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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bill44 - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link
That's the problem. I know nothing about the 900 series audio capabilities (which I suppose is the same as the 800 series ;) ) and no one publishes them in review. All reviews are incomplete.Anyone here knows at least the supported audio sampling rates? If not, I think my best bet is going with AMD (which I'm shure supports 88.2 & 176.4 KHz).
bill44 - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link
Anyone?poohbear - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
thank you for the review, late as it is it's still an excellent review and love the details!junky77 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
In other reviews, even a Haswell-E is limited for GPUs like GTX 1070JamesAnthony - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
I really appreciate all the work that went into this in depth review.I especially am very glad that you included the GTX 680 in the benchmarks along with all the other cards after it.
It's often really hard to get an overview of performance over a couple years.
I'm looking at upgrading 2 systems from GTX680 to either GTX 1070 or GTX 1060 and Titan (original one) to GTX 1080, so this helps see what the performance would be like.
Hopefully you tested the 1060 the same way so I can just plug the numbers for it into the same graph.
Thanks again!
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Be sure to check Bench. The 1060 results are already there, so you can see those comparisons right now.fivefeet8 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
2nd page 3rd paragraph: "generational increate in performance". ;increase?2nd page 2nd section: "Pascal in an architecture that I’m not sure has any real parallel on a historical basis". ;is?
hansmuff - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Great review, i like that you went into all the hardware details. Worth the wait.Chaser - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
I'm a Nvidia guy all the way. For now. I am disappointed in the midrange RX480 and it's power consumption compared to the competition, especially after they had said that Polaris was goingto primarily be an efficiency improvement.Outside of my bias I truly hope AMD provides a very competitive flagship in the near future. Everyone wins. But with the 1060 now announced it just makes AMD's GPU prospects and profitability questionable.
MarkieGcolor - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
So basically after all the hype about finfet, we get a standard, if not disappointing jump this generation also with a price hike. I'm so relieved that I didn't wait for this generation and can just enjoy my current 970 sli/nano crossfire rigs. AMD easily has the opportunity to blow these cards out of the water with big gpus.