The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 & GTX 1070 Founders Editions Review: Kicking Off the FinFET Generation
by Ryan Smith on July 20, 2016 8:45 AM ESTThe Division
The final first person shooter in our benchmark suite, The Division is a multiplayer-only game powered by Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine. The game’s design focuses on detailed urban environments and utilizes dynamic global illumination for parts of its lighting. For our testing we use the game’s built-in benchmark, which cycles through a number of scenes/areas of the game.
As a bit of an unknown when it comes to engines, we went ahead and benchmarked this game at 4K with both Ultra and High settings, to see how performance was impacted by reducing the image quality. The result is that even at High quality, the GTX 1080 isn’t going to be able to hit 60fps. When it comes to The Division and 4K, your options are to either put up with a framerate in the mid-40s or make greater image quality sacrifices. That said, the GTX 1080 does get the distinction of being the only card to even crack 40fps at 4K; the GTX 1070 isn’t doing much better than 30fps.
More than anything else, this game is unexpectedly sensitive to the differences between the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. Normally the GTX 1080 would lead by 25% or so, but in The Division that’s a 33% to 40% lead. It’s more than you’d expect given the differences between the two cards’ configurations, and while I suspect it’s a combination of memory bandwidth differences and ALU throughput differences, I’m also not 100% convinced it’s not a bug of some kind. So we’ll have to see if this changes at all.
In any case, the more significant gap between the Pascal cards means that while GTX 1080 is comfortably leading, this is one of the only cases where GTX 1070 isn’t at least at parity with GTX 980 Ti. The gap closes with the resolution, but at all points GTX 1070 comes up short. It’s not a total wash for the GTX 1070 since it’s both significantly cheaper and significantly more energy efficient than GTX 980 Ti, but it’s very rare for the card not to be hanging relatively close to GTX 1080.
Looking at the generational differences, GTX 1080 enjoys a solid lead over GTX 980. With the exception of 1440p, it improves on its direct predecessor by 60% or more. Meanwhile GTX 1070, despite its greater handicap, is a consistent 50%+ faster than GTX 970.
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Flunk - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
The "stock" fan setup is the blower. The "founders edition" cards are the base reference cards.prophet001 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Alrighty then. Thanks for the info.bill44 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Where can I find Audio specification, sampling rates etc.? Decoding capabilities?ImSpartacus - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
The timeline is appreciated.tipoo - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Sounds like a good few weeks here, well doneChaotic42 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Thanks for the review. Some things are worth the wait. Turn your phone and computer off and go take a nap. Sounds like you've earned it.zeeBomb - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
An anandtech review takes all the pain away! How am I going to read this casually though? Without all the detailed whachinlmicallitssna1970 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Can you please add Cross Fire benchmarks in the RX480 review ?close - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
But where's the GTX 1070/1080 review? Oh wait... Scratch that.blanarahul - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
"this change in the prefetch size is why the memory controller organization of GP104 is 8x32b instead of 4x64b like GM204, as each memory controller can now read and write 64B segments of data via a single memory channel.*Shouldn't it be the opposite?
"Overall when it comes to HDR on NVIDIA’s display controller, not unlike AMD’s Pascal architecture"
What?!!!