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 ESTGrand Theft Auto V
The latest edition of Rockstar’s venerable series of open world action games, Grand Theft Auto V was originally released to the last-gen consoles back in 2013. However thanks to a rather significant facelift for the current-gen consoles and PCs, along with the ability to greatly turn up rendering distances and add other features like MSAA and more realistic shadows, the end result is a game that is still among the most stressful of our benchmarks when all of its features are turned up. Furthermore, in a move rather uncharacteristic of most open world action games, Grand Theft Auto also includes a very comprehensive benchmark mode, giving us a great chance to look into the performance of an open world action game.
On a quick note about settings, as Grand Theft Auto V doesn't have pre-defined settings tiers, I want to quickly note what settings we're using. For "Very High" quality we have all of the primary graphics settings turned up to their highest setting, with the exception of grass, which is at its own very high setting. Meanwhile 4x MSAA is enabled for direct views and reflections. This setting also involves turning on some of the advanced redering features - the game's long shadows, high resolution shadows, and high definition flight streaming - but it not increasing the view distance any further.
Otherwise for "High" quality we take the same basic settings but turn off all MSAA, which significantly reduces the GPU rendering and VRAM requirements.
GTA V is another game that in recent times has favored NVIDIA GPUs, and as a result the GTX 1080 enjoys a solid standing here. At 61.4fps, the card becomes the first card to crack 60fps at 4K, albeit at only High quality. For very high quality, it becomes the first card to crack 30fps, both reinforcing how much of an improvement the card is over the previous generation and at the same time highlighting that it’s still going to have to make quality tradeoffs for 60fps at 4K.
Second to only the GTX 1080 is of course the GTX 1070. 4K is arguably out of the question, but at 1440p it can do just better than 60fps, making it the second card to do so. And though largely symbolic, it manages to do so when the GTX 980 Ti could not.
Looking at the generational improvements, GTA shows slightly better than average scaling with the new Pascal cards. GTX 1080 holds a anywhere between a 61% and 71% lead over the GTX 980, with particularly good gains above 1080p. Meanwhile GTX 1070 averages just shy of 60% over its GTX 970 counterpart.
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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.