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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Klimax - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
@zepi: Perfect scaling on non-Intel's fabs doesn't exist as 16/14nm has 20nm metal layer and thus cannot scale as effectively.Refuge - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Distribution costs them more than manufacturing. lolChaser - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
That's pointless. 28nm with (Nvidia at least) is very energy efficient and as seen by this review a steal for the power this card delivers. It's a Titan X at $650.00. You're just desperately trying to find anything you can try and gripe about.Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
A GPU that expensive only qualifies as a steal if you're Leona Helmsley.mapesdhs - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
2019 says hold my beer. :)Mark_gb - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Nvidia must make a living. No matter who they have to run over in the process. You, me, AMD... Doesn't matter. I imagine that at Nvidia, the mantra is "MUST MAKE MONEY! LOTS AND LOTS OF MONEY!", and that it repeats all day long, every day.P. T. Barnum was right... "There's a sucker born every minute."... and we are them.
Michael Bay - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
What a shock that must be, for-profit corporation going about making profit. How dare they.mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Indeed, quite shocking. :)Personally I hope they make oodles of the stuff, so they can reinvest and make even better tech, because, my heavens, that's how private companies function. :D
It's weird how people complain about companies making profits, yet the very existence & continued success of a company depends on profits (unless of course one is AMD and somehow gets away with year after year of losses without going under).
(btw MB, please stop making crap Transformers movies... ;D Sorry, couldn't resist, hehe...)
FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
the arabs have been shoring up amd - it's dirty oil money for the crime that amd isfingerbob69 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Yeah ...but imagine how pissed you'd be if you'd brought a titan x in the last couple of months!I hope that extra 3% feels good!