The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTDragon Age: Inquisition
Our RPG of choice for 2015 is Dragon Age: Inquisition, the latest game in the Dragon Age series of ARPGs. Offering an expansive world that can easily challenge even the best of our video cards, Dragon Age also offers us an alternative take on EA/DICE’s Frostbite 3 engine, which powers this game along with Battlefield 4.
Meanwhile on an absolute basis what we find at 4K with Ultra quality is that the GTX 980 Ti is once more hitting framerates in the 40fps range. At 40.7fps the GTX 980 Ti is the only other single-GPU card to average better than 30fps at these settings, with the next-closest card being the GTX 980 at exactly 30fps. Otherwise users looking for higher framerates can either turn down the quality setting one notch to high, which gets us 52.6fps, or drop down to 1440p, which is good for 77.9fps.
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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.