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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douglord - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I need to know if the 980ti can output 10-bit color correctly? Is it ready for UHD Blueray?dragonsqrrl - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
To my knowledge only Quadro's and Firepro's output 10 bit color depth.johnpombrio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Any card that can do true RGB color schemes are NOT MEANT for normal users. It brings a lot of drawbacks for games and normal tasks. These type of cards are for graphics professionals only. Google it to see why.mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Indeed, the way colourspaces interact with different types of monitor can result in some nasty issues for accurate colour presentation. For home users, it's really not suitable since so many normal apps & games aren't written to utilise such modes correctly. Besides, I doubt any 4K TVs could properly resolve 10bis/channel anyway. Funny though that people are still asking about 10bit colour when pro users were already using 12bit more than 20 years ago. :D Also 16bit greyscale for medical/GIS/etc.johnpombrio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Yikes! That overclock ability! I always buy EVGA's superclocked NVidia cards as they as super stable and have great benchmarks (as well as playing games well, heh). I might buy into this even tho I have a GTX980.As for AMD, NVidia has 76% of the discrete GPU graphics card market (and still rising) while AMD has lost 12% market share in the last 12 months alone. Whatever AMD has up for new products, it better hurry and be a LOT better than NVidia cards. AMD has tried the " rebadge existing GPU family cards, reduce its price, and bundle games" for too long and IT IS NOT WORKING. C'mon AMD, get back into the fight.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
True, I kept finding EVGA's cards work really well. The ACX2 980 (1266MHz) is particularly good.Nfarce - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Well I recently upgraded with a second 970 for SLI for 1440p gaming and have them overclocked to 980 performance. It's roughly 15% faster than this single card solution for $700 vs. $650 (7.5% increase in cost). But one thing is for certain: we are still a long time away from realistic 4K gaming with a G-sync 120Hz monitor when those come out. I would much prefer 1440p gaming with max quality and high AA settings and faster FPS matched to screen Hz than detuned 4K settings (even if AA is less meaningful at 2160p).By the way: are you guys ever going to add Project Cars to your benchmarks? It has rapidly become THE racer to own. Grid Autosport is not really a good benchmark these days because it's just a rehash of the Grid 2 engine (EGO 3.0)...easy on GPUs. Many, including me, haven't touched Autosport since PCars was released and may never touch it again.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Project Cards is one game that runs badly in CF atm (driver issues), which would make the 295x2 look horrible. Might be better to wait until AMD has fixed the issue first.agentbb007 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
A GTX Titan X for $649, DOH BART! Oh well I've enjoyed my SLI Titan X's for a few months so I guess that was worth the $700 premium. I keep falling for nVidia's Titan brand gimmick, I also bought the original Titan luckily just 1 of them and ended up selling it for about half what I paid.Lesson learned, AGAIN, don't buy the Titan brand wait for the regular GTX version instead.
mapesdhs - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
2019 calling! I wonder if he bought the 2080 Ti or RTX Titan... :}