It’s confirmed, NVIDIA is skipping the GTX 800 series naming scheme and went on with GTX 900 series instead. Recently, one of the largest IT distributors, Synnex, has listed a certain Asus GTX980-4GD5 and Asus Asus STRIX-GTX970-DC2OC-4, which is definitely the upcoming Asus GeForce GTX 980 (reference) and Asus STRIX GTX 970 DirectCU II OC respectively. Feeling excited? Check out more details below.
UPDATE: Here’s a first look on the Asus STRIX GTX 970 OC 4GB Edition.
UPDATE: There’s a new and updated story regarding the GTX 980 and GTX 970. See it here: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 Specifications, Pricing and Photos Revealed
Asus GeForce GTX 980 and STRIX GTX 970 On Its Way
NVIDIA’s first wave of GTX 900 series graphics cards are the GTX 980 and GTX 970. It’s still unconfirmed whether these new graphics card will be based on a 28nm architecture or new 20nm architecture. Synnex has already listed both the Asus GTX 980 and Asus STRIX GTX 970 graphics cards, and both features 4GB of GDDR5 memory running on a 256bit memory interface. The STRIX GTX 970 will have factory overclock settings, while the first Asus GTX 980 will come with stock or reference speeds. It won’t be long now until we see an Asus GTX 980 DirectCU II OC variant. Those are the only specifications disclosed and we are not certain regarding its base/boost clock speeds or number of CUDA cores.
An actual photo of the products has not been spotted yet, and I’m not sure if NVIDIA will use the same reference cooler design that they used on their GTX 800 series. But we all know how Asus’ STRIX series looks like. So most probably we will be seeing the same “owl-ish” shroud with a DirectCU II cooler design.
On a related story, MSI has revealed a new graphics card that is believed to be the MSI GeForce GTX 980 Twin Frozr V (N980 TF 4GD5). The shroud looks like it has a similar design / pattern that we saw on MSI’s X99 Gaming motherboard. Check out the image below.
Meanwhile, the GeForce GTX 960 is expected to be released a month after the GTX 980 and GTX 970 is released. No words yet regarding the GTX 980 Ti.
In addition to this story, NVIDIA_UK tweeted on September 3, 2014 regarding a graphics card that “may (or may not) be faster than the 780 Ti. I think the tweet was removed after a while since I cannot locate that tweet any more.
I’ll post more news or information about the upcoming GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 very soon, so stay tuned and don’t forget to follow ThePCEnthusiast on Facebook.
UPDATE: See NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 3DMark Fire Strike Benchmarks Revealed
