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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garadante - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
What might be interesting is doing a comparison of video cards for a specific framerate target to (ideally, perhaps it wouldn't actually work like this?) standardize the CPU usage and thus CPU power usage across greatly differing cards. And then measure the power consumed by each card. In this way, couldn't you get a better example ofgaradante - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Whoops, hit tab twice and it somehow posted my comment. Continued:couldn't you get a better example of the power efficiency for a particular card and then meaningful comparisons between different cards? I see lots of people mentioning how the 980 seems to be drawing far more watts than it's rated TDP (and I'd really like someone credible to come in and state how heat dissipated and energy consumed are related. I swear they're the exact same number as any energy consumed by transistors would, after everything, be released as heat, but many people disagree here in the comments and I'd like a final say). Nvidia can slap whatever TDP they want on it and it can be justified by some marketing mumbo jumbo. Intel uses their SDPs, Nvidia using a 165 watt TDP seems highly suspect. And please, please use a nonreference 290X in your reviews, at least for a comparison standpoint. Hasn't it been proven that having cooling that isn't garbage and runs the GPU closer to high 60s/low 70s can lower power consumption (due to leakage?) something on the order of 20+ watts with the 290X? Yes there's justification in using reference products but lets face it, the only people who buy reference 290s/290Xs were either launch buyers or people who don't know better (there's the blower argument but really, better case exhaust fans and nonreference cooling destroys that argument).
So basically I want to see real, meaningful comparisons of efficiencies for different cards at some specific framerate target to standardize CPU usage. Perhaps even monitoring CPU usage over the course of the test and reporting average, minimum, peak usage? Even using monitoring software to measure CPU power consumption in watts (as I'm fairly sure there are reasonably accurate ways of doing this already, as I know CoreTemp reports it as its probably just voltage*amperage, but correct me if I'm wrong) and reported again average, minimum, peak usage would be handy. It would be nice to see if Maxwell is really twice as energy efficient as GCN1.1 or if it's actually much closer. If it's much closer all these naysayers prophesizing AMD's doom are in for a rude awakening. I wouldn't put it past Nvidia to use marketing language to portray artificially low TDPs.
silverblue - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Apparently, compute tasks push the power usage way up; stick with gaming and it shouldn't.fm123 - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Don't confuse TDP with power consumption, they are not the same thing. TDP is for designing the thermal solution to maintain the chip temperature. If there is more headroom in the chip temperature, then the system can operate faster, consuming more power."Intel defines TDP as follows: The upper point of the thermal profile consists of the Thermal Design Power (TDP) and the associated Tcase value. Thermal Design Power (TDP) should be used for processor thermal solution design targets. TDP is not the maximum power that the processor can dissipate. TDP is measured at maximum TCASE"
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&...
NeatOman - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
I just realized that the GTX 980 has a TDP of 165 watts, my Corsair CX430 watt PSU is almost overkill!, that's nuts. That's even enough room to give the whole system a very good stable overclock. Right now i have a pair of HD 7850's @ stock speed and a FX-8320 @ 4.5Ghz, good thing the Corsair puts out over 430 watts perfectly clean :)Nfarce - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
While a good power supply, you are leaving yourself little headroom with 430W. I'm surprised you are getting away with it with two 7850s and not experiencing system crashes.ET - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
The 980 is an impressive feat of engineering. Fewer transistors, fewer compute units, less power and better performance... NVIDIA has done a good job here. I hope that AMD has some good improvements of its own under its sleeve.garadante - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
One thing to remember is they probably save a -ton- of die area/transistors by giving it only what, 1/32 double precision rate? I wonder how competitive in terms of transistors/area an AMD GPU would be if they gutted double precision compute and went for a narrower, faster memory controller.Farwalker2u - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
I am looking forward to your review of the GTX 970 once you have a compatible sample in hand.I would like to see the results of the Folding @Home benchmarks. It seems that this site is the only one that consistently use that benchmark in its reviews.
As a "Folder" I'd like to see any indication that the GTX 970, at a cost of $330 and drawing less watts than a GTX 780; may out produce both the 780 ($420 - $470) and the 780Ti ($600). I will be studying the Folding @ Home: Explicit, Single Precision chart which contains the test results of the GTX 970.
Wolfpup - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Wow, this is impressive stuff. 10% more performance from 2/3 the power? That'll be great for desktops, but of course even better for notebooks. Very impressed they could pulll off that kind of leap on the same process!They've already managed to significantly bump up the top end mobile part from GTX 680 -> 880, but within a year or so I bet they can go quite a bit higher still.
Oh well, it was nice having a top of the line mobile GPU for a while LOL
If 28nm hit in 2012 though, doesn't that make 2015 its third year? At least 28nm seems to be a really good process, vs all the issues with 90/65nm, etc., since we're stuck on it so long.
Isn't this Moore's Law hitting the constraints of physical reality though? We're taking longer and longer to get to progressively smaller shrinks in die size, it seems like...
Oh well, 22nm's been great with Intel and 28's been great with everyone else!