NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review: A Cheaper Titan X Arrives

Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review: A Cheaper Titan X
Brand: NVIDIA

by Marco Chiappetta — Sunday, May 31, 2015, 06:00 PM EDT

Before bringing this article to a close, we'd like to cover a couple of final data points -- namely, power consumption and noise. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored acoustics and tracked how much power our test system was consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you an idea of how much power each configuration used while idling and also while under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the graphics cards alone.

Total System Power Consumption

Tested at the Outlet

power

Like the GeForce GTX Titan X, the 980 Ti is a step forward in terms of high-end GPU efficiency. Despite featuring about a billion additional transistors and a similar sized frame buffer, the 980 Ti consumes a little less power than the original Titan, which was also produced on TSMC's 28nm node. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti offers much better performance than the original Titan, though. In comparison to the Radeon R9 290X, the 980 Ti consumes less power, while offering much higher overall performance.

noise

NVIDIA has put significant resources into designing the coolers in its high-end graphics cards, and it has been paying dividends. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti made a bit more noise than the GTX 980 under load, but its still one of the quietest flagship graphics cards around -- it is clearly quieter than the high-end Radeons. It is not a totally silent solution, however. When under load, the fan will spin up to audible levels.

In terms of temperature, our GeForce GTX 980 Ti sample idled at around 50'C and under load the temperature quickly shot up to its default 83'C target.

Tags: Nvidia, GeForce, Gaming, graphics, GPU, Maxwell, 980 ti

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com