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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Casecutter - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Nvidia places the TitanX in play just so that logic works... But when you pull TitanX from the equation, and work from the 980 (GM204) a 20% increase in FpS for, almost 20% more money, and use 28% more power. It look really humdrum.Kutark - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
You felt the need to post basically the same comment in 2 different places?Regardless you're cherry picking data. Overall its about a 30% increase in perf, for about a 30% increase in price. Its still a "good" deal if you want a powerful single GPU.
uglyduckling81 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
I'm still shocked at how much the 295x2 kills it. It's so much more powerful that even a Titan X. Newegg had the 295x2 on a sale for $550 2 weekends ago as well. Crossfire driver issues aside if your in the market for the high end I just don't see how you could go past the much more powerful and cheaper 295x2. If I had been in the USA with that $550 sale going I would of snapped that up so fast. Hell I would of bought several and sold a couple when I got home. Those cards are still $1600 in Australia.mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Really? CF issues aside?? It's a freakin' CF card! What the heck is the point in buying the thing if CF support just doesn't work properly for so many games? And did AMD ever fix DX9/CF issues? Still sucks the last time I tested 7970 CF. Feel free to whack your power bill with the 295x2, spew out heat, etc. Every time I see a crazy extended power usage graph just so the enormous line for the 295x2 can be included, it blows my mind that people ever bother buying it. One person from OZ here commented that heat output is of primary concern where he lives, so chucking out so much heat from a 295x2 would be a real problem. I noticed the same thing with 580 SLI, sooo glad I eventually switched to a single 980.CiccioB - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
The fact that a supposedly more powerful card is sold at a lower price should automatically raise you some questions... it is not that because 290x2 is a single card that all crossfire problems magically go away.Drive issue apart is not an option. Crossfire and SLI performances depend heavily on driver quality. And, sorry, but AMD dual GPUs cards have always been the worst choice since they were created.
See what is the support for 7990 cards. 690 cards are still supported as you can see in these very benchmarks.
Moreover, if you want a better dual configuration with support done as one would expect for the spent money, you can just buy 2x GTX970 and live much more happily. Consuming much more less. Dual GPU comparison here is not even to take into account. The simplicity, scaling and smoothness of a single GPU like Titan X or this GTX980TI simply crush the dual GPU competition without any doubt, even though they do some FPS less as average.
If you cannot understand that, it is right that you continue buying crappy cards and be happy with those.
NvidiaWins - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Compared to my Evga 770 SuperClocked Sli, it only generates a few extra fps, scored just over 100 points higher in Firestrike(770 Sli graphic score- 16,837/ 980Ti graphic score- 16,900), its a great single card at a cheap price point, but little improvement over what I currently use.Zak - Saturday, June 13, 2015 - link
Compare your dual 770 against dual 980ti and then we'll talk...godrilla - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
It seems that nvidia created the titan x just to make the 980ti seem like a bargain so that gamers will jump at it pretty clever.nadia28 - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Yeah, that what I thought too. They keep thinking of new marketing strategies to boost the sales and this one works like a charm.CHRAHL - Saturday, June 6, 2015 - link
Ryan! We never saw a review from GTX 960, will it be published. And there is no data in bench from it hence. Could you at least upload performance to bench section..