Nvidia is readying its Geforce GTX 980 8GB for an imminent release

Nvidia will be launching an upgraded 8GB version of its Geforce GTX 980 GM204 Maxwell card this late November or early December. This information comes from Hermitage Akihabara, a highly reliable source which has proved very accurate in the past when speculating on future Nvidia releases. Nvidia’s GTX 980 8GB will be expected to further increase the market demand for its Maxwell-fueled graphics cards, not that the current GTX 970 and GTX 980 models were not selling in high volumes. The upcoming GTX 980 8GB will feature the usual GDDR5 memory interface, and the same bus width of 256 bit, although a 384 bit was initially expected.

This may come in response to the scheduled re-launch of the AMD Radeon R9 290X, which is also getting a 8GB frame-buffer upgrade, as AMD gave the go ahead to Club3D, PowerColor, Sapphire and more recently, MSI, to build their own 8GB versions of the Radeon R9 290X. The “bumped up” R9 290X will feature the same GDDR5 memory, but will have an obvious advantage in the bus width department, packing an impressive 512 bit bus. With this massive 8GB of VRAM, both Nvidia and AMD are aiming to deliver two high-end graphics cards able to support 4K gaming in high settings. Extreme full-scene antialiasing is one example that comes to mind, and will most likely be achievable thanks to this additional amount of GDDR5 memory. Perhaps, many gamers will regard the upcoming GTX 980 8GB as a little bit over the top for what they need at the moment, but an extra amount of VRAM will always have its benefits.

It is very possible that both GTX 980 8GB and Radeon R9 290X 8GB will see light out of the box later this month and it would be quite interesting to assess their performance by stacking them head to head. Surely the GTX 980 8GB will get a post release OC version which might overpower the GTX Titan Black 6GB when rendering UHD resolutions, where the extra amount of VRAM will make a difference. With that in mind, we are eagerly waiting to see what the upcoming GTX 980 8GB is capable of.