Since the September launch of Maxwell for high-end, we’ve seen Nvidia launch the GeForce GTX 980 as well as the GTX 970 and their accompanying mobile bretheren, the GeForce GTX 980M and GTX 970M. Now that Nvidia’s high-end GPU has had roughly a month of sales, we want to take a look at how well they’re doing and exactly why they are doing so well or so poorly. The GTX 980 is going for anywhere between $549 and $599 and the GTX 970 is selling for anywhere between $329 and $409.

We first decided to talk to some retailers, specifically some etailers across the globe. From our conversations with them they had indicated that they are essentially selling as many GTX 980s and GTX 970s as they possibly can and that when the cards had initially launched, they had difficulty keeping them in stock. Now, if we look at the stock situation for the GTX 980 and GTX 970 now, it appears to be better. A quick stock check of GTX 980 and GTX 970s on Newegg shows a fairly good amount of cards in stock, while some others are still out of stock or on order. If you look on Amazon, you can actually see that other than the ‘budget’ cards like the GTX 750 Ti, 8400GS and HD5450, the rest of the top 10 cards on Amazon are all GTX 980s and 970s, mostly being 970s. Do keep in mind that Amazon’s numbers are a rolling total, rather than a weekly or monthly figure meaning that the relatively new GTX 970s are already selling like crazy.

This lines up with what we’ve been hearing from our retailer friends who have all said that the GTX 970 is their best selling graphics card and that in many cases people are buying two of them at a time because of their relatively inexpensive price of $329. Two GTX 970s in SLI is going to be a lot more powerful than a single GTX 980 and only at a $100 price premium, if that. The retailers we spoke with also indicated that they had double digit SLI sales (dual 970) and it continues to be the best selling card that they have in their inventory. Some retailers even said, if they had more cards available to them, they’d probably sell even more.

In addition to retailers, we also polled a few system builders anonymously. In their case, we saw essentially the same behavior with the GTX 970 being the most popular card that they sold and the GTX 980 coming in second after it. Considering the $220 price difference, that doesn’t seem that far fetched. All system builders also indicated that the release of these cards, like many graphics card launches, helped boost sales significantly the the point where they could actually measure the difference in demand.

The really big factor here in all of this is that Nvidia has had an incredibly strong launch and has sold more cards than we’re actually able to count. What’s more interesting was that one of the retailers pointed us to a fairly thoughtful point, we haven’t officially broken into the holiday buying season yet and they believe that Nvidia’s graphics card sales are going to skyrocket during the holiday season. And considering how dominant the GTX 980 is in benchmarks, they suspect that many GTX 980 buyers are going to wait until the holiday season when they’ve been able to save up more money or get their holiday bonuses. The GTX 980 is a more expensive card, which is what’s partially keeping it from being as successful as the GTX 970. That’s primarily because the GTX 970 is 30% cheaper and only about 10-20% slower than the GTX 980, the more affordable card will always sell better than the highest end card if it delivers a good value, which the GTX 970 undeniably is.

So, we’ll be looking towards this holiday season to see exactly how well Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 do, but if early sales figures are any indication they are going to do extremely well and have a fantastic quarter.

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After launching its Maxwell-based desktop GPUs last month, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) is bringing the GM204 silicon to notebooks with the  launch of the GTX 980M and the GTX 970M. During the launch of the desktop GTX 980 and GTX 970, Nvidia touted features like increased power efficiency, a new anti-aliasing technology called MFAA and a downsampling feature that renders content from 4K to 1080k, all of which would be ideal for the notebook form factor.

Architectural enhancements

Nvidia’s tweaks with Maxwell include redesigned Streaming Multiprocessors, which in conjunction with efficient clock-gating and better compiler-based scheduling deliver double the performance per Watt as a Kepler-based card. It is no wonder, then, that Nvidia is claiming desktop-level performance with the GTX 980M and 970M. Both cards are still fabricated using a 28 nm process, but the inherent architectural improvements allow Nvidia to deliver much better efficiency and performance at the same time.

The introduction of the GTX 980M and the GTX 970M diminishes the gap that exists between Nvidia’s desktop and mobile GPUs. Over the last three years, Nvidia’s mobile offerings delivered around 50 to 55% of what was achieved by their desktop counterparts, but with the GTX 900 series, Nvidia claims that users will get around 75% of the performance as a desktop 980M. Considering that the GTX 980 in itself is the fastest single card solution available today, the performance delivered by a GTX 980M should then be at par or better than most desktop GPUs in the market today.

