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 |
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
200 Comments
View All Comments
Ninhalem - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
There's 32 freaking pages in this review. Maybe people have other jobs instead of writing all day long. Did you ever think of that?I'll take quality and a long publishing time over crap and rushing out the door.
Stuka87 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Thanks for the extremely in depth review Ryan!cknobman - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
I cannot help feel just a bit underwhelmed.Of course these Nvidia cards kick some major butt in games that have always favored Nvidia but I noticed that in games not specifically coded to take advantage of Nvidia and furthermore games with DX12 that these cards performance advantage is minimal at best vs an old Fury X with half the video RAM.
Then when you take into account Vulcan API and newer DX12 games (which can be found elsewhere) you see that the prices for these cards is a tad ridiculous and the performance advantage starts to melt away.
I am waiting for AMD to release their next "big gun" before I make a purchase decision.
I'm rocking a 4k monitor right now and 60fps at that resolution is my target.
nathanddrews - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
1080 is close to being that 4K60 card, but can't quite cut it. I'm waiting for "Big Vega" vs 1080Ti before dropping any money.lefty2 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Great review - one of the few that highlights the fact the Pascal async compute is only half as good as AMD's version. Async compute is a key feature for increasing performance in DX12 and Vulkan and that's going to allow the RX 480 to perform well against the GTX 1060Daniel Egger - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
"... why the memory controller organization of GP104 is 8x32b instead of 4x64b like GM204"Sounds like it's the other way around.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
No, that's correct. 8 32bit wide controllers rather than 4 64bit wide controllers.http://images.anandtech.com/doci/10325/GeForce_GTX...
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8526/GeForce_GTX_...
DominionSeraph - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
>It has taken about 2 years longer than we’d normally see... for a review of a flagship card to come out
sgeocla - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
The old Maxwell was so optimized it was always full and didn't even need Async Compute. The new Pascal is so much more optimized that it even has time to create the "holes" in execution (not counting the ones in your pocket) that were "missing" in the old architecture to be able to benefit for Async Compute. Expect Volta to create even more holes (with hardware support) for Async Compute to fill.tipoo - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
That's demonstrably untrue.http://www.futuremark.com/pressreleases/a-closer-l...
Plenty of holes that could have been filled in Maxwell.