The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Review: Maxwell Mark 2
by Ryan Smith on September 18, 2014 10:30 PM ESTOverclocking GTX 980
One of GTX 750 Ti’s more remarkable features was its overclocking headroom. GM107 could overclock so well that upon initial release, NVIDIA did not program in enough overclocking headroom in their drivers to allow for many GTX 750 Ti cards to be overclocked to their true limits. This is a legacy we would be glad to see repeated for GTX 980, and is a legacy we are going to put to the test.
As with NVIDIA’s Kepler cards, NVIDIA’s Maxwell cards are subject to NVIDIA’s stringent power and voltage limitations. Overvolting is limited to NVIDIA’s built in overvoltage function, which isn’t so much a voltage control as it is the ability to unlock 1-2 more boost bins and their associated voltages. Meanwhile TDP controls are limited to whatever value NVIDIA believes is safe for that model card, which can vary depending on its GPU and its power delivery design.
For GTX 980 we have a 125% TDP limit, meanwhile we are able to overvolt by 1 boost bin to 1265MHz, which utilizes a voltage of 1.25v.
| GeForce GTX 980 Overclocking | ||||
| Stock | Overclocked | |||
| Core Clock | 1126MHz | 1377MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1216MHz | 1466MHz | ||
| Max Boost Clock | 1265MHz | 1515MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 7GHz | 7.8GHz | ||
| Max Voltage | 1.25v | 1.25v | ||
GTX 980 does not let us down, and like its lower end Maxwell 1 based counterpart the GTX 980 turns in an overclocking performance just short of absurd. Even without real voltage controls we were able to push another 250MHz (22%) out of our GM204 GPU, resulting in an overclocked base clock of 1377MHz and more amazingly an overclocked maximum boost clock of 1515MHz. That makes this the first NVIDIA card we have tested to surpass both 1.4GHz and 1.5GHz, all in one fell swoop.
This also leaves us wondering just how much farther GM204 could overclock if we were able to truly overvolt it. At 1.25v I’m not sure too much more voltage is good for the GPU in the long term – that’s already quite a bit of voltage for a TSMC 28nm process – but I suspect there is some untapped headroom left in the GPU at higher voltages.
Memory overclocking on the other hand doesn’t end up being quite as extreme, but we’ve known from the start that at 7GHz for the stock memory clock, we were already pushing the limits for GDDR5 and NVIDIA’s memory controllers. Still, we were able to work another 800MHz (11%) out of the memory subsystem, for a final memory clock of 7.8GHz.
Before we go to our full results, in light of GTX 980’s relatively narrow memory bus and NVIDIA’s color compression improvements, we quickly broke apart our core and memory overclock testing in order to test each separately. This is to see which overclock has more effect: the core overclock or the memory overclock. One would presume that the memory overclock is the more important given the narrow memory bus, but as it turns out that is not necessarily the case.
| GeForce GTX 980 Overclocking Performance | |||||
| Core (+22%) | Memroy (+11%) | Combined | |||
| Metro: LL |
+15%
|
+4%
|
+20%
|
||
| CoH2 |
+19%
|
+5%
|
+20%
|
||
| Bioshock |
+9%
|
+4%
|
+15%
|
||
| Battlefield 4 |
+10%
|
+6%
|
+17%
|
||
| Crysis 3 |
+12%
|
+5%
|
+15%
|
||
| TW: Rome 2 |
+16%
|
+7%
|
+20%
|
||
| Thief |
+12%
|
+6%
|
+16%
|
||
While the core overclock is greater overall to begin with, what we’re also seeing is that the performance gains relative to the size of the overclock consistently favor the core overclock to the memory overclock. With a handful of exceptions our 11% memory overclock is netting us less than a 6% increase in performance. Meanwhile our 22% core overclock is netting us a 12% increase or more. This despite the fact that when it comes to core overclocking, the GTX 980 is TDP limited; in many of these games it could clock higher if the TDP budget was large enough to accommodate higher sustained clockspeeds.
Memory overclocking is still effective, and it’s clear that GTX 980 spends some of its time memory bandwidth bottlenecked (otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing even these performance gains), but it’s simply not as effective as core overclocking. And since we have more core headroom than memory headroom in the first place, it’s a double win for core overclocking.
To put it simply, the GTX 980 was already topping the charts. Now with overclocking it’s another 15-20% faster yet. With this overclock factored in the GTX 980 is routinely 2x faster than the GTX 680, if not slightly more.
But you do pay for the overclock when it comes to power consumption. NVIDIA allows you to increase the TDP by 25%, and to hit these performance numbers you are going to need every bit of that. So what was once a 165W card is now a 205W card.
Even though overclocking involves raising the temperature limit to 91C, NVIDIA's fan curve naturally tops out at 84C. So even in the case of overclocking the GTX 980 isn't going to reach temperatures higher than the mid-80s.
The noise penalty for overclocking is also pretty stiff. Since we're otherwise TDP limited, all of our workloads top out at 53.6dB, some 6.6dB higher than stock. In the big picture this means the overclocked GTX 980 is still in the middl of the pack, but it is noticably louder than before and louder than a few of NVIDIA's other cards. However interestingly enough it's no worse than the original stock GTX 680 at Crysis 3, and still better than said GTX 680 under FurMark. It's also still quieter than the stock Radeon R9 290X, not to mention the louder yet uber mode.