As far as the two cards are concerned, Nvidia cites a performance divide of around 30% between the GTX 980M and the GTX 970M. While the increased performance will allow gamers on notebooks to play at resolutions beyond 1080p, although there is a clear dearth of notebooks that offer 4K panels. For users on 1080p displays, Nvidia solution is Dynamic Super Resolution, a technology that samples a game at higher resolutions and then scales down to lower resolutions, resulting in much better visuals.

While Nvidia isn’t disclosing TDP, it is possible that the GTX 980M will be around 110W given that it delivers 75% of the performance of the desktop GTX 980. Nvidia has managed to significantly reduce the power consumption with Maxwell, and the same should be reflected in its mobile offerings.

As for how fast the current-generation cards are when seen against Nvidia’s earlier offerings, the vendor states that the GTX 980M is around 40% faster than the GTX 880M, and twice as fast as the GTX 680M. The GTX 970M is similarly 40% faster than the GTX 870M and twice as fast as the GTX 860M. We’ll have more detailed benchmarks during our review, but for now here’s a look at the figures shared by Nvidia:

The GTX 980M and 970M also feature Battery Boost, which is also tweaked to allow for more untethered gaming. When removed from a power source, Battery Boost throttles the GPU so that users get just the amount of performance they need to run games at their desired frame rate target. The enhancements mean that gamers can now play titles like League of Legends, GRID 2, and Tomb Raider for twice as long when not connected to a power source.

All of this is geared at a growing market, as Nvidia mentions that over the last three years, the gaming notebook segment has witnessed a 5x increase. With Maxwell, gamers on notebook can look forward to playing visually intensive games like Battlefield 4 and Metro: Last Light at resolutions of 2560 x 1440 and on ultra settings.

Nvidia has a strong foothold in the mobile GPU segment, and with the launch of the GTX 980M and the GTX 970M, it is poised to consolidate its position in this category. With numerous design improvements, increased performance and greater power efficiency figures, Nvidia has a clear winner on its hands with its Maxwell mobile GPUs. As for availability, several mainstream vendors like MSI and Asus have already started selling gaming notebooks laden with GTX 900M series cards, as have boutique vendors like Digital Storm, Origin and others.

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This past Thursday (September 18^th), Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) hosted its GAME24 event from Hangar 8 at the Santa Monica Airport in Los Angeles. The event was billed as a “celebration of PC gaming”, and it certainly was. However, the main event was no secret to those in the press – the release of the new top end Maxwell GPUs: GTX 980 and GTX 970.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang soon took the stage to welcome the attendees and to present Maxwell and the new technologies that come with it.

Maxwell has a variety of improvements over the previous generation of GPU technology. Memory consumption has been drastically reduced, using approximately 25% less memory bandwidth on the games Nvidia tested with when comparing the GTX 980 to GTX 680.

Energy efficiency was also improved, with Nvidia boasting a 2x improvement in efficiency (measured in performance per watt as determined by frames per second).

Two interesting new software features are DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution) and MFAA.

DSR is designed to be used with games that are already running at maximum visual settings and are still getting extremely high framerates. DSR uses the extra GPU horsepower to render the frames at 4K resolution and downscale them to the monitor’s native resolution, resulting in improved visual fidelity.

MFAA is a different type of anti-aliasing designed to provide higher levels of AA at a lower performance cost. Nvidia stated it as “4x MSAA Quality at 2x AA Performance”. That’s not entirely accurate as the number was compared to 4x MSAA on a GTX 680 vs 4x MFAA on a GTX 980. As seen in the slide below, going from 4x MSAA to 4x MFAA on a GTX 980 provides an increase of approximately 27%, going from 41 FPS to 52 FPS. Nevertheless, the improvement is still impressive.

Nvidia also significantly improved input lag time for the purpose of VR displays, making Oculus Rift a much more attractive product.

VXGI (Voxel Global Illumination) is a low-cost (in terms of performance) lighting technology. The results looked very good and ran in real-time. They also demonstrated a debunking of the moon landing conspiracy using VXGI lighting effects to simulate the images of the moon landing.

At the end of the presentation, the GTX 980 was launched at an MSRP of $549 and the GTX 970 at an MSRP of $329. (Check out the GTX 980 review here)

After the presentation, there was more food and drinks, as well as a variety of stations set up to try out Nvidia’s tech.

Stations included the following: three display 4K surround, Nvidia Shield gaming stations, G-Sync enabled 4K gaming stations, and most impressively – Oculus Rift testing stations utilizing Nvidia’s new input lag-reducing tech.

