The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTBattlefield 4
Kicking off our benchmark suite is Battlefield 4, DICE’s 2013 multiplayer military shooter. After a rocky start, Battlefield 4 has since become a challenging game in its own right and a showcase title for low-level graphics APIs. As these benchmarks are from single player mode, based on our experiences our rule of thumb here is that multiplayer framerates will dip to half our single player framerates, which means a card needs to be able to average at least 60fps if it’s to be able to hold up in multiplayer.
Battlefield 4 is going to set the pace for the rest of this review. In our introduction we talked about how the GTX 980 Ti may as well be the GTX Titan X, and this is one such example why. With a framerate deficit of no more than 3% in this benchmark, the difference between the two cards is just outside the range of standard run-to-run experimental variation that we see in our benchmarking process. So yes, it really is that fast.
In any case, after stripping away the Frostbite engine’s expensive (and not wholly effective) MSAA, what we’re left with for BF4 at 4K with Ultra quality puts the 980 Ti in a pretty good light. At 56.5fps it’s not quite up to the 60fps mark, but it comes very close, close enough that the GTX 980 Ti should be able to stay above 30fps virtually the entire time, and never drop too far below 30fps in even the worst case scenario. Alternatively, dropping to Medium quality should give the card plenty of headroom, with an average framerate of 91.8fps meaning even the lowest framerate never drops below 45fps.
Meanwhile our other significant comparison here is the GTX 980, which just saw its price cut by $50 to $499 to make room for the GTX 980 Ti. At $649 the GTX 980 Ti ideally should be 30% faster to justify its 30% higher price tag; here it’s almost exactly on that mark, fluctuating between a 28% and 32% lead depending on the resolution and settings.
Finally, shifting gears for a moment, gamers looking for the ultimate 1440p card will not be disappointed. GTX 980 Ti will not get to 120fps here (it won’t even come close), but at 77.7fps it’s well suited for driving 1440p144 displays. In fact and GTX Titan X are the single-GPU cards to do better than 60fps at this resolution.
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TheJian - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Depends on where you live. At a mere 3hrs per day (easy if more than one person uses it) at 270w difference even Ocing it, you end up $75 a year savings in a place like Australia. That ends up being $300 if you keep it for 4yrs, more if longer. In 15+ states in USA they are above 15c/kwh (au is 25.5c) so you'd save ~$45+ a year (at 15.5, again 14 quite a bit above this), so again $180 for 4yrs. There are many places around the world like AU.Note it pretty much catches 295x2 while doing it Oced. It won't put off as much heat either running 270w less, so in a place like AZ where I live, this card is a no brainer. Since I don't want to cool my whole house to game (no zoned air unfortunately), I have to think heat first. With Electricity rising yearly here, I have to think about that over the long haul too. TCO is important. One more point, you don't deal with any of the "problem" games on NV where crossfire does nothing for you. Single chip is always the way to go if possible.
If you have a kid, they can blow those watts up massively during summer for 3 months too! WOW users can do 21hrs on a weekend...LOL. I'd say Skyrim users etc too along with many rpg's that will suck the life out of you (pillars, witcher 3, etc). A kid can put in more time in the summer than an adult all year in today's world where they don't go out and play like I used to when I was a kid. You're shortsighted. Unless AMD's next card blows this away (and I doubt that, HBM will do nothing when bandwidth isn't the problem, as shown by gpu speeds giving far more than ocing memory), you won't see a price drop at all for a while either.
If rumors are true about $850-900 price for AMD's card these will run off the shelf for a good while if they don't win by a pretty hefty margin and drop the watts.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Add Elite Dangerous, Project Reality, GTA V, the upcoming Squad and various other games to your list of titles which one tends to play for long periods if at all.Ian.
Deacz - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
860€ atm :(ddferrari - Sunday, June 14, 2015 - link
I guess you're one of those people who care more about specs than actual performance. Seriously, is 28nm just too big for ya? It's 3% slower than the fastest gpu on Earth for $650, and you're whining about the transistor size... get a life.Michael Bay - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
I`d much rather read about 960...pvgg - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Me too...Ryan Smith - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
And you will. Next week.just4U - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
The 960 is a underwhelming overpriced product.. I'd be more interested in a Ti variant if I was looking to buy right now.. but no.. although that 980Ti is tempting, I'd never purchase it without seeing what AMD is doing next month.Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
"The 960 is a underwhelming overpriced product."There you go, Michael, you've read about it.
PEJUman - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
GM206 based 960xx? or a further cut on GM204? ;)My gut feel tells me it would be GM204 based: I am guessing ~3B trans on GM206 on a very mature 28nm process should be relatively doable without much defects.