The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTMiddle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Our next benchmark is Monolith’s popular open-world action game, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. One of our current-gen console multiplatform titles, Shadow of Mordor is plenty punishing on its own, and at Ultra settings it absolutely devours VRAM, showcasing the knock-on effect of current-gen consoles have on VRAM requirements.
Another game, another set of benchmarks where the GTX 980 Ti and GTX Titan X are more or less tied. In this case the latest GM200 card closes the tiny gap even more, bringing the difference between the two down to 1-2% in favor of the GTX Titan X. Meanwhile the GTX 980 Ti’s advantage over the GTX 980 is as strong as ever, beating the most powerful of the GM204 cards by 30% or more.
On an absolute basis, as with Crysis 3 GTX 980 Ti won’t be enough for 60fps at 4K, but at 47.9fps it’s closer to 60fps than 30fps, representing a significant improvement in 4K performance in only a generation. Turning down the game’s quality settings to Very High does improve performance a bit, but at 53.7fps it’s still not quite enough for 60fps. The biggest advantage of Very High quality is alleviating some of the high VRAM requirements, not that the GTX 980 Ti seems to mind even at 6GB. Otherwise dropping to 1440p will give us a significant bump in performance, pushing framerates over 80fps once again.
Looking at minimum framerates, we find the one and only place under which the GTX 980 Ti may be struggling to keep up with its Titan sibling. While it held very close to the GTX Titan X in average framerates, the minimum framerate finds a larger, distinct gap between the two, with the GTX 980 Ti trailing by 8%. That said, minimum framerates are inherently more unreliable than averages, and other than a momentary dip the GTX 980 Ti is doing quite well here, so while it’s a less-than-perfect showing, I don’t believe we’re seeing any kind of real impact from VRAM differences. Note that the 4GB cards don’t seem to be worse off despite being short a further 2GB of VRAM.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
290 Comments
View All Comments
Klimax - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
@zepi: Perfect scaling on non-Intel's fabs doesn't exist as 16/14nm has 20nm metal layer and thus cannot scale as effectively.Refuge - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Distribution costs them more than manufacturing. lolChaser - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
That's pointless. 28nm with (Nvidia at least) is very energy efficient and as seen by this review a steal for the power this card delivers. It's a Titan X at $650.00. You're just desperately trying to find anything you can try and gripe about.Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
A GPU that expensive only qualifies as a steal if you're Leona Helmsley.mapesdhs - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
2019 says hold my beer. :)Mark_gb - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Nvidia must make a living. No matter who they have to run over in the process. You, me, AMD... Doesn't matter. I imagine that at Nvidia, the mantra is "MUST MAKE MONEY! LOTS AND LOTS OF MONEY!", and that it repeats all day long, every day.P. T. Barnum was right... "There's a sucker born every minute."... and we are them.
Michael Bay - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
What a shock that must be, for-profit corporation going about making profit. How dare they.mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Indeed, quite shocking. :)Personally I hope they make oodles of the stuff, so they can reinvest and make even better tech, because, my heavens, that's how private companies function. :D
It's weird how people complain about companies making profits, yet the very existence & continued success of a company depends on profits (unless of course one is AMD and somehow gets away with year after year of losses without going under).
(btw MB, please stop making crap Transformers movies... ;D Sorry, couldn't resist, hehe...)
FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
the arabs have been shoring up amd - it's dirty oil money for the crime that amd isfingerbob69 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Yeah ...but imagine how pissed you'd be if you'd brought a titan x in the last couple of months!I hope that extra 3% feels good!