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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MrSpadge - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
An HBM2 equipped vega(n) rabbit?eek2121 - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Before you do that though, you should test Ryzen with the Ti. Reviewers everywhere are showing that for whatever reason, Ryzen shines with the 1080 Ti at 4k.just4U - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
I did a double take there as I actually thought you type pull a rabbit out of my a... Was like ... wait, what?? (..chuckle) Anyway, good review Ryan. I read about the Ti being out soon.. didn't realize it was here already.Drumsticks - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Nice review Ryan.I can't wait to see what Vega brings. I'm hoping we at least get a price war over a part that can sit in between the 1080 and Ti parts. I would love to see Vega pull off 75% faster than a Fury X (50% clock speed boost, 20% more IPC?) but wow that would be a tough order. Let's just hope AMD can bring some fire back to the market in May.
MajGenRelativity - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
I'm also extremely interested in seeing what Vega brings as well. My wallet is ready to drop the bills necessary to get a card in this price range, but I'm waiting for Vega to see who gets my money.ddriver - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
It will bring the same thing as ever - superior hardware nvidia will pay off most game developers to sandbag, forcing amd to sell at a very nice price to the benefit of people like me, who don't care about games but instead use gpus for compute.For compute amd's gpus are usually 2-3 TIMES better value than nvidia. And I have 64 7950s in desperate need of replacing.
MajGenRelativity - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
That's a lot of 7950s. What do you compute with them?A5 - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Fake internet money, I assume. And maybe help the power company calculate his bill...ddriver - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Nope, I do mostly 3D rendering, multiphysics simulations, video processing and such. Cryptocurrency is BS IMO, and I certainly don't need it.MajGenRelativity - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
I'm assuming you do that for your job? If not, that's an expensive hobby :P