HotHardware: The 4GB of video memory on both cards is clocked at a blisteringly-fast 7GHz (effective GDDR5 data rate) and the memory links to the GPU via a wide 256-bit interface. At those clocks, the GeForce GTX 980 offers up a peak textured fillrate of 144.1 GTexels/s and 224 GB/s of memory bandwidth; the GTX 970 offers a peak textured fillrate of 109.2 GTexels/s and the same amount of memory bandwidth. Those numbers might seem low in light of the GeForce GTX 780 Ti's 384-bit memory interface, 210 GTexels/s and 336 GB/s of memory bandwidth, but stick with us here-we'll have more to share on the next couple of pages. Like the high-end cards in the GeForce GTX 700 series, the new GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 reference cards are outfitted with heavy-duty coolers and frames made of aluminum to add rigidity. The GTX 980 also has an aluminum back-plate, which aids in cooling. And what's interesting about it is that there's a removable panel that allows for better air-flow between cards, should a system be packing multiple cards, close together. NVIDIA claims they've done some testing in this regard, and removing that portion of the back-plate is all that's necessary to improve air-flow into an adjacent card's fan. The GeForce logo along the top edge of the cards also light up and there are embossed badges at the front of the fan shroud with the cards' model number. For the most part, the GeForce GTX 980 and 970 reference cards, look very much like the 700 series.

TechSpot: Nvidia says Maxwell brings 2x the performance per watt over the previous generation. For example, the GTX 980 has 33% more cores that also operate at a higher frequency than the GTX 680, yet the newer card's TDP rating is 30 watts lower. Nvidia says that the GTX 980's GM204 GPU is so efficient due to rebalancing the design to fully utilize the CUDA cores more often. Additionally, they have increased the cache size to 2MB, which is four times larger than the 512KB cache found inside the GK104 used by GPUs such as the GTX 680 and GTX 770. The larger cache means fewer requests to the GPU DRAM are needed, improving performance and reducing the GPUs power consumption. Speaking of DRAM, the GM204 features a new compression engine which is designed to further reduce the bandwidth demands.

TechReport: By either measure, the GeForce GTX 980 is the fastest single-GPU graphics card we tested. With the possible exception of the pricey Titan Black, it's also the fastest single-GPU graphics card on the planet. Although $549 is a lot to pay, the GTX 980 manages to deliver appreciably better value than the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, which it replaces. The new GeForce flagship outperforms AMD's Radeon R9 290X, as well. If you want the best, the GTX 980 is the card to get.That's an assessment based on price and performance, but we know from the preceding pages that the GTX 980's other attributes are positive, too. The GM204 GPU's power efficiency is unmatched among high-end GPUs. With Nvidia's stock cooler, that translates into lower noise levels under load than any older GeForce or current Radeon in this class. I'm also quite happy with the suite of extras Nvidia has built into the Maxwell GPU, such as DSR for improved image quality and a big ROP count for high performance at 4K resolutions. This graphics architecture takes us a full generation beyond Kepler-and thus beyond what's in current game consoles like the PlayStation 4 and Xbone.

TechPowerUp: In terms of pure performance, we find the GeForce GTX 980 exceeding the GeForce GTX 780 Ti by 7%, which doesn't look huge, but consider that the GM204 has nearly 2 billion fewer transistors and about a 50% lower TDP, and something tells us that the GM204 won't be the biggest chip NVIDIA will design on this architecture. Compared to AMD's Radeon R9 290X, we see a large performance gap of up to 20% at 1920x1080, although it shrinks to 10% at higher resolutions. This makes the GTX 980 an excellent choice for beyond-HD gaming, but you should still have two cards running in SLI for 4K. When looking at performance, you also have to consider power consumption. Nowadays, power consumption is the limiting factor for GPU performance because heat and noise follow power consumption, and you can only cool so much heat in a graphics card while keeping it as quiet as possible. We got a first glimpse of Maxwell's superior energy efficiency with the GTX 750 Ti it debuted with, and NVIDIA has successfully managed to bring those improvements to their high-end product. The GTX 980 only uses 156 W on average in our power consumption tests, which is incredibly low for a card of this performance class. AMD's recently released "Tonga" GPU, based on their latest technology, sips 50 W more for only roughly half the performance. Unlike AMD, NVIDIA has also improved non-gaming power consumption of their board, which will be important to productivity users who run their PC all day long. NVIDIA was also able to reduce noise levels of their card considerably because of these power consumption improvements, making gaming on it a quiet experience. With 34 dBA, the card is very quiet for its performance class, but I still see some headroom to reduce noise, which board partners will certainly capitalize on.

PCPerspective: The performance of the GeForce GTX 980 is impressive, but doesn't quite mix-up the high end market as some people might have thought it would a year or so ago. My experiences gaming with the GTX 980 proved it was the best single GPU graphics card you can get today; better than the GTX 780 Ti, better than the Titan Black, and better than the Radeon R9 290X. Benchmarks and real-world game play proved that to be true: the GTX 980 was as much as 15% faster than the R9 290X and was only beaten by the AMD flagship card in one of our six games. The GTX 780 Ti falls into the same path as the R9 290X - faster in only a single competition (Skyrim) against the newest member of the GeForce family. The GTX 970 might be a better overall package if you include pricing, but it's performance is also worth noting again. For just $329 it is able to outperform AMD's Radeon R9 290 and the GeForce GTX 780. And again, that advantage is up to 15%, and comes in a dead heat in a couple of cases. What makes these wins for the GTX 980 and GTX 970 so impressive is not the scale or ratio by which they outperform the R9 290X or GTX 780 Ti, but that it is being done on fairly modestly pressed silicon. Keep in mind that the GTX 780 Ti has 2880 CUDA cores, while the GTX 980 has 2048. The GTX 780 Ti has a 384-bit memory bus, the GTX 980 a 256-bit bus. The GTX 780 Ti has a 250 watt TDP, the GTX 980 only 165 watts. The GTX 780 Ti launched for $699 last November, the GTX 980 launches at $549.