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 ESTGrand Theft Auto V
The latest edition of Rockstar’s venerable series of open world action games, Grand Theft Auto V was originally released to the last-gen consoles back in 2013. However thanks to a rather significant facelift for the current-gen consoles and PCs, along with the ability to greatly turn up rendering distances and add other features like MSAA and more realistic shadows, the end result is a game that is still among the most stressful of our benchmarks when all of its features are turned up. Furthermore, in a move rather uncharacteristic of most open world action games, Grand Theft Auto also includes a very comprehensive benchmark mode, giving us a great chance to look into the performance of an open world action game.
On a quick note about settings, as Grand Theft Auto V doesn't have pre-defined settings tiers, I want to quickly note what settings we're using. For "Very High" quality we have all of the primary graphics settings turned up to their highest setting, with the exception of grass, which is at its own very high setting. Meanwhile 4x MSAA is enabled for direct views and reflections. This setting also involves turning on some of the advanced redering features - the game's long shadows, high resolution shadows, and high definition flight streaming - but it not increasing the view distance any further.
Otherwise for "High" quality we take the same basic settings but turn off all MSAA, which significantly reduces the GPU rendering and VRAM requirements.
Grand Theft Auto V is another game where the GTX 1080 Ti won’t quite reach 60fps at 4K with all the bells & whistles, but it gets close in doing so. Given that this was originally a console game that ran at 30fps, 51.1 should make a lot of people reasonably satisfied, but there’s always room for improvement.
Relative to the GTX 980 Ti, this is actually the GTX 1080 Ti’s best game; it picks up a better-than-average 83% in performance. I suspect that GTAV is an outlier that is especially memory bandwidth sensitive, benefitting from the combination of a raw 44% increase in memory bandwidth from the previous generation, and NVIDIA’s improved memory compression technology on the Pascal architecture.
Looking at the minimum framerates, the story is much the same. For gamers looking for high minimum framerates, the GTX 1080 Ti is the first card that can deliver better than 30fps at the 99th percentile. So while it can’t average 60fps, it also will never drop to the 30fps rate that its console counterparts are capped at in the first place.
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ddriver - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Yeah, also amd was free to offer discounts to those who didn't sell intel products. They helped make two games, and gave Larry who only sells amd systems a free amd t-shirt as a reward. Because that's what amd can afford, after years of being sandbagged by intel and Hecktor made it buy ati for 3 times what it was worth so it can go bankrupt so it will be forced to sell its fabs to Hecktor's arab boyfriends.eddman - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
You did not answer the question.Being known in the industry for many years, yet nothing has happened.
ddriver - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
What nvidia does is the same thing as lobying. It is legalized bribe. You cannot give a briefcase of money to a politician and tell him to do what you want him to. But you can spend a briefcase of money to make a politician do what you want him to do. And it is not illegal, politicians have legalized it, and as far as they and the lobbyists are concerned, that is a good thing, a political contribution.The same kind of advantage that allows nvidia to do that is what would give them the upper hand in court. It could be proven to be a crime, if only amd had enough money to out-sue nvidia. Which they don't. And if they did, they'd be able to support game developers, so it wouldn't even come to that. nvidia is friends with the big boys, amd is a perpetual underdog. In such scenarios, even if a lawsuit was to take place, it would be mostly a show for the public, and if found guilty, the punishment would be a symbolic and gentle slap on the wrist.
Now, with your question answered, do you feel better?
ddriver - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
There is high likelihood that we will see such a case against nvidia, but not until they have completely cemented their dominance position, and that case would only serve to wipe nvidia clean, so they can enjoy their dominance without being haunted by their past of sleazy illegal practices, giving them a clean slate at a very desirable price.eddman - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
So it is not illegal to help devs doing optimizations?ddriver - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
It can be as legal or illegal as killing people. What nvidia does is most certainly unfair business practices and abuse of its position.The legal system is rarely about what is right or wrong. What nvidia does is certainly wrong. If they can get away with it, it is legal. If someone kills your entire family and then walks free because the legal system found him to be innocent, would you be as OK and defending his innocence as you are doing for nvidia?
eddman - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
That comparison isn't even remotely relevant.Companies work with devs in the entire computing industry all the time to make sure software works best with hardware. It has never been illegal.
ddriver - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Are you by a chance on the spectrum? There is nothing wrong with helping to optimize software. For the last time - what is wrong is offering that help on implied exclusive terms. I don't know people who have been offered support by amd in exchange of sandbagging nvidia. But I know people who eventually optimized for amd and as a result lost the support nvidia offered prior to that. And the revenge didn't end there either, subsequent driver releases significantly worsened the performance of the already nvidia optimized code.nvidia doesn't help out of the kindness of their hearts or awesomeness, they do not even help to make the best out of their hardware, they only help if that would get them an unfair advantage, so it is implied that their help is only available to those who leave the amd rendering pipeline deliberately unoptimized.
eddman - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
...and some other people tell otherwise. Who to believe. Can you provide anything solid to back that up?"subsequent driver releases significantly worsened the performance of the already nvidia optimized code"
Which games? Which drivers? This one can be tested.
Why would nvidia reduce the performance of a game on their own cards, which is going to hurt them? The whole purpose of this was to make the game work best and sell cards based on that.
eddman - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
What about you? Are you on the spectrum?