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 ESTHitman
The final game in our 2016 benchmark suite is the 2016 edition of Hitman, the latest title in the stealth-action franchise. The game offers two rendering paths: DirectX 11 and DirectX 12, with the latter being the case of DirectX 12 being added after the fact. As with past Hitman games, the latest proves to have a good mix of scenery and high model counts to stress modern video cards.
Because Hitman supports both DX11 and DX12, for the moment we’ve gone ahead and benchmarked it with both. In practice the performance impact of DX12 is very mixed; NVIDIA cards prior to Pascal lose performance and Pascal cards can either gain or lose performance. AMD cards on the other hand tend to gain performance. The image quality is the same with both renderers, so it’s simply a matter of picking the render path that produces the best performance for a given card.
In any case, the GTX 1080 continues to top the charts here. 60fps still isn’t attainable at 4K, but it can deliver a reasonably playable 49fps. Alternatively, at 1440p it does better than 85fps. Meanwhile the GTX 1070 isn’t a great option at 4K, but at 1440p it can easily stay north of 60fps, delivering 69.4fps.
Thanks in part to the DX12 code path, this is another game where the GTX 1070 performs as expected versus GTX 1080, but still can’t hold on to second place. Rather the Radeon Fury X takes second place at all but 1080p.
Looking at our generational comparisons one last time, this final game has the Pascal cards performing better than expected. At 1440p and above, the GTX 1080 hits 86% better performance than the GTX 980 under DirectX 11, and the GTX 1070 bests the GTX 970 by an average of 63% in the same circumstances. As best as I can tell, there is just something about the Pascal cards that is slightly more in tune with this game than was the Maxwell 2 cards, leading to the performance we’re seeing here. Otherwise the gap between the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 is pretty typical at about 25% at the higher resolutions.
Finally, in our last time checking in on the GTX 680, the GTX 1080 offers a commanding performance improvement. GTX 1080 is 4.1x faster than GTX 680 under DirectX 11, reinforcing just how much progress NVIDIA had made in 4 years and a single full manufacturing node upgrade.
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Matt Doyle - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Same page, "The latter is also a change from GTX 980, as NVIDIA has done from a digital + analog DVI port to a pure digital DVI port.""NVIDIA has gone"?
Matt Doyle - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Rather, "Meet the GTX 1080" page, second to last paragraph.Matt Doyle - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
"Meet the GTX 1080..." page, "...demand first slow down to a point where board partners can make some informed decisions about what cards to produce."I believe you're missing the word "must" (or alternatively, "needs to") between "demand" and "first" in this sentence.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Thanks!supdawgwtfd - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Didn't even finish reading the first page. The bias is overwhelming... So much emotional language...Good bye Anandtech. Had been a nice 14 years of reading but it's obvious now you have moved to so many other sites.
Shills who can't restrain their bias and review something without the love of a brand springing forth like a fountain.
Yes i created an account just for this soul reason...
The fucking 2 month wait is also not on.
But what to expect form children,
BMNify - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Then just GTFO you idiot, on second thoughts crying your heart out may also help in this fanboy mental break down situation of yours.catavalon21 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
You're joking, or a troll, or a clown. I complained about the time it took to get the full article, (to Ryan's credit, for the impatient ones of us just looking for numbers, he noted a while back that GPU bench was updated to include benchmarks for these cards), but this is exactly the kind of review that often has separated AT from numerous other sites. The description of the relatively crummy FP16 performance was solid and on point. From NV themselves teasing us with ads that half precision would rock our world, well, this review covers in great detail the reset of the story.Yeah, I know guys, I shouldn't dignify it with a response.
atlantico - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
Anandtech have always been nvidia shills. Sad they can't make a living without getting paid by nvidia, but they're not alone. Arstechnica is even worse and Tomshardware is way worse.brookheather - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Typo page 12 - "not unlike AMD’s Pascal architecture" - think you mean Polaris?brookheather - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
And another one on the last page: it keep the GPU industry - should be kept.