The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTCrysis 3
Still one of our most punishing benchmarks, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers and still holds “most punishing shooter” title in our benchmark suite. Only in a handful of setups can we even run Crysis 3 at its highest (Very High) settings, and that’s still without AA. Crysis 1 was an excellent template for the kind of performance required to drive games for the next few years, and Crysis 3 looks to be much the same for 2015.
Once more we find the GTX 980 Ti and GTX Titan X virtually tied. Across all settings and resolutions the GTX 980 Ti stays within 97-98% of the Titan’s performance. Consequently GTX Titan X is ever so marginally better, but not enough to make any real difference.
This also means that GTX 980 Ti continues with its very strong lead over the GTX 980. Once more we’re looking at a 26-31% performance advantage for the latest member of the GTX 900 series, in-line with its price premium.
Meanwhile on an absolute basis, as one of our most punishing games this is also a good reminder of why even GM200 cards can’t quite pull off high quality 4K gaming with a single GPU today. Even without MSAA and one step below Crysis 3’s Very High quality settings, the GTX 980 Ti can only muster 40.9fps. If you want to get to 60fps you will need to drop to Low quality, or drop the resolution to 1440p. The latter will get you 83.2fps at the same quality settings, which again highlights GTX 980 Ti’s second strength as a good card for driving high refresh rate 1440p displays.
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TheJian - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Depends on where you live. At a mere 3hrs per day (easy if more than one person uses it) at 270w difference even Ocing it, you end up $75 a year savings in a place like Australia. That ends up being $300 if you keep it for 4yrs, more if longer. In 15+ states in USA they are above 15c/kwh (au is 25.5c) so you'd save ~$45+ a year (at 15.5, again 14 quite a bit above this), so again $180 for 4yrs. There are many places around the world like AU.Note it pretty much catches 295x2 while doing it Oced. It won't put off as much heat either running 270w less, so in a place like AZ where I live, this card is a no brainer. Since I don't want to cool my whole house to game (no zoned air unfortunately), I have to think heat first. With Electricity rising yearly here, I have to think about that over the long haul too. TCO is important. One more point, you don't deal with any of the "problem" games on NV where crossfire does nothing for you. Single chip is always the way to go if possible.
If you have a kid, they can blow those watts up massively during summer for 3 months too! WOW users can do 21hrs on a weekend...LOL. I'd say Skyrim users etc too along with many rpg's that will suck the life out of you (pillars, witcher 3, etc). A kid can put in more time in the summer than an adult all year in today's world where they don't go out and play like I used to when I was a kid. You're shortsighted. Unless AMD's next card blows this away (and I doubt that, HBM will do nothing when bandwidth isn't the problem, as shown by gpu speeds giving far more than ocing memory), you won't see a price drop at all for a while either.
If rumors are true about $850-900 price for AMD's card these will run off the shelf for a good while if they don't win by a pretty hefty margin and drop the watts.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Add Elite Dangerous, Project Reality, GTA V, the upcoming Squad and various other games to your list of titles which one tends to play for long periods if at all.Ian.
Deacz - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
860€ atm :(ddferrari - Sunday, June 14, 2015 - link
I guess you're one of those people who care more about specs than actual performance. Seriously, is 28nm just too big for ya? It's 3% slower than the fastest gpu on Earth for $650, and you're whining about the transistor size... get a life.Michael Bay - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
I`d much rather read about 960...pvgg - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Me too...Ryan Smith - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
And you will. Next week.just4U - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
The 960 is a underwhelming overpriced product.. I'd be more interested in a Ti variant if I was looking to buy right now.. but no.. although that 980Ti is tempting, I'd never purchase it without seeing what AMD is doing next month.Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
"The 960 is a underwhelming overpriced product."There you go, Michael, you've read about it.
PEJUman - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
GM206 based 960xx? or a further cut on GM204? ;)My gut feel tells me it would be GM204 based: I am guessing ~3B trans on GM206 on a very mature 28nm process should be relatively doable without much defects.