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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RaistlinZ - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
What more would a review of the 960 tell you that you don't already know, honestly? I'd rather read reviews about interesting products like the 980Ti. People need to let the 960 review go already, geez.Michael Bay - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
I only trust AT numbers and am in no hurry to upgrade.God I wish they would compare Baytrail/Cherrytrail to i3s.
Brett Howse - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
I did compare Cherry Trail to the i3 SP3 in the Surface 3 review. Was there more you were looking for?Michael Bay - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I`m trying to get a cheap small notebook for my father. He is currently on i3-380UM and the choice is between N3558 and i3-4030U. Workload is strictly internet browsing/ms office.Not much point in changing anything if performance is going to be worse than it was...
sandy105 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Exactly , it would be interesting to see how much faster than baytrail they are ?DanNeely - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
DVI may be an obsolescent standard at this point; but 4/5k gaming is still expensive enough that a lot of the people buying into it now are ones who're upgrading from older 2560x1600 displays that don't do DP/HDMI 2. A lot of those people will probably keep using their old monitor as a secondary display after getting a new higher resolution one (I know I plan to); and good DL-DVI to display port adapters are still relatively expensive at ~$70. (There're cheaper ones; but they've all got lots of bad reviews from people who found they weren't operating reliably and were generating display artifacts: messed up scan lines.) Unless it dies first, I'd like to be able to keep using my existing NEC 3090 for a few more years without having to spend money on an expensive dongle.YazX_ - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Dude, majority are still playing on 1920x1080 and just few now are making the leap to 2560x1440p, i have been gaming on 1440p since two years and not planning to go 4k anytime soon since hardware still not mature enough to play at 4k comfortably with single video card.thus, DVI is not going anywhere since dual layer DVI supports 1440p and probably most of 1080p gamers are using DVI unless if they have G-Sync or want to use Adaptive V-Sync then they have to use DP, and dont forget that there are too many people who bought 27" Korean 1440 monitors that doesnt have except DVI ports.
DanNeely - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
If you're playing at 1920/60hz this card's massive overkill, and in any event it's a non-issue for you because your monitor is only using a single link in the DVI and you can use a dirt cheap passive DVI-HDMI/DP adapter now; and worst case would only need a cheap single link adapter in the future.My comment was directed toward Ryan's comment on page 2 (near the bottom, above the last picture) suggesting that the DVI port wasn't really needed since any monitor it could drive wouldn't need this much horse power to run games.
FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
totally disagree - I game at 1920x1200, the only rez the 980ti is capable of without knocking down the eye candy.Kutark - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Exactly. I literally just now upgraded to a 1440p monitor, and i can't even express in words how little of a sh*t i give about 4k gaming. Ive been a hardware nerd for a long time, but when i got into home theater i learned just how much resolution actually matters. 4k is overkill for a 120" projected image at a 15' seating distance. 4k at normal desk viewing distances is way beyond overkill. They've done tests on fighter pilots who have ridiculous vision, like 20/7.5 and such, and even they can't see a difference at those seating distances. 4k is almost as much of a marketing BS gimmick than 3D was for tv's.Anyways im clearly getting angry. But point still stands, every single gamer i know is still on 1080p, i was the first to splurge on a 1440p monitor. And now its put me into a position where my SLI'd 760's aren't really doing the deed, especially being 2gb cards. So, 980ti fits the bill for my gsync 144hz 1440p monitor just about perfectly.