Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 4GB “Maxwell” (28nm) Review

A Closer Look

Behold: the new Nvidia GTX 980! Hang on a minute….this looks a bit familiar doesn’t it? Well, yes. That’s because it is. Nvidia’s going by the good old fashioned theory of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. Nvidia’s premium GeForce stock cooler has served it well so far and with the GTX 980 running more efficiently and with less heat than predecessors that used this cooler there’s certainly no need for a cooling upgrade.

The GTX 980 keeps to a dual slot design and it has the LED GeForce GTX logo along the top which lights up when the card is turned on.

Just like the GTX 780 Ti and GTX Titan Black the model number is filled in black to improve visibility.

Undernearth the glass window we can see there’s still a dense heatsink which gets cooled by the blower style fan. Air is pushed laterally from the farthest end of the card out of the rear I/O and out the back of the case.

The fan hasn’t changed since its first implementation on the GTX 780 last year.

A backplate is issued as standard with the GTX 980 and from my testing, yikes this backplate does get hot! Eagle-eyed readers will note the similarities between this backplate and the one fitted on Nvidia’s $3000 GTX Titan Z.

Two 6 pins are all that are needed to power the GTX 980, which makes sense given its modest 165W TDP.

Two SLI connectors provide support for 4-Way SLI but most users will find one or two of these cards is more than enough for anything you can throw at it.

Nvidia’s I/O always used to be a bit lacklustre in terms of connectivity options but that’s all changed with the GTX 980. A staggering three DisplayPort outputs, one HDMI and one DVI give an incredible amount of display flexibility. You might ask why so many Display Port’s are offered. My understanding is that if you want to run triple G-Sync monitors you need 3 DisplayPort outputs, hence the issue of three DisplayPorts as standard. Nvidia also include the updated HDMI 2.0 port to support 60Hz 4K over HDMI with supported displays.