The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTTotal War: Attila
The second strategy game in our benchmark suite, Total War: Attila is the latest game in the Total War franchise. Total War games have traditionally been a mix of CPU and GPU bottlenecks, so it takes a good system on both ends of the equation to do well here. In this case the game comes with a built-in benchmark that plays out over a large area with a fortress in the middle, making it a good GPU stress test.
Switching out to another strategy game, even given Attila’s significant GPU requirements at higher settings, GTX 980 Ti still doesn’t falter. It trails GTX Titan X by just 2% at all settings.
That said, on an absolute basis even GTX Titan X couldn't get past 30fps here at 4K with max quality settings, so the GTX 980 Ti is going to fare no better.. To get single card performance above 30fps we have to drop a notch to the “Quality” setting, which gets the GTX 980 Ti up to 44.2fps. In any case, at these settings the GTX 980 Ti makes easy work of the single-GPU competition, beating the GTX 980 once again by 28%+.
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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... :}