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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
161 Comments
View All Comments
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.