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Posted December 9, 2015 by Charl Pantaleon in Columns
 
 

Nvidia GeForce Graphics Cards Ho-ho-holiday Deals!

It’s that time of the year again, people! It’s December, and that means there are tons of amazing holiday deals to be had – especially in the consumer electronics industry, because companies are going to be unveiling new technologies at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at Q1 2016.

GeForce_logo

Nvidia is slashing prices from the GeForce GTX 900 series graphics cards. Have you felt the need to upgrade, but you couldn’t, because of the prices? This one’s for you!

Let’s take a closer look at each card.

 

GTX 980 Ti

GTX980Ti

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti is a beast that is closer to the top-end GeForce card (the $1000 GTX Titan X) than it is to its sibling, the older GTX 980. It shares a lot of its innards with the Titan X, but the 980 Ti “only” has half the VRAM available (only 6 GB compared to the Titan X’s monstrous 12 GB). Remember that a few years ago, most flagship graphics cards only had 2 GB VRAM!

In terms of performance, the 980 Ti is within 10% of the Titan X – that is, until you hit the 6 GB VRAM limit, which is pretty hard to do with most modern games. At the time of release (just a few months ago), it debuted at a price of $649. Now, you can get it for only $559 after a rebate of $30 from MSI or at $579 after a rebate of $20 from EVGA.

GTX 980

gtx980

Released just last year, the GTX 980 had its place as the fastest 900-series GPU from Nvidia, until 2015 brought in two GM200 GPU models this year (the Titan X and the 980 Ti). At its debut, it was priced at $549. Now, you can get this great GPU for $409 to $439 (after $20-30 rebates).

GTX 970

gtx970

The GTX 970 was released at the same time as the GTX 980, and since then it has become Nvidia’s most popular and best-selling graphics card. While it had its inaccuracies with regards to the specifications (it actually only has 3.5 GB of VRAM at full bandwidth, then the last 512 MB are magnitudes slower), it still remains a top pick.

Originally, the 970 is priced at $329, but now, you can find some for as low as $259.

GTX 960

gtx960

Released in Q1 2015, this is Nvidia’s midrange graphics card. This is the first GPU to natively support H.265 / HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Codec), the successor to the H.264 video codec. H.265 is twice as efficient as H.264, so theoretically, you can get twice the quality with H.265 at the same video bitrates as H.264.

From $199, you can now get this card at $149.

GTX 950

GTX950

The latest 900-series graphics card from Nvidia is also its budget solution, priced at $159. Today, you can find it for a low price of $129.

 


Charl Pantaleon