Last week, NVIDIA launched its GTX 980 Ti graphics card. If you haven’t yet heard about it, you can read the in-depth reviews for the card here:
The 980 Ti has very similar performance to NVIDIA’s $1,000 Titan X, but it costs only $650. It will play all games excellently on 1440p, and that includes the PC-humbling trio of Crysis 3, GTA V, and Witcher 3. It will even play those games at 4K, but with lowered settings.
This card performs within 5 percent of the Titan X, and because of that, it is currently the most logical high-end card on the market. You can still go for the Titan X if you like,
but only if you absolutely insist on getting the best of the best, regardless of the price.
To make room for this new card, NVIDIA has lowered the price of the 980 from $550 to $500. The price drop is quite small. It would have been nicer if the 980 became $400, and the new 980 Ti was launched at the old price of $550. Unfortunately, NVIDIA is free to price the 980 and 980 Ti however they please, as AMD does not yet have a single-GPU answer to these two cards.
Speaking of AMD: If you are not in urgent need of a $650 card, do not rush to buy the 980 Ti just yet. Everyone is expecting AMD to release their new cards by the middle of June, with a new type of VRAM that may (or may not) give a large boost to graphical performance. The price and performance of these new cards is not yet known, and the daily rumors fluctuate between “trash” and “heavenly.” We will wait until the cards are actually out and benched before we decide if they are worthy, but we are excited for AMD’s launch.
In the meantime, the 980 Ti has been added to the Enthusiast, Extremist, and Monstrous tiers in the U.S. guide. Those changes should roll out for the other countries shortly.