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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Klimax - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Just small bug in your article:Page "GRID Autosport" has one paragraph from previous page.
"Switching out to another strategy game, even given Attila’s significant GPU requirements at higher settings, GTX 980 Ti still doesn’t falter. It trails GTX Titan X by just 2% at all settings."
As for theoretical pixel test with anomalous 15% drop from Titan X, there is ready explanation:
Under specific conditions there won't be enough power to push those two Raster engines with cut down blocks. (also only three paths instead of four)
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out.bdiddytampa - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Really great and thorough review as usual :-) Thanks Ryan!Hrobertgar - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Today, Alienware is offering 15" laptops with an option for an R9-390x. Their spec sheet isn't updated, nor could I find updated specs for anything other than R9-370 on AMD's own website. Are you going to review some of these R9-300 series cards anytime soon?Hrobertgar - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
When I went to checkout (didn't actually buy - just checking schedule) it indicated 6-8 day shipping with the R9-390X.3DJF - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Ummm....$599 for R9 295X2?......where exactly? every search i have done for that card over the last 4 months up to today shows a LOWEST price of $619.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
It is currently $599 after rebate over at Newegg.Casecutter - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
From most result the 980Ti offer 20% more @1440p than a 980 (GM204) and given the 980Ti cost like 18-19% more that the orginal MSRP of the 980 ($550) It's really not any big thing.Given GM200 a 38% larger die, and 38% more SU's over a GM204 and you get 20% increase? It worse when a full TitanX is considered, that has 50% more SU's and the TitanX get perhaps 4% more in FpS over the 980Ti. This points to the fact that Maxwell doesn't scale. Looking at power the 980Ti is needing approx. 28% more power, which is not the worst but is starting to indicate there a losses as Nvidia scaled it up.
chizow - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Well, I guess its a good thing 980Ti isn't just 20% faster than the 980 then lol.CiccioB - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
This is obviously a comment by a frustrated AMD fan.Maxwell scales perfectly as you didn't consider the frequency it runs.
GM200 is 50% more than a GM204 in all resources. But those GPU run at about 0.86% of GM204 frequency (1250 vs 1075). If you can do simple math, you'll see that for any 980 results, if you multiply it by 1.5 and then for 0.86 (or directly for 1.3, that means 30% more) you'll find almost exactly the numbers the 980Ti bench shows.
Now that the new 980 $500 price, do the same and... yes, it is $650 for 980Ti.
Oh, the die size... let's see... 398mm^2of GM204 * 1.5 = 597mm^2 which compares almost exactly with the calculated 601m^2 of GM200.
Pretty simply. It shows everything scales perfectly in nvidia house. Seen custom cards are coming, we'll see GM200 going to 50% more than GM204 at same frequency. Yet these cards will consume a bit more, as expected.
You cannot say the same for AMD architecture though, as with smaller chips GCN is somewhat on par or even better with respect to nvidia for perf/mm^2, but as soon as real crunching power is requested GCN becomes extremely inefficient under the point of both perf/Watt or perf/mm^2.
If you tried to plant a doubt about the quality of this GM200 or Maxwell architecture in general, sorry, you choose the wrong architecture/chip/method. You simply failed.