The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Review: Maxwell Mark 2
by Ryan Smith on September 18, 2014 10:30 PM ESTCompany of Heroes 2
Our second benchmark in our benchmark suite is Relic Games’ Company of Heroes 2, the developer’s World War II Eastern Front themed RTS. For Company of Heroes 2 Relic was kind enough to put together a very strenuous built-in benchmark that was captured from one of the most demanding, snow-bound maps in the game, giving us a great look at CoH2’s performance at its worst. Consequently if a card can do well here then it should have no trouble throughout the rest of the game.
Since CoH2 is not AFR compatible, the best performance you’re going to get out of it is whatever you can get out of a single GPU. In which case the GTX 980 is the fastest card out there for this game. AMD’s R9 290XU does hold up well though; the GTX 980 may have a lead, but AMD is never more than a few percent behind at 4K and 1440p. The lead over the GTX 780 Ti is much more substantial on the other hand at 13% to 22%. So NVIDIA has finally taken this game back from AMD, as it were.
Elsewhere against the GTX 680 this is another very good performance for the GTX 980, with a performance advantage over 80%.
On an absolute basis, at these settings you’re looking at an average framerate in the 40s, which for an RTS will be a solid performance.
However when it comes to minimum framerates, GTX 980 can’t quite stay on top. In every case it is ever so slightly edged out by the R9 290XU by a fraction of a frame per second. AMD seems to weather the hardest drops in framerates just a bit better than NVIDIA does. Though neither card can quite hold the line at 30fps at 1440p and 4K.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
274 Comments
View All Comments
Stuka87 - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Why is it you guys are still using reference 290/290X cards for testing? Are they even being sold anymore?Oh, and I am having trouble believing nVidias claimed power consumption. It's certainly lower than a 780ti or 290x but not the 90W that is claimed according to the graphs.
arbit3r - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
looked at a few review sites, and its least 90watts some sites its a lot more but one that is closest is still about 90. AMD has been known to under state the true draw of their cards and even their CPU's. It tends to be higher then they say.Ryan Smith - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
We use reference cards whenever possible. And yes, the reference 290X is still being sold.That said, we include both normal and uber modes for this reason. Uber mode will be comparable to an open air (custom) 290X.
Stuka87 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Except when it comes to noise and heat, the open air cards are significantly better there. But I understand why you use reference cards.bill5 - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Barely beating AMD's ancient R9 290X...doesn't look good for Nvidia's new generation considering AMD's new line is due soon at the high end. Yet they barely need it as their old line is close to competitive already!arbit3r - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
it beats it using like 75-100+watts less power. On top of being overclocking monster where as AMD's card doesn't Overclock so much.kron123456789 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I think the new top-end AMDs card will have TDP around 350-400W and have a cooler similar to 295X2 :)jase240 - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Many of the pages are blank and show nothing for me, including the overclocking section.Stuka87 - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
If you read the first page, Ryan stated that things are still being uploaded.SirMaster - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Where are the Overclocking results?