Nvidia GTX 970 and GTX 980 get unofficial pricing
By now, most PC gaming enthusiasts must be thinking about a future possible upgrade for their graphics cards, but the main question mark remains the pricing of these new releases and the performance boost they bring along. Nvidia will be expected to clear the air in this regard at the upcoming Game24 event, which will take place this Friday. Unofficial sources say that the new Nvidia GTX 970 will be selling for around $399, while the GTX 980 will cost an additional $200, totaling to $599. The smaller brother of the 980, the GTX 970 will be fitted with a GM204 unit and 2nd Generation Maxwell architecture with 28nm lithography. The GTX 970 is intended for low budget 4K gaming and will be highly desirable among PC gamers.
The GTX 980 will feature 2048 Cuda Cores spread across 16 Streaming Multiprocessors Maxwell, with 4 GB memory and 224 GB/s bandwidth. This will be Nvidia’s star player for the high-end segment of the market. The GTX 980 will rival with the Radeon R9-290X, and seems to be already outperforming its rival, based on disclosed unofficial statistics. Nvidia has high hopes for these two new cards, as their prices are very close to those of the existing GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti. This new 900 series enjoys a highly increased video memory and much better energy saving capability compared to the 700 series. These rumors may indicate that we can expect the future GTX 960 to cost between $199 and $249, which can be an affordable option for many PC gaming fans.
Nvidia’s GTX 970 and GTX 980 are expected to output similar level of performance compared to the current GTX 780 Ti and GTX 780, with a lower TDP and larger frame buffer. “The increased amount of graphics memory will help the cards drive higher-resolution monitors,” according to tomshardware.com. From the distance, it seems that both these two Nvidia cards have an edge on their AMD rivals, but we will have to wait to find out for sure.