It was just a matter of time before we see some more details regarding the upcoming Geforce GTX 980 graphics card and today we have first pictures of the reference design.

According to our sources and all the previous reports, the upcoming Geforce GTX 970 will most likely launch with non-reference, custom designs from day one but the Geforce GTX 980 will be stuck with reference design, at least for the time being. This said, these pictures, posted by Videocardz.com, are quite important as it is very likely that this is the only Geforce GTX 980 that you will be able to see on retail/e-tail shelves.




The PCB of the reference GTX 980 is quite similar to the one seen on reference Geforce GTX 780 Ti graphics cards, including the blower-style dual-slot cooler. There are couple of differences, including the rear backplate, which is definitely a nice addition from Nvidia as well as a lower power requirement, since the GTX 980 features 4+1-phase VRM and needs two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors, while the GTX 780 Ti features 6+8-pin PCI-Express requirement.




These pictures also reveal that the GTX 980 comes with eight memory chips which pretty much confirms it will feature a 256-bit memory interface. In case you missed it earlier, the GTX 980 will be based on Nvidia's new GM204 Maxwell GPU.





Source: Videocardz.com.