Single GTX 980 Gaming Performance

Alien: Isolation

If first person survival mixed with horror is your sort of thing, then Alien: Isolation, based off of the Alien franchise, should be an interesting title. Developed by The Creative Assembly and released in October 2014, Alien: Isolation has won numerous awards from Game Of The Year to several top 10s/25s and Best Horror titles, ratcheting up over a million sales by February 2015. Alien: Isolation uses a custom built engine which includes dynamic sound effects and should be fully multi-core enabled.

For low-end graphics, we test at 720p with Ultra settings, whereas for mid and high range graphics we bump this up to 1080p, taking the average frame rate as our marker with a scripted version of the built-in benchmark.

Alien Isolation on MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB ($245)

Alien Isolation on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560)

Grand Theft Auto V

The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise finally hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.

For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark, relying only on the final part which combines a flight scene along with an in-city drive-by followed by a tanker explosion. For low end systems we test at 720p on the lowest settings, whereas mid and high end graphics play at 1080p with very high settings across the board. We record both the average frame rate and the percentage of frames under 60 FPS (16.6ms).

Grand Theft Auto V on MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB ($245)

Grand Theft Auto V on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560)

GRID: Autosport

No graphics tests are complete without some input from Codemasters and the EGO engine, which means for this round of testing we point towards GRID: Autosport, the next iteration in the GRID and racing genre. As with our previous racing testing, each update to the engine aims to add in effects, reflections, detail and realism, with Codemasters making ‘authenticity’ a main focal point for this version.

GRID’s benchmark mode is very flexible, and as a result we created a test race using a shortened version of the Red Bull Ring with twelve cars doing two laps. The car is focus starts last and is quite fast, but usually finishes second or third. For low end graphics we test at 1080p medium settings, whereas mid and high end graphics get the full 1080p maximum. Both the average and minimum frame rates are recorded.

GRID: Autosport on MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB ($245)

GRID: Autosport on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560)

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

The final title in our testing is another battle of system performance with the open world action-adventure title, Shadow of Mordor. Produced by Monolith using the LithTech Jupiter EX engine and numerous detail add-ons, SoM goes for detail and complexity to a large extent, despite having to be cut down from the original plans. The main story itself was written by the same writer as Red Dead Redemption, and it received Zero Punctuation’s Game of The Year in 2014.

For testing purposes, SoM gives a dynamic screen resolution setting, allowing us to render at high resolutions that are then scaled down to the monitor. As a result, we get several tests using the in-game benchmark. For low end graphics we examine at 720p with low settings, whereas mid and high end graphics get 1080p Ultra. The top graphics test is also redone at 3840x2160, also with Ultra settings, and we also test two cards at 4K where possible.

Shadows of Mordor on MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB ($245)

Shadows of Mordor on MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB ($245)

Shadows of Mordor on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560)

Shadows of Mordor on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560)

CPU Performance, Short Form Testing up to 3xGTX 980 and 10G
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  • karakarga - Wednesday, November 9, 2016 - link

    If you connect a new modem or access point, having 5GHz or newest 60GHz, you need more than 150 megabytes, thus you need faster than 1Gigabit ethernet transfer speed....
  • eek2121 - Wednesday, November 9, 2016 - link

    Speak for yourself. Anyone in the photography or content creator will benefit from the faster speeds. Hell, even at my level I could use good 10 Gig hardware for the generation, transferring, storage, and streaming of 4K content across the network to/from a NAS, all while streaming my Blu-ray library to multiple locations in the house and playing a game at the same time.
  • firefoxx04 - Tuesday, November 22, 2016 - link

    Are you kidding me? Nobody? Not even someone buying a workstation board with 8+ core support and 16/16/16/16 PCIe support?

    I just added a 10Gbit fiber card to my desktop and my file server (raid5 with 4 drives) and im getting over twice as much throughput as I was before with no tuning to the driver. 112Mb/s network transfers feel slow now when my desktop is capable of 250-300Mb/s sustained. Hell, I even installed my entire steam library onto my network share because its simply fast enough (with no latency thanks to fiber optics).

    But yeah, nobody could possibly benefit from 10G.
  • eSyr - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    PCIe switch adds about 100—300ns to RTT, I don't think it would be critical for audio applications.
  • nirsever - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    Actually, there is a rather major shift towards 2.5G and 5G happening these days. It is driven primarily by:
    + The recent ratification of the IEEE 802.3bz standard
    + Higher than 1G bandwidth demand of Wave2 11.ac WiFi APs coming up with 2.5G and 5G LAN ports
    + Availability of low cost and low power solutions from Tehuti Networks with PHYs from Marvell and Aquantia
  • BillR - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    The rumor I heard is that extending a 1G PHY to work at 2.5G didn't add a lot to the price and power (about 30-50% in extra logic/power). Running at 5G my require a lot of the same logic used in a 10G PHY so a 5G solution would not offer huge power/cost advantages over 10G.
  • nirsever - Wednesday, November 9, 2016 - link

    I agree with your observation that cost wise, 5G and 10G are the same. However, from our experience, 5G power consumption is significantly lower than 10G. In addition, investing in 5G/2.5G capable NIC gives you the benefit of extending the life of your existing Cat5e/Cat6 cabling beyond 1G which is not possible with "classic" 10GBase-T
  • BillR - Wednesday, November 9, 2016 - link

    I agree.
  • BrokenCrayons - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    Just a thought...for a motherboard review, the feature image doesn't really show the motherboard or have a lot to do with the headline discussing networking.
  • alamilla - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    For an updated board it seems strange that they removed the Thunderbolt header with no options for Thunderbolt 3 expansion.
    Disappointing... :(

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