The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founder's Edition Review: Bigger Pascal for Better Performance
by Ryan Smith on March 9, 2017 9:00 AM ESTCompute
Shifting gears, let’s take a look at compute performance on GTX 1080 Ti.
Starting us off for our look at compute is LuxMark3.1, the latest version of the official benchmark of LuxRender. LuxRender’s GPU-accelerated rendering mode is an OpenCL based ray tracer that forms a part of the larger LuxRender suite. Ray tracing has become a stronghold for GPUs in recent years as ray tracing maps well to GPU pipelines, allowing artists to render scenes much more quickly than with CPUs alone.
The OpenCL situation for NVIDIA right now is a bit weird. The company is in the middle of rolling out OpenCL 2.0 support to their video cards – something that I had actually given up hope on until it happened – and as a result their OpenCL drivers are in a state of flux as company continues to refine their updated driver. The end result is that OpenCL performance has dipped a bit compared to where the GTX 1080 launched at back in May, with said card dropping from 4138 points to 3648 points. Not that the GTX 1080 Ti is too fazed, mind you – it’s still king of the hill by a good degree – but the point is that once NVIDIA gets their drivers sorted out, there’s every reason to believe that NVIDIA can improve their OpenCL performance.
For our second set of compute benchmarks we have CompuBench 1.5, the successor to CLBenchmark. CompuBench offers a wide array of different practical compute workloads, and we’ve decided to focus on face detection, optical flow modeling, and particle simulations.
Like LuxMark, CompuBench shows some minor performance regressions on the GTX 1080 as compared to the card’s launch. None the less, this doesn’t do anything to impede the GTX 1080 Ti’s status as the fastest of the GeForce cards. It dominates every sub-benchmark, including Optical Flow, where the original GTX 1080 was unable to pull away from AMD’s last-generation Radeon R9 Fury X.
161 Comments
View All Comments
ryvoth - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Solid card release from NVIDIA too bad our costs in Canada suck due to the dollar.mapesdhs - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
Ditto the UK. Sites keep mentioning an RRP of $700, but in the UK it's the equivalent of more like $900+.Meteor2 - Tuesday, March 14, 2017 - link
Don't forget the US doesn't have VAT. Or a NHS.Mr Perfect - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Wait, so Pascal is going to have a two year lifecycle as-is? There won't be a refinement cycle like Fermi to Kepler? That's a little disappointing.Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Fermi technically had a 2-year lifecycle. The only reason it was special is because the original silicon had issues, and NV opted to fix it.There are still yearly product refreshes, but GPUs are too expensive to develop (and the underlying manufacturing process too slow to advance) to do top-to-bottom new GPUs every single year.
supcaj - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Disappointed to STILL not see ANY VR-related benchmarks in the suite. VR rendering has unique rendering requirements, and a huge margin of gamers have moved or are planning to move to VR during the lifetime of this card.r3loaded - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Hey, 'member when top-tier GPUs costed $499? I 'member!eddman - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
http://i.imgur.com/pGKlskP.pngMr Perfect - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
I'd love to see how that compares father back, adjusted for inflation. My rose tinted goggles have me remembering top-tier GPUs launching for $400 or less back in the early 2000s, but who knows how that compares to 2017 dollars.eddman - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
http://i.imgur.com/OU6612c.pngThere are a lot of inflation calculators online. Like this: https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
A geforce 2 ultra was $705 in 2017 dollars!