green aficionado, it's the most compelling of the post-toll-cutting cards.