Overclockers UK Slashes GTX 980 Ti Reference to £509.99

The AMD Fury X unveiling was a tantalizing moment for GPU aficionados, but little was known about the card’s raw performance numbers. Speculation suggested it could defeat the 980Ti and possibly dethrone the Titan X. Finally, the benchmarks have been revealed and AMD’s new flagship received a lukewarm response. With no units in stock, and inconsistent numbers which show the 980TI being clearly ahead below 4K resolutions is a disappointing result. Obviously, this could be down to a lack of mature drivers with HBM, but currently, it’s a difficult selling proposition costing £509.99 and performing worse, on average, than the 980 TI reference. When you consider custom PCB 980 Ti cards such as the Gigabyte G1 Gaming are capable of huge overclocks, then it’s unclear how AMD can compete in the high-end market.

One could argue that the 980Ti’s original price at £550 would help AMD in trying to regain market share, but Nvidia caused a storm after pitching the 980 Ti against the Titan X and even beating it with aftermarket coolers. Given the Fury X is similarly priced with less VRAM and requiring space to fit a water cooling AIO, I highly doubt anyone seriously considering a £509.99 GPU would try to save £50 based on clear performance gains.

These issues have been compounded for AMD as Overclockers UK launched a weekly promotion offering a reference GTX 980Ti for £509.99. This price matches the Fury X RRP and is currently in stock. According to Overclockers UK, stock of the Fury X isn’t expected until sometime next month and depends on the board partner. Furthermore, the reference model sold at this ridiculously good price is from Zotac which features an extensive 5 year warranty.

Vendor 980Ti’s have a wild pricing disparity and highly sought-after models such as the MSI Gaming retail for £599.99. In contrast to this, the best deal from my own point of view, is the EVGA GeForce GTX 980Ti Superclocked ACX 2.0+ which features a superb cooler, 0dB idle fan mode, 3 year warranty and factory overclocked performance, all for £539.99.  More specifically, this GPU utilizes a base clock of 1102MHz and boost clock of 1190MHz with lots of headroom to manually push the card further. Unfortunately, the memory is limited to stock values but shouldn’t be too difficult to overclock using software. Another advantage to the current 980Ti offerings is the inclusion of Batman: Arkham Knight. While the game is a technical mess at the moment, the story is impeccable and hopefully it will function properly soon enough.