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 ESTRise of the Tomb Raider
Starting things off in our benchmark suite is the built-in benchmark for Rise of the Tomb Raider, the latest iteration in the long-running action-adventure gaming series. One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 4 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.
As we’re looking at the highest of high-end cards here, the performance comparisons are pretty straightforward. There’s the GTX 1080 Ti versus the GTX 1080, and then for owners with older cards looking for an upgrade, there’s the GTX 1080 Ti versus the GTX 980 Ti and GTX 780 Ti. It goes without saying that the GTX 1080 Ti is the fastest card that is (or tomorrow will be) on the market, so the only outstanding question is just how much faster NVIDIA’s latest card really is.
As you’d expect, the GTX 1080 Ti’s performance lead is dependent in part on the resolution tested. The higher the resolution the more GPU-bound a game is, and the more opportunity there is for the card to stretch its 3GB advantage in VRAM. In the case of Tomb Raider, the GTX 1080 Ti ends up being 33% faster than the GTX 1080 at 4K, and 26% faster at 1440p.
Otherwise against the 28nm GTX 980 Ti and GTX 780 Ti, the performance gains become very large very quickly. The GTX 1080 Ti holds a 70% lead over the GTX 980 here at 4K, and it’s a full 2.6x faster than the GTX 780 Ti. The end result is that whereas the GTX 980 Ti was the first card to crack 30fps at 4K on Tomb Raider, the GTX 1080 Ti is the first card that can actually average 60fps or better.
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mapesdhs - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
It would be delayed for a month by their Customs lunacy. :DMeteor2 - Tuesday, March 14, 2017 - link
I'd love to see an Anandtech investigation of what pairings of CPU and GPU really do give the best FPS/price ratio. Could a 1080 Ti bottleneck an i5, for an example? Would a 7600 be ok but a 2500 choke?Gc - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti ...."Ti" is a clever marketing name for a penultimate card.
11GB further emphasizes that it is leading buyers toward the ultimate.
Ranger1065 - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Great review, well done Anandtech.TheJian - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Should be interesting to see how AMD does with 8GB for Vega.Looks like the best Vega can hope for is a tie and they themselves (Raja) said they only had enough software engineers to be working on Vulkan drivers. So that means Dx11/OpenGL and possible DX12 won't be very good, or could take ages to catch up if AMD doesn't make some money to hire more people. I really hope Vega launch doesn't end up like Ryzen (motherboards all over the place having issues, and SMT etc issues in games). I think I'll wait out Vega and maybe even 1080r2 with GDDR5x & faster clocks before jumping. Also have to wait for AMD to fix ryzen if they can. At least the motherboard part, as sites like PCper think the game part will stay the same forever. AMD talking Ryzen rev2 already (that fixes things) makes me think PCper etc are correct.
Still, an exciting time for hardware and a great time to buy a PC this year. Even the low end is getting a major boost probably. The 1060 is low to me no point in spending under $200 if you want to really game IMHO, faster speeds, GDDR5x, could be interesting. That combo could make a really great HTPC. I wonder how much faster 1060 will get. Pity it seems AMD has no access to GDDR5x as nvidia is using it all.
Just read Hardocp's review, 30-35% faster than 1080. Much the same as here. AMD has a rough road ahead (so do their shareholders). That said, competition is good :)
Ken_g6 - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Hm, 11GB RAM, 11Gbps, 11.3 TFLOPs. Why do I get the impression Marketing wanted to use the phrase "goes to eleven" for this card? Did they announce it with Spinal Tap music?Ryan Smith - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
They did not. Though clearly they should have.mapesdhs - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
Even SGI did this. IIRC:"audiopanel -spinaltap"
Changes the scale to 11. :D
oranos - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
pretty meh if you own a gtx 1080 already. higher TDP, lower base clocks.justaviking - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
30% faster is "meh"?