Benchmarks for the NVIDIA GTX 980 have been leaked online

The closer we get to the supposed reveal date for Nvidia’s new range of graphics cards, the more leaks appear on the big blue internet. Last week it was seemingly confirmed that the green team would be letting their cards loose this month, and now we might have an idea of just how powerful they’re going to be out the gate. A few months ago a leaked 3DMark score for the GTX 880 suggested that the new Maxwell-based card would trump the GTX 780Ti by a massive 35%. These new leaks seem far more grounded, although they still suggest an interesting outcome. Despite the age of the 780Ti, it seems Nvidia is ok with a new card effectively writing it off the market.

Leaked benchmark numbers from Videocardz.com allege that the upcoming Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 graphics card scores 13,005 in 3DMark Fire Strike, a popular test used to measure graphics performance. Meanwhile, the Radeon R9 290X, which will be the GTX 980′s chief competitor once it launches, scores 11,224 in the same test. There’s more though. That first 980 score is from a card that’s clocked at 1.19GHz. There are two other 980 cards listed as well, and they’re clocked at slower speeds of 1.178GHz, and 1.127GHz. Nevertheless, each outperforms the Radeon R9 290X in Fire Strike. The 1.178GHz 980 got 12,847, while the 1.127GHz model earned a mark of 12,328. The 290X that got 11,224 was clocked at 1.05GHz, and a 1GHz version of the 290X earned a grade of 10,837. Though Fire Strike is a synthetic test, these numbers are still noteworthy in that they paint a picture of superiority when stacked up against AMD’s best single-GPU graphics card. What’s also interesting is that, according to the numbers Videocardz posted, two 980s clocked at 1.178GHz while running in SLI mode scored 20,491 in Fire Strike. AMD’s dual-GPU R9 295×2 just beat it out, scoring 20,801 in the same test.