The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 & GTX 1070 Founders Editions Review: Kicking Off the FinFET Generation
by Ryan Smith on July 20, 2016 8:45 AM ESTCrysis 3
Still one of our most punishing benchmarks 3 years later, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. Crytek’s DX11 masterpiece, Crysis 3’s Very High settings still punish even the best of video cards, never mind the rest. Along with its high performance requirements, Crysis 3 is a rather balanced game in terms of power consumption and vendor optimizations. As a result it can give us a good look at how our video cards stack up on average, and later on in this article how power consumption plays out.
This being the first cycle we’ve used the Very High settings, it’s humorous to see a $700 video card getting 35fps on a 3 year old game. Very High settings give Crysis 3 a level of visual quality many games still can’t match, but the tradeoff is that it obliterates most video cards. We’re probably still 3-4 years out from a video card that can run at 4K with 4x MSAA at 60fps, never mind accomplishing that without the MSAA.
The GTX 1080 does however at least get the distinction of being the one and only card to crack 30fps at 4K. Though 30fps is not suggested for Crysis, it can legitimately claim to be the only card that can even handle the game at 4K with a playable framerate at this time. Otherwise if we turn down the resolution, the GTX 1080 is now the only card to crack 60fps at 1440p. Very close to that mark though is the GTX 1070, which at 58.1fps is a small overclock away from 60fps.
Looking at the generational comparisons, GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 lead by a bit less than usual, at 62% and 51% respectively. The GTX 1080/1070 gap on the other hand is pretty typical, with the GTX 1080 leading by 27% at 4K, 23% at 1440p, and 21% at 1080p.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
200 Comments
View All Comments
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
To follow: GTX 1060 Review (hopefully Friday), RX 480 Architecture Writeup/Review, and at some point RX 470 and RX 460 are still due.Chillin1248 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Nice, don't worry about the rushers. There are plenty of day one reviewers, but few go into depth the way that makes it interesting.retrospooty - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Agreed, this is a good review, as the video card reviews here usually are... Agreed about rushing as well. A lot of sites have less thorough stuff out in 1-2 days... I am guessing that Ryan and the others at Anandtech have regular day jobs and doing these reviews and articles is done on their own time. If that is the case, 2 months seems right. If I am incorrect in that assumption and this is a full time job, then they should be coming out with articles alot faster.JoshHo - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Currently for mobile the only full time editor is Matt Humrick.AndrewJacksonZA - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Thank you Ryan. I look forward to more and reliable information about the 470 and especially the 460.prophet001 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Hi All, I was just wondering if it's worth it to get the FE 1080 or just go with the regular one. Does the stock fan setup offer better thermals than the blower setup?Teknobug - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
FE is a ripoffImSpartacus - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
It's literally just the reference card. It's not a bad reference design, but it's generally considered a poor value for enthusiasts.HomeworldFound - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
A reference design is very useful if you're watercooling though.trab - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Depends if your custom board has any actual changes, it may just be the reference board with a custom cooler, so it would make no difference. Of course it would also be cheaper to boot.