The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Review: Maxwell Mark 2
by Ryan Smith on September 18, 2014 10:30 PM ESTBioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite is Irrational Games’ latest entry in the Bioshock franchise. Though it’s based on Unreal Engine 3 – making it our obligatory UE3 game – Irrational had added a number of effects that make the game rather GPU-intensive on its highest settings. As an added bonus it includes a built-in benchmark composed of several scenes, a rarity for UE3 engine games, so we can easily get a good representation of what Bioshock’s performance is like.
Even with advanced depth of field effects, our highest end video cards are starting to run away with Bioshock: Infinite. That is particularly true for the GTX 980, which in a game that NVIDIA frequently does well in further props up the GTX 980’s advantage. Only at 4K are the R9 290XU and GTX 980 anywhere near close, otherwise at 1440p it’s a 37% performance advantage. GTX 780 Ti on the other hand holds much closer, still falling behind the GTX 980 but only by around 5% at sub-4K resolutions. This does make for a good moment for showcasing the GTX 980’s greater ROP throughput though; as we crank up the resolution to 4K, the 780 Ti falls further behind, especially when we’re at lower quality settings that leave us less shader-bound.
On an absolute basis 120Hz/144Hz gamer should have a blast even with a single GTX 980 at 1080p, while purists will need more performance for 1440p than the 85fps the card can offer. And at 4K the GTX 980 is doing very well for itself, almost cracking 60fps at High quality, and becoming the only card to crack 40fps with Ultra quality.
This will be one of the weaker showings for the GTX 980 over the GTX 680 though; at sub-4K resolutions it’s only a 60-65% performance improvement.
Meanwhile Bioshock is the first of 5 games we can reliably measure with the FCAT tools to check for frame pacing consistency. Bioshock is a bit more erratic than most games in this respect, and while our general rule of thumb for an excellent performance from a single card is 3%, our recording for GTX 980 is a bit higher at 3.5%. On the other hand at 4K it measures in at just 2.3%. So while frame pacing is going to be a bit of a rubber stamping process overall, we can confirm that GTX 980 is delivering a good frame pacing experience in Bioshock.
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Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
As noted in the article, we had a problem with our 970 sample that was not able to be resolved in time for this article. Otherwise I would have very much liked to have a 970 in this review.Sunrise089 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
"Focus on quality first, then timeliness second. There's value in both but there's more value in one." :(extide - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Yeah guys, seriously just make the article live a little bit late!hpglow - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
The boss quits and all you guys around running around the office with your shirts off screaming at the top of your lungs? The review could have waited and hour or two so that it was done, now I'm not even going to finish reading it.iLovefloss - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
They've been doing this since forever. If you look at the comments from the R9 290X launch review, people were complaining about the same thing for example.Sunrise089 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Including me. It was unacceptable clIck-baiting then and it still is. Interestingly enough it's not a site-wide issue. Surface Pro 3 and Devils Canyon both had long waits for ultimately excellent reviews. iPhone 6 will no doubt be a very popular review and yet Joshua or whoever didn't push it online at midnight. For whatever reason though GPU reviews get this weird 'rush to publish, fill in content later' pattern.djscrew - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
diva much? jeez give it a restnathanddrews - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
This is not the first time AT has done this, there have been many other incomplete reviews published over the years (decades).chizow - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
@hpglow, in Ryan's defense, it was a short turnaround from the press briefing and this has happened in the past. Usually AT's articles focus heavily on the technical aspects also (which is greatly appreciated throughout the industry) and he also gets help from the rest of the staff to stitch the review together, so it is understandable that it is sometimes uploaded piecemeal.I would rather have something that is eventually updated that stands the test of time, vs. something that is rushed out hastily.
SodaAnt - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
You think that it would only take an hour or two to get a gpu somehow, run dozens of tests on it, put those tests into tables, put those tables onto pages, then write another few thousand words on those tests?