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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chizow - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Yes, its unprecedented to launch a full stack of rebrands with just 1 new ASIC, as AMD has done not once, not 2x, not even 3x, but 4 times with GCN (7000 to Boost/GE, 8000 OEM, R9 200, and now R9 300) Generally it is only the low-end, or a gap product to fill a niche. The G92/b isn't even close to this as it was rebranded numerous times over a short 9 month span (Nov 2007 to July 2008), while we are bracing ourselves for AMD rebrands going back to 2011 and Pitcairn.Gigaplex - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
If it's the 4th time as you claim, then by definition, it's most definitely not unprecedented.chizow - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
The first 3 rebrands were still technically within that same product cycle/generation. This rebrand certainly isn't, so rebranding an entire stack with last-gen parts is certainly unprecedented. At least, relative to Nvidia's full next-gen product stack. Hard to say though given AMD just calls everything GCN 1.x, like inbred siblings they have some similarities, but certainly aren't the same "family" of chips.Refuge - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Thanks Gigaplex, you beat me to it... lolchizow - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Cool maybe you can beat each other and show us the precedent where a GPU maker went to market with a full stack of rebrands against the competition's next generation line-up. :)FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
Nothing like total fanboy denialKevin G - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
The G92 got its last prebrand in 2009 and was formally replaced on in 2010 by the GTX 460. It had a full three year life span on the market.The GTS/GTX 200 series as mostly rebranded. There was the GT200 chip on the high end that was used for the GTX 260 and up. The low end silently got the GT216 for the Geforce 210 a year after the GTX 260/280 launch. At this time, AMD was busy launching the Radeon 4000 series which brought a range of new chips to market as a new generation.
Pitcairn came out in 2012, not 2011. This would mimic the life span of the G92 as well as the number of rebrands. (It never had a vanilla edition, it started with the Ghz edition as the 7870.)
chizow - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
@Kevin G, nice try at revisionist history, but that's not quite how it went down. G92 was rebranded numerous times over the course of a year or so, but it did actually get a refresh from 65nm to 55nm. Indeed, G92 was even more advanced than the newer GT200 in some ways, with more advanced hardware encoding/decoding that was on-die, rather than on a complementary ASIC like G80/GT200.Also, at the time, prices were much more compacted at the time due to economic recession, so the high-end was really just a glorified performance mid-range due to the price wars started by the 4870 and the economics of the time.
Nvidia found it was easier to simply manipulate the cores on their big chip than to come out with a number of different ASICs, which is how we ended up with GTX 260 core 192, core 216 and the GTX 275:
Low End: GT205, 210, GT 220, GT 230
Mid-range: GT 240, GTS 250
High-end: GTX 260, GTX 275
Enthusiast: GTX 280, GTX 285, GTX 295
The only rebranded chip in that entire stack is the G92, so again, certainly not the precedent for AMD's entire stack of Rebrandeon chips.
Kevin G - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
@chizowOut of that list of GTS/GTX200 series, the new chip in that line up in 2008 was the GT200 and the GT218 that was introduced over a year later in late 2009. For 9 months on the market the three chips used in the 200 series were rebrands of the G94, rebrands of the G92 and the new GT200. The ultra low end at this time was filled in by cards still carrying the 9000 series branding.
The G92 did have a very long life as it was introduced as the 8800GTS with 512 MB in late 2007. In 2008 it was rebranded the 9800GTX roughly six months after it was first introduced. A year later in 2009 the G92 got a die shrink and rebranded as both the GTS 150 for OEMs and GTS 250 for consumers.
So yeah, AMD's R9 300 series launch really does mimic what nVidia did with the GTS/GTX 200 series.
FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
G80 was not G92 not G92b nor G94 mr kevin g