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 ESTDriver Performance & The Test
Alongside the launch of the GTX 1080 Ti, NVIDIA is also touting the performance of their drivers. For most users who have been regularly updating their drivers to begin with, I don’t think there’s anything too surprising here. But because of NVIDIA’s talk of driver performance gains, I’ve already seen some confusion here over whether the GTX 1080 Ti launch driver (378.78) is a special performance driver or not. For the record, it is not.
In their presentation, NVIDIA outlined their driver performance gains in DX12 since the launch of various DX12 games, including Ashes of the Singularity, Hitman, and Rise of the Tomb Raider. All of these games have seen performance improvements, but what’s critical here is that this is over the long-run, since the launch of the GTX 1080 and these respective games.
The 378.78 driver in that respect is nothing special. In terms of driver release, NVIDIA is already a few releases into the R378 branch, so any big code changes for this branch have already been released to the public in earlier driver builds.
In any case, for reference purposes, here’s how performance of the GTX 1080 stacks up now compared to performance at launch.
| GeForce GTX Driver Performance Gains: July 2016 vs. March 2017 (4K) | |||
| Game | GTX 1080 | GTX 980 Ti | |
| Rise of the Tomb Raider |
Even
|
Even
|
|
| DiRT Rally |
+8%
|
+7%
|
|
| Ashes of the Singularity |
+11%
|
+14%
|
|
| Battlefield 4 |
Even
|
Even
|
|
| Crysis 3 |
Even
|
Even
|
|
| The Witcher 3 |
|
Even
|
|
| The Division* |
-7%
|
-9%
|
|
| Grand Theft Auto V |
+2%
|
Even
|
|
| Hitman (DX12) |
+26%
|
+24%
|
|
As was the case with NVIDIA’s data, the performance gains vary from game to game. Some games have not budged, whereas others like Hitman have improved significantly, and outlier The Division has actually regressed a bit due to some major updates that have happened to the game in the same time period. But at the end of the day, these are performance gains that have accumulated over the months and are already available in the latest drivers from NVIDIA.
The Test
For our review of the GTX 1080 Ti, we’re using NVIDIA’s 378.78 driver.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti AMD Radeon Fury X |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 378.78 AMD Radeon Software Crimson 17.3.1 |
| OS: | Windows 10 Pro |
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SaolDan - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
i dont need it but i really want it. currently gaming and vr on a 1070 and loving it.Endda - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Would have loved to see the Titan XP in those graphsRyan Smith - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Unfortunately NVIDIA never sampled us on that one, so I don't have one on-hand to test again.Samus - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Can't wait to pickup one of these in a year for ~$400. Easily future-proof for the next generation of console games, and my 780Ti is really showing its age, by about 154%...Nfarce - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
If you think you are going to see a 1080Ti in 12 months selling for $400, I've got a like-new Ferrari to selling you for $15k. It will be nearly summer before the AIB GPUs (ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, etc.) start becoming available in decent supply.rtho782 - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
I know I'm an outlier, but having lived with SLI 980s for a couple of years I'm looking to go back to a single card, and I really wish I could find SLI 980 to 1080ti benchmarks :PDrumsticks - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
I think the original AT review of the 1080 compares them. Go there and just tack on another 30% maybe?mapesdhs - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
If it's of any help, I've done a fair few 980 SLI tests for 3DMark, Unigine, etc., you could compare those to 1080 Ti reviews (several sites have included 3DMark results, and Techpowerup has a couple of Unigine results threads/tables); PM me for links, or email (Google "Ian SGI", find the Contact page, use my Yahoo address).Achaios - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
It should be borne in mind that Benchmark results are misleading, especially when referring to the 780TI.The 780TI launched at ridiculously low clocks of 875MHz Core Clock and 928 MHz Boost Clock, which wasn't much different from what a GTX 580 OC'd could do.
When overclocked, the 780TI worked at around 1.25 GHz, a huge difference over the stock card.
So, while the 1080TI has got more than double the performance of an OC'd 780TI as per 3D Mark Firestrike, the performance shown herein for the 780TI is ridiculously low and thus, misleading.
Yojimbo - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
I guess if you're worried about someone making judgments of general GPU trends without fully researching it, that's true. But owners of 780 Ti cards should be aware of where their individual cards sit compared to the reference design. In any case it's always going to be hairy taking overclocking performance into account when making judgments about generational trends. For instance, 2017 1060s and 1080s are going to be able to overclock better than 2016 1060s and 1080s. There's also a whole range of clock speeds that come out. Do you take the fastest or the average? If you take the average do you take the average of the SKUs or an average weighted by units sold? It's not so easy to get an accurate picture without a lot of work.