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 ESTAshes of the Singularity
Sorely missing from our benchmark suite for quite some time have been RTSes, which don’t enjoy quite the popularity they once did. As a result Ashes holds a special place in our hearts, and that’s before we talk about the technical aspects. Based on developer Oxide Games’ Nitrous Engine, Ashes has been designed from the ground up for low-level APIs like DirectX 12. As a result of all of the games in our benchmark suite, this is the game making the best use of DirectX 12’s various features, from asynchronous compute to multi-threadeded work submission and high batch counts. What we see can’t be extrapolated to all DirectX 12 games, but it gives us a very interesting look at what we might expect in the future.
Of all of the games in our benchmark suite, Ashes is perhaps the most unusual. Besides being built for low-level APIs like DirectX 12 from the start, its rendering optimizations scale very well with resolution. As a result it takes a lot of rendering power to play Ashes with all the bells & whistles turned on, but once you can reach that point, going to 4K isn’t too much harder.
In any case, the GTX 1080 Ti becomes the first card to crack 60fps at 4K in this game. In doing so it’s 27% faster than the GTX 1080, and 71% faster than the GTX 980 Ti. Performance has actually reached a point that if we drop to 1440p, we start being CPU-limited a not-insignificant percentage of the time. So the GTX 1080 Ti outright needs 4K to really put its best foot forward.
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webdoctors - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
No, its because the dollar is worthless and real inflation is off the charts. Once we make the dollar great again, we'll see prices come down.eddman - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
The only reason that we had $500 cards is because of the fierce competition from ATI back then.Whenever ATI's cards couldn't compete, or could but were not launched yet, nvidia jacked the prices up. I don't know why people forget the $600 8800 GTX or $650 GTX 280. Take a look at the link I posted above.
mapesdhs - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
What I miss is being able to buy a couple of well-priced mid-range cards that beat the high-end, with good scaling. I couldn't afford the 580 when it was new, but 2x 460 SLI was faster and served nicely for a good while. With support & optimisations moving away from SLI/CF though (lesser gains, more stuttering, costly connectors, unlock codes, etc.), a single good GPU is more attractive, but the cost way up the scale compared to 5 years ago.Have a look at the Anand review for the 280 though, it shows what I mean: 2x 8800GT SLI was faster than the 280, but $200 cheaper and with excellent scaling. I had 2x 8800GT 1GB before switching to the two 460s. Today, mid-range cards don't even support SLI (GTX 1060).
Ian.
Meteor2 - Tuesday, March 14, 2017 - link
What about two RX480s? Can they top a 1080?aryonoco - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
The 780 Ti was released in November 2013.The 1080 Ti is being released now, in March 2017.
So 3.5 years later, Nvidia's flagship consumer card has improved 260% while using pretty much the same amount of power and generating pretty much the same level of noise.
If this continues, I can see that in the next few years, all sort of software will find a way to utilise the GPU more, not just games and neural networks.
Nvidia has a lot to be proud of. Their execution in the past few years has been Apple-esque.
Meteor2 - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Reflected in their share price!virtuastro - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
@Ryan SmithCan you test Intel i7 7700K, Intel-E Processors, and Ryzen 7 1800x with a GTX 1080ti in benchmark? :)
Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Unfortunately no. We don't have a central office; I'm in the US with the GPUs, and Ian is in the UK with the CPUs. He's working on game testing for Ryzen Part 2, but we likely won't be able to include the GTX 1080 Ti.virtuastro - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Aw dang. Thanks for answer anyway. :DMeteor2 - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
FedEx?