NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 SLI (Laptop) vs AMD Radeon RX 570 (Desktop) vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 SLI (Laptop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 SLI is a high-end DirectX 12-compatible graphics solution for laptops, consisting of two GeForce GTX 980 cards. Each card has a 28 nm GM204 GPU based on the Maxwell architecture with similar specifications as the desktop GeForce GTX 980. The clocks for the SLI-setup are usually identical to a single GTX 980.

With SLI, each card renders a single frame (AFR mode). Therefore, it may suffer from micro-stuttering in low fps ranges of 30 fps. This happens because of different time-spans between two frames (e.g., irregular delays between sequential frames).

The performance is on a level with the two desktop GTX 980 cards in SLI. Due to the different cooling solutions, the long-term performance may be slightly lower compared to a well cooled desktop, but Nvidia assures there will only be small degrades in performance. As with all SLI combinations, the performance depends on the driver support for the used benchmark and game. In our tests with an MSI GT80S, the 980 SLI was the fastest graphics solution for laptops. The 980M SLI was 17% slower, a single 980 26% slower. Therefore, the 980 SLI for laptops offers enough performance for all demanding games from 2015 in high details and 4K resolution.

The core features are also the same as the desktop 980, so expect support for DirectX 12 (FL 12_1). There will be no support for the new H.265 video engine as found on the desktop GTX 950.

The power consumption of a single card is a lot higher than other mobile graphics cards like the GeForce GTX 980M (100 Watt TDP). According to Nvidia, the TDP of the reference design is still 165 Watt like in the desktop version. So, the TDP of the SLI combination may be as high as 330 Watt. Therefore, only big laptops with efficient cooling methods can house the GeForce GTX980 for laptops.

AMD Radeon RX 570 (Desktop)

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is a mainstream graphics card for desktop PCs. It was announced in April 2017 and is based on the Polaris 20 chip. It is a refresh of the RX 470 and uses the same chip as the RX 580 (and 580X) with less shaders. The clock speeds are specified as 1,168 - 1,244 (Boost). The VRAM is connected by a 256 Bit bus and clocks at 1,750 MHz (effective 7,000 MHz) which leads to a 224 GB/s memory bandwidth.

At launch, the performance of the Radeon RX 570 was slightly below a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060. Therefore, the GPU is best used for 1920x1080 and high detail settings for demanding games of 2019.

The TDP of the Radeon RX 570 is specified with 120 Watts by AMD, so a single 6-pin power connector is sufficient.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti is a High-End desktop graphics card based on the Maxwell architecture. It uses the big GM200 chip with 2,816 CUDA cores (versus 2048 of the GTX 980) and is manufactured in 28 nm. Together with the NVidia Titan X (that uses the same chip with more graphics memory), the 980Ti was the fastest single chip graphics card for desktops in 2015. In 2016 the new Pascal based GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080 however were faster while using less energy thanks to the new architecture and the 16 nm process.