The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTOverclocking
Finally, no review of a high-end video card would be complete without a look at overclocking performance.
From a design standpoint, GTX 980 Ti already ships close to its power limits. NVIDIA’s 250W TDP can only be raised another 10% – to 275W – meaning that in TDP limited scenarios there’s not much headroom to play with. On the other hand with the stock voltage being relatively low, in clockspeed limited scenarios there’s still some room for pushing the performance envelope through overvolting. And neither of these options addresses the most potent aspect of overclocking, which is pushing the entire clockspeed curve higher at the same voltages by increasing the clockspeed offsets.
GTX Titan X by comparison ended up being a good overclocker, and while we'd expect GTX 980 Tis to use slightly lower quality chips as part of the binning process, it should still overclock rather well.
| GeForce GTX 980 Ti Overclocking | ||||
| Stock | Overclocked | |||
| Core Clock | 1000MHz | 1250MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1075Mhz | 1326MHz | ||
| Max Boost Clock | 1202MHz | 1477MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 7GHz | 8GHz | ||
| Max Voltage | 1.187v | 1.23v | ||
Overall we're able to get another 250MHz (25%) out of the GTX 980 Ti's GPU, and another 1GHz (14%) out of its VRAM. This pushes the GTX 980 Ti's clockspeeds up to 1326MHz for the standard boost clock, and 1477MHz for the maximum boost clock. The card is heavily TDP limited at this point, so it's unlikely to sustain clockspeeds over 1400MHz, but working clockspeeds in the 1300MHz range are certainly sustainable. Meanwhile interestingly enough, this is actually a slightly better overclock than what we saw with the GTX Titan X; the Titan was only able to get another 200MHz out of its GPU and 800MHz out of its memory. So GTX 980 Ti ends up being the better overclocker by 50MHz.
The gains from this overclock are a very consistent across all 5 of our sample games at 4K, with the average performance increase being 20%. Though not quite enough to push the GTX 980 Ti above 60fps in Shadow of Mordor or Crysis 3, it is enough to crack 60fps on Battlefield 4 and The Talos Principle.
The cost of that 20% overclock in terms of power and noise is similarly straightforward. You're looking at an increased power cost of 30W or so at the wall – in-line with the 25W increase in the card’s TDP – while on the noise front the GTX 980 Ti is pushed out of its sweet spot. Card noise levels will increase by around 4.5dB(A).
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PEJUman - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I agree, the fact that AMD new 3xx is mostly (sans 1 new GPU) rebrands scares the crap out of me. and Nvidia knows it too, that's why we're getting the bad witcher 3 on gameworks @ kepler, astronomical prices and a generally very 'apple like marketing' from nvidia.Don't get me wrong, I certainly appreciate the level of refinements that Nvidia brings to the table, but without any answer from AMD, prices are very far from reasonable.
few years ago, I would never guessed PC gaming will be dead due to single GPU supplier situation, nowadays I am a lot more unsure...
Yojimbo - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
In that case why assume that the 980 should have been dropped in price more. Maybe the 980 Ti should have been priced at $700?The difference between $500 and $650 is palpable. And the performance one requires depends on the monitor one has. What you seem to be saying is you would be willing to pay more than 30% price premium for a 30% increase in performance, which is usual. But when prices are actually set that way, there always seem to be people complaining the premium card is priced too high, and quoting the price/performance difference as the reason.
chizow - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
@Yojimbo lol so true, people seem to think price:perf should be perfectly linear and comparable to some bargain bin part at $75, but if that was always the case, we'd all be using 2-3 gen old cards that can't play the games we want to play, today.dragonsqrrl - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
The 980 is $550, not $499. Despite that it still has a similar price/performance ratio to the 980 Ti. So technically it's no worse of a deal than the 980 Ti, but I think the 980 should still drop in price to ~$500 or $450. It should have a better price/performance ratio than the higher-end Ti.jjj - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
The 980 price has been dropped to 499$ and the point was that the TI and the 970 are much better buys, the 870 being way cheaper for little perf loss while the TI offers a lot more perf and is far better at 4k.dragonsqrrl - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Ahh, sorry I missed that. However, at $500 the 980 still has a similar price/performance ratio as the 980 Ti. So while I do think it should drop by more, I'm also a bit confused by why people are calling it a terrible buy when it really isn't anymore terrible than the Ti at $650.just4U - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
(...sigh) $740 here in Canada.dragonsqrrl - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
:(o-k - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
could you please make sure this time that the ram is 384-Bit, 6GB total @ 7GHz GDDR5. Please double check.D. Lister - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
No, drop everything in your life AT staff, and effing TRIPLE check, and make sure to provide a notarized video of the process. Anything, ANYTHING at all, that can wash away the salt of the AMD rebadge, C'MOOOOON!