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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Yojimbo - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
After some research, I posted a long and detailed reply to such a statement before, I believe it was in these forums. Basically, the offending NVIDIA rebrands fell into three categories: One category was that NVIDIA introduced a new architecture and DIDN'T change the name from the previous one, then later, 6 months if I remember, when issuing more cards on the new architecture, decided to change to a new brand (a higher numbered series). That happened once, that I found. The second category is where NVIDIA let a previously released GPU cascade down to a lower segment of a newly updated lineup. So the high end of one generation becomes the middle of the next generation, and in the process gets a new name to be uniform with the entire lineup. The third category is where NVIDIA is targeting low-end OEM segments where they are probably fulfilling specific requests from the OEMs. This is probably the GF108 which you say has "plagued the low end for too long now", as if you are the arbiter of OEM's product offerings and what sort of GPU their customers need or want. I'm sorry I don't want to go looking for specific citations of all the various rebrands, because I did it before in a previous message in another thread.The rumors of the upcoming retail 300 series rebrand (and the already released OEM 300 series rebrand) is a completely different beast. It is an across-the-board rebrand where the newly-named cards seem to take up the exact same segment as the "old" cards they replace. Of course in the competitive landscape, that place has naturally shifted downward over the last two years, as NVIDIA has introduced a new line up of cards. But all AMD seems to be doing is introducing 1 or 2 new cards in the ultra-enthusiast segment, still based on their ~2 year old architecture, and renaming the entire line up. If they had done that 6 months after the lineup was originally released, it would look like indecision. But being that it's being done almost 2 years since the original cards came out, it looks like a desperate attempt at staying relevant.
Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Nice spin. The bottom line is that both companies are guilty of deceptive naming practices, and that includes OEM nonsense.Yojimbo - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
In for a penny, in for a pound, eh? I too could say "nice spin" in turn. But I prefer to weigh facts.Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
"I too could say 'nice spin' in turn. But I prefer to weigh facts."Like the fact that both companies are guilty of deceptive naming practices or the fact that your post was a lot of spin?
FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
AMD is guilty of going on a massive PR offensive, bending the weak minds of it's fanboys and swearing they would never rebrand as it is an unethical business practice.Then they launched their now completely laughable Gamer's Manifesto, which is one big fat lie.
They broke ever rule they ever laid out for their corpo pig PR halo, and as we can see, their fanboys to this very day cannot face reality.
AMD is dirtier than black box radiation
chizow - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Nice spin, no one is saying either company has clean hands here, but the level to which AMD has rebranded GCN is certainly, unprecedented.Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Hear that sound? It's Orwell applauding.Klimax - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
I see only rhetoric. But facts and counter points are missing. Fail...Yojimbo - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Because I already posted them in another thread and I believe they were in reply to the same guy.Yojimbo - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Orwell said that severity doesn't matter, everything is binary?