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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
161 Comments
View All Comments
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