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 ESTGPU 2016 Benchmark Suite & The Test
As this is the first high-end card release for 2016, we have gone ahead and updated our video card benchmarking suite. Unfortunately Broadwell-E launched just a bit too late for this review, so we’ll have to hold off on updating the underlying platform to Intel’s latest and greatest for a little while longer yet.
For the 2016 suite we have retained Grand Theft Auto V, Battlefield 4, and of course, Crysis 3. Joining these games are 6 new games: Rise of the Tomb Raider, DiRT Rally, Ashes of the Singularity, The Witcher 3, The Division, and the 2016 rendition of Hitman.
| AnandTech GPU Bench 2016 Game List | ||||
| Game | Genre | API(s) | ||
| Rise of the Tomb Raider | Action | DX11 | ||
| DiRT Rally | Racing | DX11 | ||
| Ashes of the Singularity | RTS | DX12 | ||
| Battlefield 4 | FPS | DX11 | ||
| Crysis 3 | FPS | DX11 | ||
| The Witcher 3 | RPG | DX11 | ||
| The Division | FPS | DX11 | ||
| Grand Theft Auto V | Action/Open World | DX11 | ||
| Hitman (2016) | Action/Stealth | DX11 + DX12 | ||
As was the case in 2015, the API used will be based on the best API available for a given card. Rise of the Tomb Raider and Hitman both support DirectX 11 + DirectX 12; in the case of Tomb Raider the DX12 path was until last week a regression – a new patch changed things too late for this article – and meanwhile the best API for Hitman depends on whether we’re looking at an AMD or NVIDIA card. For now Tomb Raider is benchmarked using DX11 and Hitman on both DX11 and DX12. Meanwhile Ashes of the Singularity is essentially tailor made for DirectX 12, as the first DX12 game to be designed for it as opposed to porting over a DX11 engine, so it is being run under DX12 at all times.
Meanwhile from a design standpoint our benchmark settings remain unchanged. For lower-end cards we’ll look at 1080p at various quality settings when practical, and for high-end cards we’ll be looking at 1080p and above at the highest quality settings.
The Test
As for our hardware testbed, it remains unchanged from 2015, being composed of an overclocked Core i7-4960X housed in an NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition case.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 AMD Radeon RX 480 AMD Radeon Fury X AMD Radeon R9 Nano AMD Radeon R9 390X AMD Radeon R9 390 AMD Radeon HD 7970 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 368.39 AMD Radeon Software Crimson 16.7.1 (RX 480) AMD Radeon Software Crimson 16.6.2 (All Others) |
| OS: | Windows 10 Pro |
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DonMiguel85 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Agreed. They'll likely be much more power-hungry, but I believe it's definitely doable. At the very least it'll probably be similar to Fury X Vs. GTX 980sonicmerlin - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
The 1070 is as fast as the 980 ti. The 1060 is as fast as a 980. The 1080 is much faster than a 980 ti. Every card jumped up two tiers in performance from the previous gen. That's "standard" to you?Kvaern1 - Sunday, July 24, 2016 - link
I don't think there's much evidence pointing in the direction of GCN 4 blowing Pascal out of the water.Sadly, AMD needs a win but I don't see it coming. Budgets matter.
watzupken - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Brilliant review. Thanks for the in depth review. This is late, but the analysis is its strength and value add worth waiting for.ptown16 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
This review was a L O N G time coming, but gotta admit, excellent as always. This was the ONLY Pascal review to acknowledge and significantly include Kepler cards in the benchmarks and some comments. It makes sense to bench GK104 and analyze generational improvements since Kepler debuted 28nm and Pascal has finally ushered in the first node shrink since then. I guessed Anandtech would be the only site to do so, and looks like that's exactly what happened. Looking forward to the upcoming Polaris review!DonMiguel85 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
I do still wonder if Kepler's poor performance nowadays is largely due to neglected driver optimizations or just plain old/inefficient architecture. If it's the latter, it's really pretty bad with modern game workloads.ptown16 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
It may be a little of the latter, but Kepler was pretty amazing at launch. I suspect driver neglect though, seeing as how Kepler performance got notably WORSE soon after Maxwell. It's also interesting to see how the comparable GCN cards of that time, which were often slower than the Kepler competition, are now significantly faster.DonMiguel85 - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
Yeah, and a GTX 960 often beats a GTX 680 or 770 in many newer games. Sometimes it's even pretty close to a 780.hansmuff - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
This is the one issue that has me wavering for the next card. My AMD cards, the last one being a 5850, have always lasted longer than my NV cards; of course at the expense of slower game fixes/ready drivers.So far so good with a 1.5yrs old 970, but I'm keeping a close eye on it. I'm looking forward to what VEGA brings.
ptown16 - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
Yeah I'd keep an eye on it. My 770 can still play new games, albeit at lowered quality settings. The one hope for the 970 and other Maxwell cards is that Pascal is so similar. The only times I see performance taking a big hit would be newer games using asynchronous workloads, since Maxwell is poorly prepared to handle that. Otherwise maybe Maxwell cards will last much longer than Kepler. That said, I'm having second thoughts on the 1070 and curious to see what AMD can offer in the $300-$400 price range.