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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Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I'm sure you posted that from your 65nm processor and 80nm GPU.godrilla - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
Because next shrink is in the 3d chips plus hbm category and that should be amazing performance leap.Gastec - Sunday, September 4, 2016 - link
Oh yeah, that's "1337 5p34k" for ya! :PWreckage - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Wait until AMD tries to sell you a rebadge for that much.Rezurecta - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
I don't understand the rage about rebadge all of a sudden. GPU has been doing this for YEARS!Anyway, nice card from Nvidia for a decent price.
dragonsqrrl - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Don't mix up traditional rebadging and what AMD is doing with their upcoming lineup, it's unprecedented. It's also worrisome, and it's clearly a big problem for AMD. What does it say about the state of the company and their R&D budget that they'll only have 1 new GPU this coming generation? One of the big problems AMD is currently facing, amongst many other things, are their profit margins. In order to compete they're selling larger, more expensive GPU's attached to more complex memory interfaces relative to the competition, and that won't change much this coming generation as a result of these top to bottom rebadges. The situation is really becoming quite analogous to their CPU's, which should raise alarms for any informed enthusiast. It's a less than ideal situation, to put it lightly.Azix - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
If you post this after their launch then maybe I'd understand. As it is their Chips are almost certainly not rebadged because they aren't on TSMC and will include hardware improvements. They maybe be based on hawaii or w/e but not even nvidia managed to put out more than 2 new cards during their major launch last year. Considering this is likely the last year of 28nm launches, it may make sense for them to put out an entire line of modified chips and be done with the 300 series. Keeping it fresh till next year when they can do 2-3 on a smaller process.dragonsqrrl - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
"If you post this after their launch then maybe I'd understand."You realize I could just give the exact same response to the rest of your comment. But I won't.
"As it is their Chips are almost certainly not rebadged because they aren't on TSMC and will include hardware improvements.",
That's interesting, I haven't heard anything about AMD switching fabs for the 300 series. Source?
"They maybe be based on hawaii or w/e but not even nvidia managed to put out more than 2 new cards during their major launch last year."
Not quite a straight comparison there, since Nvidia also launched a new architecture with the 750Ti. Thus far we've gotten 4 new GPU's (not just cards) based on Maxwell. And we're not just talking launch here. All indications point to Fiji as the only new GPU of the coming generation for AMD. And what's more, it might not even be an updated architecture. The rest of the lineup will likely be refreshes of Hawaii, Tonga, Pitcairn, and Bonaire, ranging from GCN 1.2-1.0, with at most manufacturing revisions to improve efficiency. Again it's very important to put this in perspective, in the context of what these GPU's will be competing against. They range in feature set, and in power efficiency, none of which is anywhere close to par with Maxwell, and it's going to be very difficult for AMD to compete with this lineup for another generation. It's not a good situation for AMD. "Keeping it fresh"? How you came to spin your conclusion the way you did is beyond me.
ImSpartacus - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Be nice. The guy is basically telling you at this point.ImSpartacus - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
trolling***