Are the GTX 970's & 980's already the best GPU's ever made?

[vintage-x]

I wouldn't say the 980 or the 970 are the best gpus ever made nor are they that revolutionary but they are damn good cards for the price especially the 970. I bought 2 of them and it is the most I have ever spent on graphics cards.
I game at 1080p so 2 of them at that res is complete over kill but using dsr and downscaling from 4k most of the games I play can run at that res with no AA and 60fps.
I didn't think it would but downscaling from 4k seems to eliminate more jaggies then even 8xmsaa.
I'm also very impressed with the power draw and how quiet the cards are too

 

[Bonjour]

The original GeForce was actually the first genuine 'GPU'. Hence why I suggested it.

 

[james.miller]

9500non-pro and the x800gto2 were the best cards of their era, none of that 9800pro/x800xt nonsense.

 

[hyperseven]

The original GeForce was actually the first genuine 'GPU'. Hence why I suggested it.

Nope, what about Voodoo 1, PowerVR's, Matrox Mystique/Millenium's and even NVidia's own Riva range all out before the Geforce brand and all 'genuine' GPU's.

 

[LegendaryDread]

I'd say the Geforce 6800 series...

• Mopped the floor with everything else for a long time
• SM3.0/DX9.0c
• Pioneered true HDR rendering (that Far Cry patch! good times)
• First to have GPU-accelerated video encoding, if memory serves
• Could flash unlock the GT to Ultra
• Reintroduced SLI/multi-GPU, a whole year ahead of ATI's Crossfire

Nope, what about Voodoo 1, PowerVR's, Matrox Mystique/Millenium's and even NVidia's own Riva range all out before the Geforce brand and all 'genuine' GPU's.

The term GPU was coined by Nvidia in '99 while marketing the 256, pertaining to a single dedicated chip capable of both geometry and T&L.

 

[Bonjour]

Nope, what about Voodoo 1, PowerVR's, Matrox Mystique/Millenium's and even NVidia's own Riva range all out before the Geforce brand and all 'genuine' GPU's.

They weren't actually 'GPU's. Merely graphics cards. The GeForce 256 was the first card to bring all the graphics processing (i.e hardware T&L) onto a single chip and be classified as a 'Graphical Processing Unit'.

I still have my Orchid Righteous 3d Voodoo 1 sitting in a drawer somewhere, and (IMO) the Vooodoo 2 is a contender for best graphics card ever due to being the Godfather of SLI.

 

[The Running Man]

The riva tn2 was a big stepping stone too. I had a diamond viper

http://www.anandtech.com/show/307

Those were the days things like randac seemed important. You could play unreal tournament. .!!!

32bit colour became use able

 

[Arcane]

Likewise the 6800 GT you could unlock to a 6800 Ultra.

Indeed, had two of these on a first gen SLI NForce4 AMD setup, they were beasts under water. Ran them off a Koolance EXOS AI, lol.

 

[JamesM]

Best GPUs ever made is a very strong choice of words.

Good GPUs they maybe in terms of power efficiency in relation to their performance however I wouldn't consider them the best GPUs ever.

 

[Nocky24]

They're good gpus, but I can't say they've blown me away.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The last card that really wowed me was the 4870. It felt like such a leap forward and at£180 too.

It's the £150-£180 market that I care about and it's been 2 years since anything interesting has happened there.

To me it should be expected that each new generation brings a leap forward in performance and without a price increase either.

I am kind of in the same boat and agree.

 

[Kaapstad]

The question in the title should really have been saved for when the Maxwell Titan launches. The only downside with the GMT when it launches will be the price but everything else should be off the scale.

 

[Boomstick777]

The highlights over the past years for me have been,

GTX 8800
GTX 480
HD 7970
R9 290X 'Sapphire Tri X'
GTX Titan Black
GTX 980

So I guess the 980 has to be the best GPU ever made as it's the current top end, but if we consider the price VS performance at launch of all the cards the 8800 GTX is still the king imho.

970 / 980 are awesome cards for sure. This isn't even the best of Maxwell, not even close. The fact that it's this good is impressive. Next year will be even better

 

[arc@css]

No, though a nice upgrade if coming from a 7970 / 670 / 680 / 770 or lower card. The cherry on the cake for me (and many others I'm sure) was the launch price of the GTX970. I was more than a little surprised at that. I so nearly pulled the trigger on one of those, but seeing as Crysis 3 plays well enough maxed out bar high levels of MSAA, I think I can wait until something else arrives.

 

[Rangerjr1]

You mean the noise from my pump?

+1

 

[Silent_Scone]

Did someone say 6800 was best card ever made? Lol

I had 6800 and 800XT and I have to say they were pretty well matched when both on the PCIE platform. Or as you can see here, the 800XT is faster.

X800 Pro is definitely in the top 5 cards ever made along side the 8000GTX and Radeon 9700 Pro

GM204 on the other hand although it brings a lot to the table hasn't got all the tick boxes.

Still an awesome GPU

 

[Darren555]

The Radeon 9700 Pro was a big step forward for me. It set new benchmarks way higher than the last generation, was a genuine DX9 card whilst still being fast as hell on DX8 games, had solid drivers and did all this on a small footprint PCB with a tiny fan when the Nvidia cards had leaf blowers on them.

 

[almighty15]

I think Nvidia's G80 core was perhaps the best leap both in terms of performance and features.

That core served NVidia for years and will take some beating.

 

[Jamielicious]

Yes the G80 was a huge success, Nvidia really had nothing new until Fermi and it took until the 4870 and 4850 for AMD to finally offer a worthy successor to G80.

 

[humbug]

GTX 970:
Power consumption is much better than the 290P and the 780
@ 1080P / 1440P the performance is about the same as a 290P / 780.
@ 4K the 290P has the edge.
290P has better multi GPU Scaling.
970 is £50 more expensive than a 290P


GTX 980:
Power consumption is again much than the 290X, and 780TI.
@ 1080P / 1440P the performance is 10% faster than a 290X, 5% faster than an 780TI
GTX 980 is £170 more expensive than a 290X.

The clock for clock performance is actually about the same as the cards they replaced, they just run higher clock rates.

The die size (400mm^2) is also the same relative to GK110, actually the 970 is much larger than the 770, 100mm^2 larger.

Always something else around the bend...

This, Nvidia have their new GPU's out before AMD, AMD's 7970 was 30% faster than the GTX 580 and used less power, it took about 4 or 5 Months for Nvidia to bring out a competitor to it.
Does that mean the 7970 was at the time the best GPU ever made?

Maxwell is not any faster than Kepler, its not any smaller, yes it does use a lot less power.

It has one aspect of improvement on its predecessor, all others its no change, and it is expensive compared with the competition.

AMD have yet to bring out their new architecture, why not wait for that before declaring "the best GPU ever made"
Personally, while it is a good thing, i don't think reducing the power consumption makes it all that.