At the heart of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 lies the GM204 GPU having a total of 16 SMs which results in about 2048 CUDA cores in total. It's less compared to the 780 Ti but the performance is slightly better owing to the improved architecture.
Black powder coated aluminium fins seated on three heatpipes take out most of the heat generated by the GPU.
Protective front plate helps channel air flow through the rear and frount outlets over the aluminium fins.
Power delivery from each of the two 6-pin connectors and the PCIe interface has been balanced for maximum overclocking headroom.
The protective backplate was last seen on the GTX TITAN Z. A premium feature present only on high-end partner boards.
Removable panel on the backplate allows for air to vent into the next card when in a SLI configuration.
Improved compression algorithms have resulted in better utilisation of memory bandwidth. A 7 Gbps Maxwell is equivalent to a 9.3 Gbps Kepler in terms of effective memory bandwidth.
Notice the dual 6-pin power connector. Flagships so far came with a 6-pin + 8-pin power connector. The GTX 980 is rated for 165W compared to the 250W rating that the GTX 780 Ti had.
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