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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IUU - Saturday, June 6, 2015 - link
Wow ,Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4 hitting 80 fps at very high 2560x1440.Clearly there's much room for better graphics at lower resolutions.
I would buy this card , but not if I knew the only benefit would be to
run games at higher resolutions, that is, graphics has some way to go still
and this card could accommodate such a prospect.
FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
the R9 295X2 has completely lost it's luster and value, forget itlooper - Sunday, June 14, 2015 - link
This 980 Ti.... Is it the same physical size as my current 780?bullie - Monday, June 15, 2015 - link
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I'll wait to see what this 980GTX "METAL" is all about before I order a new gpu. With 770 Sli I'm in no real rush, as the 980Ti just barley surpassed my Firestrike Score(less than 100 graphic points)johnpombrio - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
I am just going through the AMD Fury X's reviews as it came out today with a ton of reviews (June 24th, 2015). It is excellent card and would have absolutely dominated the price point if this pesky GTX 980Ti just had not come along a month before AMD's much hyped launch. It cannot be such a coincidence that NVidia's card just happened to be so close in its benchmarks to the AMD's card. It is also such a coincidence that AMD set the price of their card at exactly the same price as NVidia. So my theory is that NVidia managed to get their hands on a reference Fury X and dialed in their 980Ti to match it. In the meantime, AMD was planning on charging a LOT more for their extremely well designed card (with its own built in water cooler and HBM) expecting the Ti to be launched much later this year but was forced to chop the price. If the price was cut, I don't expect the AIB manufacturers for the Fury X to be very pleased to have a lot less profit margin on the card. Three things may hold back the Fury X as well. One is that the Ti overclocks much better. Next is that the water cooler may or may not be welcomed by all considering its size and possible installation issues. Finally, AMD has been getting complaints by many folks over drivers (or lack thereof). Otherwise, a successful launch for both companies.deteugma - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link
It is extremely frustrating that none of the charts include the 970.Loretta946 - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
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