Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) is heavily rumored to launch series-9XX GeForce cards at its Game24 gaming event next week, with the first two products alleged to be the GTX 970 and the GTX 980. We got a look at the GTX 970 last week, and this time around VideoCardz has managed to snag a few images of the reference design GTX 980. The latest round of rumors indicate that while the GTX 970 will receive factory overclocked non-reference versions, the GTX 980 will only be available in the reference design form.
As you can see from the images above, it looks like Nvidia is retaining the cooler shroud we first saw on the GTX 780 on the GTX 980. The backplate, however, is more similar to that of the Titan Z. The card is said to be based on the new Maxwell-based GM204 silicon, and features two 6-pin PCIe power connectors along with a 4+1 phase VRM. The upcoming card is said to require only 180W power, hence the lack of an 8-pin connector. The memory layout has also been changed from the GTX 780, and now has a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. In terms of display outputs, the GTX 980 sports one DVI, three DisplayPort and one HDMI out.
Details of the GTX 970 and the GTX 980 have been leaked online for some time now, but if a rumor out of Hermitage Akihabara is to be believed, it looks like Nvidia is mulling a third SKU: a sub-$300 card which will allegedly be dubbed the GTX 960. There is no word on what kind of hardware the card will feature, with the site only stating that Nvidia will launch the card sometime next month.
