The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Review: Maxwell Mark 2
by Ryan Smith on September 18, 2014 10:30 PM ESTTotal War: Rome 2
The second strategy game in our benchmark suite, Total War: Rome 2 is the latest game in the Total War franchise. Total War games have traditionally been a mix of CPU and GPU bottlenecks, so it takes a good system on both ends of the equation to do well here. In this case the game comes with a built-in benchmark that plays out over a forested area with a large number of units, definitely stressing the GPU in particular.
For this game in particular we’ve also gone and turned down the shadows to medium. Rome’s shadows are extremely CPU intensive (as opposed to GPU intensive), so this keeps us from CPU bottlenecking nearly as easily.
Of all of our games, there is no better set of benchmarks for the GTX 980 than Total War: Rome II. Against both AMD and NVIDIA’s last-generation cards it never wins by as much as it wins here.
Compared to the GTX 780 Ti the GTX 980 is a consistent 16-17% ahead at all resolutions. Meanwhile against the R9 280XU this is an 18% lead at 1080p and 1440p. R9 290XU only begins to catch up at 4K Very High quality, where GTX 980 still leads by a respectable 8%.
This is also a very strong showing compared to the GTX 680. The overall lead is 80-95% depending on the resolution. The GTX 980 was not necessarily meant to double the GTX 680’s performance, but it comes very close to doing so here at 1440p.
Given what happens to the GK104 cards in this game, I suspect we’re looking at the results of either the ROP advantage and/or a very good case CUDA core occupancy improvements. The fact that the lead over the GTX 780 Ti is so consistent over all resolutions does point to the CUDA core theory, but we can’t really rule out the ROPs with the information we have.
As for results on an absolute basis, not even mighty GTX 980 is going to crack 30fps at 4K with Extreme settings. In lieu of that Very High quality comes off quite well at 49fps, and we’re just shy of hitting 60fps at 1440p with Extreme.
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TheJian - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/09/19/maxwell-an...Did I miss it in the article or did you guys just purposely forget to mention NV claims it does DX12 too? see their own blog. Microsoft's DX12 demo runs on ...MAXWELL. Did I just miss the DX12 talk in the article? Every other review I've read mentions this (techpowerup, tomshardware, hardocp etc etc). Must be that AMD Center still having it's effect on your articles ;)
They were running a converted elemental demo (converted to dx12) and Fable Legends from MS. Yet curiously missing info from this site's review. No surprise I guess with only an AMD portal still :(
From the link above:
"Part of McMullen’s presentation was the announcement of a broadly accessible early access program for developers wishing to target DX12. Microsoft will supply the developer with DX12, UE4-DX12 and the source for Epic’s Elemental demo ported to run on the DX12-based engine. In his talk, McMullen demonstrated Maxwell running Elemental at speed and flawlessly. As a development platform for this effort, NVIDIA’s GeForce GPUs and Maxwell in particular is a natural vehicle for DX12 development."
So maxwell is a dev platform for dx12, but you guys leave that little detail out so newbs will think it doesn't do it? Major discussion of dx11 stuff missing before, now up to 11.3 but no "oh and it runs all of dx12 btw".
One more comment on 980: If it's a reference launch how come other sites already have OC versions (IE, tomshardware has a Windforce OC 980, though stupidly as usual they downclocked it and the two OC/superclocked 970's they had to ref clocks...ROFL - like you'd buy an OC card and downclock them)? IT seems to be a launch of OC all around. Newegg even has them in stock (check EVGA OC version):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
And with a $10 rebate so only $559 and a $5 gift card also.
"This model is factory overclocked to 1241 MHz Base Clock/1342 MHz Boost Clock (1126 MHz/1216 MHz for reference design)"
Who would buy ref for $10 diff? IN fact the ref cards are $569 at newegg, so you save buying the faster card...LOL.
cactusdog - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
TheJian, Wow, Did you read the article? Did you read the conclusion? AT says the 980 is "remarkable" , "well engineered", "impeccable design" and has "no competition" They covered almost all of Nvidia marketing talking points and you're going to accuse them of a conspiracy? Are you fking retarded??Daniel Egger - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
It would be nice to rather than just talk about about the 750 Ti to also include it in comparisons to see it clearer in perspective what it means to go from Maxwell I to Maxwell II in terms of performance, power consumption, noise and (while we are at it) performance per Watt and performance per $.Also where're the benchmarks for the GTX 970? I sure respect that this card is in a different ballpark but the somewhat reasonable power output might actually make the GTX 970 a viable candidate for an HTPC build. Is it also possible to use it with just one additional 6 Pin connector (since as you mentioned this would be within the specs without any overclocking) or does it absolutely need 2 of them?
SkyBill40 - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
As was noted in the review at least twice, they were having issues with the 970 and thus it won't be tested in full until next week (along with the 980 in SLI).MrSpadge - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Wow! This makes me upgrade from a GTX660Ti - not because of gaming (my card is fast enough for my needs) but because of the power efficiency gains for GP-GPU (running GPU-Grid under BOINC). Thank you nVidia for this marvelous chip and fair prices!jarfin - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
i still CANT understand amd 'uber' option.its totally out of test,bcoz its just 'oc'd' button,nothing else.
its must be just r290x and not anantech 'amd canter' way uber way.
and,i cant help that feeling,what is strong,that anatech is going badly amd company way,bcoz they have 'amd center own sector.
so,its mean ppl cant read them review for nvidia vs radeon cards race without thinking something that anatech keep raden side way or another.
and,its so clear thats it.
btw
i hope anantech get clear that amd card R9200 series is just competition for nvidia 90 series,bcoz that every1 kow amd skippedd 8000 series and put R9 200 series for nvidia 700 series,but its should be 8000 series.
so now,generation of gpu both side is even.
meaning that next amd r9 300 series or what it is coming amd company battle nvidia NEXT level gpu card,NOT 900 series.
there is clear both gpu card history for net.
thank you all
p.s. where is nvidia center??
Gigaplex - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Uber mode is not an overclock. It's a fan speed profile change to reduce thermal throttling (underclock) at the expense of noise.dexgen - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Ryan, Is it possible to see the average clock speeds in different tests after increasing the power and temperature limit in afterburner?And also once the review units for non-reference cards come in it would be very nice to see what the average clock speeds for different cards with and without increased power limit would be. That would be a great comparison for people deciding which card to buy.
silverblue - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Exceptional by NVIDIA; it's always good to see a more powerful yet more frugal card especially at the top end.AMD's power consumption could be tackled - at least partly - by some re-engineering. Do they need a super-wide memory bus when NVIDIA are getting by with half the width and moderately faster RAM? Tonga has lossless delta colour compression which largely negates the need for a wide bus, although they did shoot themselves in the foot by not clocking the memory a little higher to anticipate situations where this may not help the 285 overcome the 280.
Perhaps AMD could divert some of their scant resources towards shoring up their D3D performance to calm down some of the criticism because it does seem like they're leaving performance on the table and perhaps making Mantle look better than it might be as a result.
Luke212 - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Where are the SGEMM compute benchmarks you used to put on high end reviews?