The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Review: Maxwell Mark 2
by Ryan Smith on September 18, 2014 10:30 PM ESTThief
Our latest addition to our benchmark suite is Eidos Monreal’s stealth action game, Thief. Set amidst a Victorian-era fantasy environment, Thief is an Unreal Engine 3 based title which makes use of a number of supplementary Direct3D 11 effects, including tessellation and advanced lighting. Adding further quality to the game on its highest settings is support for SSAA, which can eliminate most forms of aliasing while bringing even the most powerful video cards to their knees.
Thief is another solid win for the GTX 980. The closest anyone gets to it is within 10%, and the lead only widens from there. Against the GTX 780 Ti, this is a lead of anywhere between 10% and 16%, and against the R9 290 XU it’s 15-22%; Mantle doing the card no favors for average framerates above 1080p.
The performance advantage over the GTX 780 and GTX 680 is also above average. GTX 980 can outrun the previous x80 card by 33% or more, and the GTX 680 by at least 80%.
On an absolute basis the GTX 980 won’t quite crack 60fps at 1440p, but it does come very close at 56fps. And since thief is running an internal form of SSAA, turning up the resolution to 4K and dropping the SSAA still yields playable framerates, though at 48fps it’s closer to 45 than 60. 60fps is going to require a bit more horsepower than what a single GTX 980 can deliver today.
The GTX 980’s performance advantage generally holds up when it comes to minimum framerates as well. Though it is interesting to note that until we get to 4K, the GTX 980 holds a larger minimum framerate advantage over the GTX 780 Ti than it does an average framerate advantage – 20% verus about 10%. On the other hand the use of Mantle begins to close the gap for the R9 290XU a bit, but it’s still not enough to make up for the GTX 980’s strong overall performance advantage, especially at 1080p.
Our delta percentages are once more unremarkable. All cards are consistently below 3% here.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
274 Comments
View All Comments
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?