Now it's time to compare our measurements to some of the other relevant graphics cards. Gigabyte's GTX 980 WindForce OC stands out yet again, especially when it comes to our idle and gaming readings. It’s amazing what a specially-selected Maxwell GPU can do.
That's not the only offering that makes a good impression, though. Nvidia's reference GeForce GTX 980 does well too, as long as you don’t focus on the idle power measurement. And the party ends as soon as you look at the compute-based stress test results. A taxing load just doesn't give Maxwell any room for its optimizations to shine.
When it comes down to it, our most taxing workloads take Maxwell all the way back to Kepler-class consumption levels. In fact, the GeForce GTX 980 actually draws more power than the GeForce GTX Titan Black without really offering more performance in return.

- Introducing GM204: There's A New Maxwell In Town
- New Features
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Reference Card
- Gigabyte GTX 980 WindForce OC
- Gigabyte GTX 970 WindForce OC
- EVGA GTX 970 Superclock ACX 2.0
- Test System And Benchmarks
- Results: Battlefield 4 And Thief
- Results: Arma 3 And Grid Autosport
- Results: Assassin's Creed IV, Watchdogs, Far Cry 3
- A New Power Consumption Test Setup
- Power Consumption In Detail
- Power Consumption Overview
- Efficiency
- Temperatures And Noise
- Verdict


Looks like The Gtx 980 will become a part of my build family!
so roll on next week and hopefully they will have them back in stock...
-Top performance as always
-Low power consumption
-A right price this time XD
-Top performance as always
-Low power consumption
-A right price this time XD
nvidia
I have an oldish Antec TP New Series 650 watt modular psu. I had the gtx970 on one 25A 12v rail feeding the 8+6 connectors. It seems this was possibly not enough to cope with the peaks. Not up on psus but with 80% efficiency that 25x12 is not a full 300 watts - more like 240watts. So, I added another 12v rail for the 6pin and hey presto it worked fine no issue.
So anyone with such an issue might try this or get a more powerful psu.