Earlier this week, Nvidia and Palit partnered up to debut the latest gaming graphics cards from the high-end GeForce GTX 900 series – the GeForce GTX 980 and GeForce GTX 970. Banking on the dynamism and upgradeable quality of PC gaming, these new cards feature the Maxwell architecture to deliver stunning graphics other consoles won’t be able to touch with a 10-feet stick.
The GeForce GTX 980 flaunts 2048 CUDA cores clocked at 1126MHz (boost clock at 1216MHz) paired with a Maxwell GM204 GPU and 4GB of GDDR5 memory.
Meanwhile, the GeForce GTX 970 sports lower CUDA cores at 1164 clocked at 1152MHz (boost clock of 1304MHz) mated with 4GB of GDDR5 memory.
Both cards support graphics technologies pioneered by Nvidia such as PhysX for realistic, player-driven in-game physics; G-SYNC for less framerate stutters, screen tearing, and input lag; Shadowplay, a hardware-based screen recording app allowing a myriad of options for capturing in-game moments; Dynamic Super Resolution for 4K quality on a 1080p monitor; Multi-Frame Anti-Aliasing for better edge quality and frame rates even in dynamic scenes; Voxel Global Illumination lighting technology for accurate and interactive light reflections of geometric surfaces; and VR Direct for low latency when wearing virtual reality goggles to prevent motion sickness due to display lag.
Additionally, they boast optimal gigaflops-to-watt ratio ensuring that your electricity bills won’t sky rocket every time you go on a gaming spree.
Buying either the GTX 980 or GTX 970 also entitles customers to Nvidia’s Pick Your Path promo, wherein Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Far Cry 4, or The Crew is bundled with the purchased card.
Finally, Nvidia gave their guests a peek at their newest “Optimize Your PC” campaign. In a nutshell, the campaign talks about how high-end, processor-dependent rigs pale in comparison to “mid-range” CPU-GPU combos. Making their case, Nvidia demoed Battlefield 4 on two PCs: one equipped with only a powerful i5 processor with the latest IntelHD integrated graphics, and the other one equipped with a relatively old Intel Pentium processor mated with their midrange GeForce GTX 750.
With other specs the same (motherboard, hard disk, and RAM), the first CPU-only rig cost almost PHP 4,000 more than the CPU-GPU machine. Frame-rate wise, the GeForce-equipped rig left the other one in the dust as it consistently churned out 30 to 50fps, while the other one was basically unplayable with its measly 1 to 10fps performance.
That just goes to show you that you should never underestimate the power of a good graphics card. Not only do you get better performance in gaming, multimedia, and photo, video, and audio manipulation, but you’ll also get to save a significant amount of money when you know how to properly utilize and equip your rig.