The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTMiddle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Our next benchmark is Monolith’s popular open-world action game, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. One of our current-gen console multiplatform titles, Shadow of Mordor is plenty punishing on its own, and at Ultra settings it absolutely devours VRAM, showcasing the knock-on effect of current-gen consoles have on VRAM requirements.
Another game, another set of benchmarks where the GTX 980 Ti and GTX Titan X are more or less tied. In this case the latest GM200 card closes the tiny gap even more, bringing the difference between the two down to 1-2% in favor of the GTX Titan X. Meanwhile the GTX 980 Ti’s advantage over the GTX 980 is as strong as ever, beating the most powerful of the GM204 cards by 30% or more.
On an absolute basis, as with Crysis 3 GTX 980 Ti won’t be enough for 60fps at 4K, but at 47.9fps it’s closer to 60fps than 30fps, representing a significant improvement in 4K performance in only a generation. Turning down the game’s quality settings to Very High does improve performance a bit, but at 53.7fps it’s still not quite enough for 60fps. The biggest advantage of Very High quality is alleviating some of the high VRAM requirements, not that the GTX 980 Ti seems to mind even at 6GB. Otherwise dropping to 1440p will give us a significant bump in performance, pushing framerates over 80fps once again.
Looking at minimum framerates, we find the one and only place under which the GTX 980 Ti may be struggling to keep up with its Titan sibling. While it held very close to the GTX Titan X in average framerates, the minimum framerate finds a larger, distinct gap between the two, with the GTX 980 Ti trailing by 8%. That said, minimum framerates are inherently more unreliable than averages, and other than a momentary dip the GTX 980 Ti is doing quite well here, so while it’s a less-than-perfect showing, I don’t believe we’re seeing any kind of real impact from VRAM differences. Note that the 4GB cards don’t seem to be worse off despite being short a further 2GB of VRAM.
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douglord - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I need to know if the 980ti can output 10-bit color correctly? Is it ready for UHD Blueray?dragonsqrrl - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
To my knowledge only Quadro's and Firepro's output 10 bit color depth.johnpombrio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Any card that can do true RGB color schemes are NOT MEANT for normal users. It brings a lot of drawbacks for games and normal tasks. These type of cards are for graphics professionals only. Google it to see why.mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Indeed, the way colourspaces interact with different types of monitor can result in some nasty issues for accurate colour presentation. For home users, it's really not suitable since so many normal apps & games aren't written to utilise such modes correctly. Besides, I doubt any 4K TVs could properly resolve 10bis/channel anyway. Funny though that people are still asking about 10bit colour when pro users were already using 12bit more than 20 years ago. :D Also 16bit greyscale for medical/GIS/etc.johnpombrio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Yikes! That overclock ability! I always buy EVGA's superclocked NVidia cards as they as super stable and have great benchmarks (as well as playing games well, heh). I might buy into this even tho I have a GTX980.As for AMD, NVidia has 76% of the discrete GPU graphics card market (and still rising) while AMD has lost 12% market share in the last 12 months alone. Whatever AMD has up for new products, it better hurry and be a LOT better than NVidia cards. AMD has tried the " rebadge existing GPU family cards, reduce its price, and bundle games" for too long and IT IS NOT WORKING. C'mon AMD, get back into the fight.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
True, I kept finding EVGA's cards work really well. The ACX2 980 (1266MHz) is particularly good.Nfarce - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Well I recently upgraded with a second 970 for SLI for 1440p gaming and have them overclocked to 980 performance. It's roughly 15% faster than this single card solution for $700 vs. $650 (7.5% increase in cost). But one thing is for certain: we are still a long time away from realistic 4K gaming with a G-sync 120Hz monitor when those come out. I would much prefer 1440p gaming with max quality and high AA settings and faster FPS matched to screen Hz than detuned 4K settings (even if AA is less meaningful at 2160p).By the way: are you guys ever going to add Project Cars to your benchmarks? It has rapidly become THE racer to own. Grid Autosport is not really a good benchmark these days because it's just a rehash of the Grid 2 engine (EGO 3.0)...easy on GPUs. Many, including me, haven't touched Autosport since PCars was released and may never touch it again.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Project Cards is one game that runs badly in CF atm (driver issues), which would make the 295x2 look horrible. Might be better to wait until AMD has fixed the issue first.agentbb007 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
A GTX Titan X for $649, DOH BART! Oh well I've enjoyed my SLI Titan X's for a few months so I guess that was worth the $700 premium. I keep falling for nVidia's Titan brand gimmick, I also bought the original Titan luckily just 1 of them and ended up selling it for about half what I paid.Lesson learned, AGAIN, don't buy the Titan brand wait for the regular GTX version instead.
mapesdhs - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
2019 calling! I wonder if he bought the 2080 Ti or RTX Titan... :}