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.
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TheJian - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Depends on where you live. At a mere 3hrs per day (easy if more than one person uses it) at 270w difference even Ocing it, you end up $75 a year savings in a place like Australia. That ends up being $300 if you keep it for 4yrs, more if longer. In 15+ states in USA they are above 15c/kwh (au is 25.5c) so you'd save ~$45+ a year (at 15.5, again 14 quite a bit above this), so again $180 for 4yrs. There are many places around the world like AU.Note it pretty much catches 295x2 while doing it Oced. It won't put off as much heat either running 270w less, so in a place like AZ where I live, this card is a no brainer. Since I don't want to cool my whole house to game (no zoned air unfortunately), I have to think heat first. With Electricity rising yearly here, I have to think about that over the long haul too. TCO is important. One more point, you don't deal with any of the "problem" games on NV where crossfire does nothing for you. Single chip is always the way to go if possible.
If you have a kid, they can blow those watts up massively during summer for 3 months too! WOW users can do 21hrs on a weekend...LOL. I'd say Skyrim users etc too along with many rpg's that will suck the life out of you (pillars, witcher 3, etc). A kid can put in more time in the summer than an adult all year in today's world where they don't go out and play like I used to when I was a kid. You're shortsighted. Unless AMD's next card blows this away (and I doubt that, HBM will do nothing when bandwidth isn't the problem, as shown by gpu speeds giving far more than ocing memory), you won't see a price drop at all for a while either.
If rumors are true about $850-900 price for AMD's card these will run off the shelf for a good while if they don't win by a pretty hefty margin and drop the watts.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Add Elite Dangerous, Project Reality, GTA V, the upcoming Squad and various other games to your list of titles which one tends to play for long periods if at all.Ian.
Deacz - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
860€ atm :(ddferrari - Sunday, June 14, 2015 - link
I guess you're one of those people who care more about specs than actual performance. Seriously, is 28nm just too big for ya? It's 3% slower than the fastest gpu on Earth for $650, and you're whining about the transistor size... get a life.Michael Bay - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
I`d much rather read about 960...pvgg - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Me too...Ryan Smith - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
And you will. Next week.just4U - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
The 960 is a underwhelming overpriced product.. I'd be more interested in a Ti variant if I was looking to buy right now.. but no.. although that 980Ti is tempting, I'd never purchase it without seeing what AMD is doing next month.Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
"The 960 is a underwhelming overpriced product."There you go, Michael, you've read about it.
PEJUman - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
GM206 based 960xx? or a further cut on GM204? ;)My gut feel tells me it would be GM204 based: I am guessing ~3B trans on GM206 on a very mature 28nm process should be relatively doable without much defects.