The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTCrysis 3
Still one of our most punishing benchmarks, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers and still holds “most punishing shooter” title in our benchmark suite. Only in a handful of setups can we even run Crysis 3 at its highest (Very High) settings, and that’s still without AA. Crysis 1 was an excellent template for the kind of performance required to drive games for the next few years, and Crysis 3 looks to be much the same for 2015.
Once more we find the GTX 980 Ti and GTX Titan X virtually tied. Across all settings and resolutions the GTX 980 Ti stays within 97-98% of the Titan’s performance. Consequently GTX Titan X is ever so marginally better, but not enough to make any real difference.
This also means that GTX 980 Ti continues with its very strong lead over the GTX 980. Once more we’re looking at a 26-31% performance advantage for the latest member of the GTX 900 series, in-line with its price premium.
Meanwhile on an absolute basis, as one of our most punishing games this is also a good reminder of why even GM200 cards can’t quite pull off high quality 4K gaming with a single GPU today. Even without MSAA and one step below Crysis 3’s Very High quality settings, the GTX 980 Ti can only muster 40.9fps. If you want to get to 60fps you will need to drop to Low quality, or drop the resolution to 1440p. The latter will get you 83.2fps at the same quality settings, which again highlights GTX 980 Ti’s second strength as a good card for driving high refresh rate 1440p displays.
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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!