Waiting for 980?

[smicha]

http://videocardz.com/52321/nvidia-gefo ... 0-pictured

I hope I am mistaken but I feel 980 will be disappointment for Octane users (compared to 780, 780Ti and TITAN).

[Seekerfinder]

Yup. Looks to be an extremely disappointing for Cuda rendering. Power efficiency seems great and hopefully the new chip will bring improvements. But only 2048 cuda cores? Agh! Why would they go backwards? It should be 3048. Calling all conspiracy theorists, here are some options:

1. The GTX line started treading on the pro line's toes. There were some internal disputes and one or two people got fired;
2. AMD are not playing the cuda game, so why bother?;
3. Like Intel, they decided to alternate release cycles between an 'evolutionary' and a 'revolutionary' release. This clearly being the former;
4. They're saving all the goodness for the 1000 (or whatever it'll be called) release, next year.

Benefits seem to be:
a. Lower power usage (less heat);
b. It 'should' push the prices of the 7xx series down (tricky one because some of the 7xx cards will certainly be more powerful. So who knows?)
c. POSSIBLY... performance increase per cuda core with the GM204 chip.

To me this seems like a gamer's release...

Seeker

[smicha]

There are also rumors about twice as powerful titan 2. We'll see.

[enigmasi]

c'mon! how you will be disappointed? it's Maxwell, so don't compare with Kepler. just like you can't compare Kepler with Fermi.
min 4gb vram. 180W!
look at "poor" gtx750Ti

[smicha]

980 will be as fast as 780Ti - this is a joke. I don't care about 170W, there could be 300W with twice performance as 780.

[enigmasi]

you would care if you want to use 8 gpus, or 4 in one box, about temp/money

[Seekerfinder]

c'mon! how you will be disappointed? it's Maxwell, so don't compare with Kepler. just like you can't compare Kepler with Fermi.

Need we be reminded that Kepler was a significant 'downgrade', partially to achieve power efficiency? I don't think that will be the case again - that is why I said "possibly" a performance increase as a potential positive. But it's just a hunch.

you would care if you want to use 8 gpus, or 4 in one box, about temp/money

Of course. But what is the point of installing 8 low powered cards if 4 current gen can do the job?

The big question is how effective Maxwell will be with cuda.

Seeker

[glimpse]

personally I don't expect performance bump more than..20-30%, certainly not looking for 2x..-maybe efficiency, but not performance..as we've seen from 750ti (70W) that performs on par with 460 (nearly 200w?).. =) don't think nVidia is going to shot itself in a leg as TitanZ is still sold for boutique builders for 2k$.. even if they manage to show faster card tun this beast - I just guess it will be out of reach for 99%...with Kepler they've managed to get the almost the same performance on gk104 (gtx680) that they had on gf110 (gtx 580), & then with Titan get twice the performance compared to 580 with the same amount of energy - that's a leap..& I think they made it quite nice.

Just because we don't like the price, doesn't mean the technology is bad. If You don't want to buy it, don't do it =) You're not forced & as upgrading CPU with every release, the same should be said with GPU - if You always want to have the "latest & greatest" then there's a price to paid..You choose =) if You need more vram, grab 780 (6gb) while You still can & enjoy for a while..(some models OC like crazy..& still runs stable on air..)& for those who don't need more vram, well 590 seems still a good deal =)

[voon]

Maybe Nvidia wants to slowly let die CUDA on GTX cards and force us to buy expensive pro cards?

[smicha]

I was about to get 3x780 6gb. I'll wait patiently and see how 980 performs on Octane, and if they go with 8gb version I'll get them.

Some more interesting stuff
http://compubench.com/compare.jsp?bench ... +Ti&cols=2