The Oculus Rift one was definitely the most impressive of all the demos on display. Even those prone to motion sickness have no problem enjoying games with the headset. The experience was totally immersing and very smooth. The immersion was so complete that people around me took the opportunity to take amusing photos.

Nvidia also did a massive giveaway, giving away a total of approximately 45 products. Considering the crowd appeared to be about 300 people, the opportunities to win were quite good. Even more appealing was the fact that the giveaways consisted solely of GTX 980 and 970 GPUs, 4K monitors from ASUS and Acer, and Nvidia Shield and Shield tablets. Each attendee also received free game codes for Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Far Cry 4, and The Crew. Considering the event was open for free public registration, the event was definitely worth attending.

Prior to the start of the event there was a hands-on preview of Zotac’s new GTX 980 and 970 offerings. Both product releases here and here, so we won’t go into too much detail here, but pictures of some of the new cards are below:

This post originally appeared on Bright Side of News*, VR World’s sister site.

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This past Thursday (September 18^th), Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) hosted its GAME24 event from Hangar 8 at the Santa Monica Airport in Los Angeles. The event was billed as a “celebration of PC gaming”, and it certainly was. However, the main event was no secret to those in the press – the release of the new top end Maxwell GPUs: GTX 980 and GTX 970. This announcement was made in conjunction with the NDA expiry of the GTX 980 reviews, including our very own review of the GeForce GTX 980.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang soon took the stage to welcome the attendees and to present Maxwell and the new technologies that come with it.

Maxwell has a variety of improvements over the previous generation of GPU technology. Memory consumption has been drastically reduced, using approximately 25% less memory bandwidth on the games Nvidia tested with when comparing the GTX 980 to GTX 680.

Energy efficiency was also improved, with Nvidia boasting a 2x improvement in efficiency (measured in performance per watt as determined by frames per second).

Two interesting new software features are DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution) and MFAA.

DSR is designed to be used with games that are already running at maximum visual settings and are still getting extremely high framerates. DSR uses the extra GPU horsepower to render the frames at 4K resolution and downscale them to the monitor’s native resolution, resulting in improved visual fidelity.

MFAA is a different type of anti-aliasing designed to provide higher levels of AA at a lower performance cost. Nvidia stated it as “4x MSAA Quality at 2x AA Performance”. That’s not entirely accurate as the number was compared to 4x MSAA on a GTX 680 vs 4x MFAA on a GTX 980. As seen in the slide below, going from 4x MSAA to 4x MFAA on a GTX 980 provides an increase of approximately 27%, going from 41 FPS to 52 FPS. Nevertheless, the improvement is still impressive.

Nvidia also significantly improved input lag time for the purpose of VR displays, making Oculus Rift a much more attractive product.

VXGI (Voxel Global Illumination) is a low-cost (in terms of performance) lighting technology. The results looked very good and ran in real-time. They also demonstrated a debunking of the moon landing conspiracy using VXGI lighting effects to simulate the images of the moon landing.

At the end of the presentation, the GTX 980 was launched at an MSRP of $549 and the GTX 970 at an MSRP of $329. (Check out the GTX 980 review here)

After the presentation, there was more food and drinks, as well as a variety of stations set up to try out Nvidia’s tech.

Stations included the following: three display 4K surround, Nvidia Shield gaming stations, G-Sync enabled 4K gaming stations, and most impressively – Oculus Rift testing stations utilizing Nvidia’s new input lag-reducing tech.

The Oculus Rift one was definitely the most impressive of all the demos on display. Even those prone to motion sickness have no problem enjoying games with the headset. The experience was totally immersing and very smooth. The immersion was so complete that people around me took the opportunity to take amusing photos.

Nvidia also did a massive giveaway, giving away a total of approximately 45 products. Considering the crowd appeared to be about 300 people, the opportunities to win were quite good. Even more appealing was the fact that the giveaways consisted solely of GTX 980 and 970 GPUs, 4K monitors from ASUS and Acer, and Nvidia Shield and Shield tablets. Each attendee also received free game codes for Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Far Cry 4, and The Crew. Considering the event was open for free public registration, the event was definitely worth attending.

Prior to the start of the event there was a hands-on preview of Zotac’s new GTX 980 and 970 offerings. Both product releases here and here, so we won’t go into too much detail here, but pictures of some of the new cards are below:

The post Nvidia Game24 Event: The Launch of GTX 980 and GTX 970 appeared first on VR World.