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TheJian - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/09/19/maxwell-an...Did I miss it in the article or did you guys just purposely forget to mention NV claims it does DX12 too? see their own blog. Microsoft's DX12 demo runs on ...MAXWELL. Did I just miss the DX12 talk in the article? Every other review I've read mentions this (techpowerup, tomshardware, hardocp etc etc). Must be that AMD Center still having it's effect on your articles ;)
They were running a converted elemental demo (converted to dx12) and Fable Legends from MS. Yet curiously missing info from this site's review. No surprise I guess with only an AMD portal still :(
From the link above:
"Part of McMullen’s presentation was the announcement of a broadly accessible early access program for developers wishing to target DX12. Microsoft will supply the developer with DX12, UE4-DX12 and the source for Epic’s Elemental demo ported to run on the DX12-based engine. In his talk, McMullen demonstrated Maxwell running Elemental at speed and flawlessly. As a development platform for this effort, NVIDIA’s GeForce GPUs and Maxwell in particular is a natural vehicle for DX12 development."
So maxwell is a dev platform for dx12, but you guys leave that little detail out so newbs will think it doesn't do it? Major discussion of dx11 stuff missing before, now up to 11.3 but no "oh and it runs all of dx12 btw".
One more comment on 980: If it's a reference launch how come other sites already have OC versions (IE, tomshardware has a Windforce OC 980, though stupidly as usual they downclocked it and the two OC/superclocked 970's they had to ref clocks...ROFL - like you'd buy an OC card and downclock them)? IT seems to be a launch of OC all around. Newegg even has them in stock (check EVGA OC version):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
And with a $10 rebate so only $559 and a $5 gift card also.
"This model is factory overclocked to 1241 MHz Base Clock/1342 MHz Boost Clock (1126 MHz/1216 MHz for reference design)"
Who would buy ref for $10 diff? IN fact the ref cards are $569 at newegg, so you save buying the faster card...LOL.
cactusdog - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
TheJian, Wow, Did you read the article? Did you read the conclusion? AT says the 980 is "remarkable" , "well engineered", "impeccable design" and has "no competition" They covered almost all of Nvidia marketing talking points and you're going to accuse them of a conspiracy? Are you fking retarded??Daniel Egger - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
It would be nice to rather than just talk about about the 750 Ti to also include it in comparisons to see it clearer in perspective what it means to go from Maxwell I to Maxwell II in terms of performance, power consumption, noise and (while we are at it) performance per Watt and performance per $.Also where're the benchmarks for the GTX 970? I sure respect that this card is in a different ballpark but the somewhat reasonable power output might actually make the GTX 970 a viable candidate for an HTPC build. Is it also possible to use it with just one additional 6 Pin connector (since as you mentioned this would be within the specs without any overclocking) or does it absolutely need 2 of them?
SkyBill40 - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
As was noted in the review at least twice, they were having issues with the 970 and thus it won't be tested in full until next week (along with the 980 in SLI).MrSpadge - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Wow! This makes me upgrade from a GTX660Ti - not because of gaming (my card is fast enough for my needs) but because of the power efficiency gains for GP-GPU (running GPU-Grid under BOINC). Thank you nVidia for this marvelous chip and fair prices!jarfin - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
i still CANT understand amd 'uber' option.its totally out of test,bcoz its just 'oc'd' button,nothing else.
its must be just r290x and not anantech 'amd canter' way uber way.
and,i cant help that feeling,what is strong,that anatech is going badly amd company way,bcoz they have 'amd center own sector.
so,its mean ppl cant read them review for nvidia vs radeon cards race without thinking something that anatech keep raden side way or another.
and,its so clear thats it.
btw
i hope anantech get clear that amd card R9200 series is just competition for nvidia 90 series,bcoz that every1 kow amd skippedd 8000 series and put R9 200 series for nvidia 700 series,but its should be 8000 series.
so now,generation of gpu both side is even.
meaning that next amd r9 300 series or what it is coming amd company battle nvidia NEXT level gpu card,NOT 900 series.
there is clear both gpu card history for net.
thank you all
p.s. where is nvidia center??
Gigaplex - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Uber mode is not an overclock. It's a fan speed profile change to reduce thermal throttling (underclock) at the expense of noise.dexgen - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Ryan, Is it possible to see the average clock speeds in different tests after increasing the power and temperature limit in afterburner?And also once the review units for non-reference cards come in it would be very nice to see what the average clock speeds for different cards with and without increased power limit would be. That would be a great comparison for people deciding which card to buy.
silverblue - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Exceptional by NVIDIA; it's always good to see a more powerful yet more frugal card especially at the top end.AMD's power consumption could be tackled - at least partly - by some re-engineering. Do they need a super-wide memory bus when NVIDIA are getting by with half the width and moderately faster RAM? Tonga has lossless delta colour compression which largely negates the need for a wide bus, although they did shoot themselves in the foot by not clocking the memory a little higher to anticipate situations where this may not help the 285 overcome the 280.
Perhaps AMD could divert some of their scant resources towards shoring up their D3D performance to calm down some of the criticism because it does seem like they're leaving performance on the table and perhaps making Mantle look better than it might be as a result.
Luke212 - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Where are the SGEMM compute benchmarks you used to put on high end reviews?