The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Review: Maxwell Mark 2
by Ryan Smith on September 18, 2014 10:30 PM ESTBioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite is Irrational Games’ latest entry in the Bioshock franchise. Though it’s based on Unreal Engine 3 – making it our obligatory UE3 game – Irrational had added a number of effects that make the game rather GPU-intensive on its highest settings. As an added bonus it includes a built-in benchmark composed of several scenes, a rarity for UE3 engine games, so we can easily get a good representation of what Bioshock’s performance is like.
Even with advanced depth of field effects, our highest end video cards are starting to run away with Bioshock: Infinite. That is particularly true for the GTX 980, which in a game that NVIDIA frequently does well in further props up the GTX 980’s advantage. Only at 4K are the R9 290XU and GTX 980 anywhere near close, otherwise at 1440p it’s a 37% performance advantage. GTX 780 Ti on the other hand holds much closer, still falling behind the GTX 980 but only by around 5% at sub-4K resolutions. This does make for a good moment for showcasing the GTX 980’s greater ROP throughput though; as we crank up the resolution to 4K, the 780 Ti falls further behind, especially when we’re at lower quality settings that leave us less shader-bound.
On an absolute basis 120Hz/144Hz gamer should have a blast even with a single GTX 980 at 1080p, while purists will need more performance for 1440p than the 85fps the card can offer. And at 4K the GTX 980 is doing very well for itself, almost cracking 60fps at High quality, and becoming the only card to crack 40fps with Ultra quality.
This will be one of the weaker showings for the GTX 980 over the GTX 680 though; at sub-4K resolutions it’s only a 60-65% performance improvement.
Meanwhile Bioshock is the first of 5 games we can reliably measure with the FCAT tools to check for frame pacing consistency. Bioshock is a bit more erratic than most games in this respect, and while our general rule of thumb for an excellent performance from a single card is 3%, our recording for GTX 980 is a bit higher at 3.5%. On the other hand at 4K it measures in at just 2.3%. So while frame pacing is going to be a bit of a rubber stamping process overall, we can confirm that GTX 980 is delivering a good frame pacing experience in Bioshock.
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atlantico - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I'm sorry, but I couldn't care less about power efficiency on an enthusiast GPU unit. The 780Ti was a 250W card and that is a great card because it performs well. It delivers results.I have a desktop computer, a full ATX tower. Not a laptop. PSUs are cheap enough, it's even a question of that.
So please, stuff the power requirements of this GTX980. The fact is if it sucked 250W and was more powerful, then it would have been a better card.
A5 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
They'll be more than happy to sell you a $1000 GM210 Titan Black Ultra GTX, I'm sure.Fact is that enthusiast cards aren't really where they make their money anymore, and they're orienting their R&D accordingly.
Fallen Kell - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Exactly. Not only that, the "real" money is in getting the cards in OEM systems which sell hundreds of thousands of units. And those are very power and cooling specific.Antronman - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Yep, yep, and yep again.For OEMs, the difference between spending 10 more or less dollars is huge.
More efficient cards means less power from the PSU. It's one of the reasons why GeForce cards are so much more popular in OEM systems.
I have to disagree with the statement about enthusiast cards not being of value to Nvidia.
Many people are of the opinion that Nvidia has always had better performance than AMD/ATI.
Tikcus9666 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
For desktop cards power consumption is meaningless to the 99%Price/Performance is much more important. if Card A uses 50w more under full load than card B, but performs around the same and is £50 cheaper to buy at 15 p per kwh cost for energy it would take 6666 hours of running to get your £50 back. Add to this if Card A produces more heat into the room, in winter months your heating system will use less energy, meanning it takes even longer to get your cash back.... tldr Wattage is only important in laptops and tablets and things that need batterys to run
jwcalla - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
At least in this case it appears the power efficiency allows for a decent overclock. So you can get more performance and heat up your room at the same time.Of course I'm sure they're leaving some performance on the table for a refresh next year. Pascal is still a long way's off so they have to extend Maxwell's lifespan. Same deal as with Fermi and Kepler.
Icehawk - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
When I built my mATX current box one criteria was that it be silent, or nearly so while still being a full power rig (i7 OC'd & 670), and the limitation really is GPU draw - thankfully NVs had dropped by the 6xx series enough I was able to use a fanless PSU and get my machine dead silent. I am glad I don't need a tower box that sounds like a jet anymore :)I would love to see them offer a high TDP, better cooled, option though for the uber users who won't care about costs, heat, sound and are just looking for the max performance to drive those 4k/surround setups.
Yojimbo - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I agree that power consumption in itself isn't so important to most consumer desktop users, as long as they don't require extra purchases to accommodate the cards. But since power consumption and noise seem to be directly related for GPUs, power efficiency is actually an important consideration for a fair number of consumer desktop users.RaistlinZ - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Yeah, but they're still limited by the 250W spec. So the only way to give us more and more powerful GPU's while staying within 250W is to increase efficiency.kallogan - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
dat beast