The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTCivilization: Beyond Earth
Shifting gears from action to strategy, we have Civilization: Beyond Earth, the latest in the Civilization series of strategy games. Civilization is not quite as GPU-demanding as some of our action games, but at Ultra quality it can still pose a challenge for even high-end video cards. Meanwhile as the first Mantle-enabled strategy title Civilization gives us an interesting look into low-level API performance on larger scale games, along with a look at developer Firaxis’s interesting use of split frame rendering with Mantle to reduce latency rather than improving framerates.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the GTX 980 Ti and GTX Titan perform within a few percent of each other. Under Civilization the gap between the two is a hair larger than in other games, at 3-4%, but this is also as large of a gap as you’ll see for average framerates. Even here the two are for all meaningful purposes tied.
Meanwhile on an absolute basis, the GM200 twin remain the only single-GPU cards to crack 60fps, with GTX 980 Ti delivering 70.5fps at the game’s most extreme setting. This is once again well ahead of the GTX 980 – beating it by 34% at 4K, though by less at lower resolutions where we start to get CPU-bottlenecked.
I also want to quickly touch upon how the GTX 980 Ti compares to the last-generation high-end GK110 Kepler cards, the GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti. Against GTX 780 in particular, in this test we see the GTX 980 Ti deliver 70-80% better performance. With this being the 2 year anniversary of the GTX 780’s release, this is especially notable since it’s such a good example of how performance has improved specifically at this $649 price point in the last 2 years. GM200 in general is not this fast versus GK110 – there’s only so much to be done at 28nm – but against GTX 780 in particular NVIDIA’s latest card looks quite good. Even GTX 780 Ti is not entirely immune, with GTX 980 Ti beating it by around 45% at 4K.
When it comes to minimum framerates the same story continues; the two GM200 cards are very close to each other, staying within 5%. At worst, you can say that the 7-17% performance advantage over the GTX 980 isn’t very impressive, though this is admittedly a game that’s not too far off from being CPU-bottlenecked.
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Laststop311 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
The performance difference between the 980ti and 980 is WAY larger than the performance difference between the 980 and 970 yet the price gap is larger between the 980 and 970. The 980 was stupidly overpriced at 550 and is still overpriced at 500. It needs to be at the 420-430 mark.I would be upset if I just paid 550 for a GTX 980 and now for only 100 more I could basically have titan x performance.
chizow - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
And what value do you place on the 9 months that 980 users have been enjoying that level of performance? Again, if you think the 970 is the better deal, it is there for you to buy at $300-330. The 980 was overpriced by maybe $50 at launch, but it still dropped the entire price and performance landscape at the time where 780Ti was still $650+, 290X was $550, 780 was $450 and 290 was $400. In that context, it wasn't so bad, was it?In reality, Nvidia has no reason to drop the 980 as there is no pressure at all from AMD. All these price cuts are self-induced as they are simply competing with themselves and pre-emptively firing a shot across the bow at $650 with 980Ti.
Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
"In reality, Nvidia has no reason to drop the 980 as there is no pressure at all from a card with 3.5 GB of VRAM that, in part, runs at 28 GB/s and has XOR contention."fify
chizow - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
"In reality, Nvidia has no reason to drop pricing on the 980, as there is no point in threatening the golden calf that may have single-handedly killed AMD graphics, 3.5GB VRAM and all."FTFY ;)
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 2.81%
AMD Radeon R9 200 Series 0.94%
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
I hope you're being paid for all this nonsense.Michael Bay - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Oh the pain.chizow - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Is it nonsense? I hope you are being paid for posting 3.5GB nonsense?darkfalz - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
I dunno. I can't really justify an upgrade from my 980 STRIX (which would then replace beloved 680 in my HTPC) - I was hoping for at least 40% improvement. Not really worth it for 20-30%. Better off getting another 980 and SLI it.darkfalz - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
I'm not sure why they aren't offering Witcher III as well as Batman. Why would a 970 get you two games? Not a great incentive to buy.SeanJ76 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Yeah this card barely surpasses my 770 Sli, and I mean BARELY! I think I'll pass and wait for another die.