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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Casecutter - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Nvidia places the TitanX in play just so that logic works... But when you pull TitanX from the equation, and work from the 980 (GM204) a 20% increase in FpS for, almost 20% more money, and use 28% more power. It look really humdrum.Kutark - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
You felt the need to post basically the same comment in 2 different places?Regardless you're cherry picking data. Overall its about a 30% increase in perf, for about a 30% increase in price. Its still a "good" deal if you want a powerful single GPU.
uglyduckling81 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
I'm still shocked at how much the 295x2 kills it. It's so much more powerful that even a Titan X. Newegg had the 295x2 on a sale for $550 2 weekends ago as well. Crossfire driver issues aside if your in the market for the high end I just don't see how you could go past the much more powerful and cheaper 295x2. If I had been in the USA with that $550 sale going I would of snapped that up so fast. Hell I would of bought several and sold a couple when I got home. Those cards are still $1600 in Australia.mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Really? CF issues aside?? It's a freakin' CF card! What the heck is the point in buying the thing if CF support just doesn't work properly for so many games? And did AMD ever fix DX9/CF issues? Still sucks the last time I tested 7970 CF. Feel free to whack your power bill with the 295x2, spew out heat, etc. Every time I see a crazy extended power usage graph just so the enormous line for the 295x2 can be included, it blows my mind that people ever bother buying it. One person from OZ here commented that heat output is of primary concern where he lives, so chucking out so much heat from a 295x2 would be a real problem. I noticed the same thing with 580 SLI, sooo glad I eventually switched to a single 980.CiccioB - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
The fact that a supposedly more powerful card is sold at a lower price should automatically raise you some questions... it is not that because 290x2 is a single card that all crossfire problems magically go away.Drive issue apart is not an option. Crossfire and SLI performances depend heavily on driver quality. And, sorry, but AMD dual GPUs cards have always been the worst choice since they were created.
See what is the support for 7990 cards. 690 cards are still supported as you can see in these very benchmarks.
Moreover, if you want a better dual configuration with support done as one would expect for the spent money, you can just buy 2x GTX970 and live much more happily. Consuming much more less. Dual GPU comparison here is not even to take into account. The simplicity, scaling and smoothness of a single GPU like Titan X or this GTX980TI simply crush the dual GPU competition without any doubt, even though they do some FPS less as average.
If you cannot understand that, it is right that you continue buying crappy cards and be happy with those.
NvidiaWins - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Compared to my Evga 770 SuperClocked Sli, it only generates a few extra fps, scored just over 100 points higher in Firestrike(770 Sli graphic score- 16,837/ 980Ti graphic score- 16,900), its a great single card at a cheap price point, but little improvement over what I currently use.Zak - Saturday, June 13, 2015 - link
Compare your dual 770 against dual 980ti and then we'll talk...godrilla - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
It seems that nvidia created the titan x just to make the 980ti seem like a bargain so that gamers will jump at it pretty clever.nadia28 - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Yeah, that what I thought too. They keep thinking of new marketing strategies to boost the sales and this one works like a charm.CHRAHL - Saturday, June 6, 2015 - link
Ryan! We never saw a review from GTX 960, will it be published. And there is no data in bench from it hence. Could you at least upload performance to bench section..