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 ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560)

Total War: Attila

The Total War franchise moves on to Attila, another The Creative Assembly development, and is a stand-alone strategy title set in 395AD where the main story line lets the gamer take control of the leader of the Huns in order to conquer parts of the world. Graphically the game can render hundreds/thousands of units on screen at once, all with their individual actions and can put some of the big cards to task.

For low end graphics, we test at 720p with performance settings, recording the average frame rate. With mid and high range graphics, we test at 1080p with the quality setting. In both circumstances, unlimited video memory is enabled and the in-game scripted benchmark is used.

Total War: Attila 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 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 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 ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560)

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

No serious differences in our gaming tests using a GTX 980.

CPU Performance, Short Form MSI X99A Gaming Pro Carbon Conclusion
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  • niva - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link

    We get your point, now are you going to get the point that it's "GAMING Pro" and not just "pro"?

    I mean it's not like LEDs help you game better, but this board caters to that crowd. MSI has other boards that are for workstations specifically for "real pros" like you.
  • BrokenCrayons - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link

    I think that some of the gripes go back to adding the LEDs and necessary control mechanisms for them drives up cost. For situations like yours where you're going to disable the LEDs anyway, there's not much point in them being included at all. When someone is buying a product at the MSRP, they're going to soak up that cost or seek out a different product with possibly a less desirable set of features and capabilites. It's a minor quibble, I admit, but you know how people tend to build trivial things into more trouble than is reasonable.
  • ChristopherF - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link

    Great article Ian! On page 2 the chipset is listed as z170
  • fanofanand - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link

    Who is buying into X99 today? This is a chipset released in 2014!
  • joex4444 - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link

    People who need more than 4C/8T.
  • wolfemane - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link

    Or those that think they need more than 4c/8t
  • galta - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link

    People who really need (or really think they need, or think they really need etc.) more than 4c/8t usually don't like leds.
  • doggface - Tuesday, February 7, 2017 - link

    Speak for yourself.
    Pfft. You can build a decent PC and take care of the aesthetics at the same time.
  • fanofanand - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link

    Those people would likely be better served waiting a month for Ryzen. We won't know until we know, but it still seems like a ludicrous buy today on 2/6/17.
  • MarkieGcolor - Tuesday, February 7, 2017 - link

    Yea but maybe you can find good deals and who likes to wait?

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