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 ESTThe Witcher 3
The third game in CD Projekt RED’s expansive RPG series, The Witcher 3 is our RPG benchmark of choice. Utilizing the company’s in-house engine, REDengine 3, The Witcher makes use of an array of DirectX 11 features, all of which combine to make the game both stunning and surprisingly GPU-intensive. Our benchmark is based on an action-heavy in-engine cutscene early in the game, and Hairworks is disabled.
The GTX 1080 never doesn’t lead in our benchmarks, but The Witcher 3 is another strong showing for the card. At 44fps for 4K, it’s three-quarters of the way to 60fps, with gives us a reasonably playable framerate even at these high quality settings. However to get 60fps you’ll still have to back off on the quality settings or resolution. Meanwhile the GTX 1070, although capable of better than 30fps at 4K, is more at home at 1440p, where the card just cracks 60fps.
Looking at the generational comparisons, the Pascal cards are about average under The Witcher 3. GTX 1080 leads GTX 980 by an average of 66%, and GTX 1070 leads GTX 970 by 58%. Similarly, the gap between the two Pascal cards is pretty typical at 24% in favor of the GTX 1080.
Finally, checking in on poor Kepler, we find GTX 680 at 31.3fps at 1080p, as compared to GTX 1080’s 100.3fps. This gives NVIDIA’s latest flagship a 3.2x advantage over its 4 year old predecessor.
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Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
The prices listed are based on checking Newegg daily for the past week. The sub-$429 cards have never been in stock when I've checked.powerarmour - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Lulz how late?jabbadap - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Great thorough review.You have a funny typo on the fast sync page:
" Fast Sync doesn’t replace either Adaptive Sync or G-Sync"
I think you meant Adaptive Vsync, not that VESA standard which nvidia does not support.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Right you are. Thanks!bill44 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Where can I find a FULL review please?Thanks
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
"Where can I find a FULL review please?"This article was an excerpt of the full review. The complete, 5 volume set on GTX 1080 will be available at your local book store in October. ;-)
catavalon21 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
AwesomeAndrewJacksonZA - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
Cool! Thanks Ryan! Did you reach your stretch goals on your Kickstarter campaign so that you can afford the scanning electron microscope for great photos?bill44 - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
Thanks Ryan.I was on about audio. Not for games, but for my music playback (SACD, DVDA) with different sampling rates that includes 88.2 and 176.4Khz. I can't find FULL specifications for the 100 series GTX cards that include this information, or any decoding capabilities. I was looking for the GTX 1060 for HTPC use with madVR.
Where can I find out about audio and sampling rates? MadVR capabilities?
Ryan Smith - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link
As far as I know, audio capabilities are the same as on the 900 series. Unfortunately I don't have more detail than that right now.