The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Review: Featuring EVGA
by Ryan Smith on September 26, 2014 10:00 AM ESTTotal War: Rome 2
The second strategy game in our benchmark suite, Total War: Rome 2 is the latest game in the Total War franchise. Total War games have traditionally been a mix of CPU and GPU bottlenecks, so it takes a good system on both ends of the equation to do well here. In this case the game comes with a built-in benchmark that plays out over a forested area with a large number of units, definitely stressing the GPU in particular.
For this game in particular we’ve also gone and turned down the shadows to medium. Rome’s shadows are extremely CPU intensive (as opposed to GPU intensive), so this keeps us from CPU bottlenecking nearly as easily.
Yet again we have a situation where the winner and loser is effectively decided by the resolution in use. GTX 970 will trail at 4K, only to take a slight lead at 1440p. As we’ve stated before 1440p and 1080p are going to be the sweet spots for GTX 970 based on its $329 price tag, so for GTX 970 this means it’s winning or tying in the resolutions where it matters the most.
Of course if you factor in the FTW overclock then the point becomes moot. With the GTX 970 and R9 290XU tracking so close together, the higher clock speeds mean that a GTX 970 card can push ahead of R9 290XU on average.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
155 Comments
View All Comments
Kalessian - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Is it really safe to overclock the memory like that when there aren't any heatsinks on them?Also, 1st?
Ryan Smith - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
As long as you're not giving them additional voltage (which you can't do on this card): yes. GDDR5 does not consume all that much power, even if it is relatively more than DDR3. The airflow off of the fans is plenty for stock voltage.Viewgamer - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Why no Mantle benchmarks for Thief ?winterspan - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
I'm assuming because this is an Nvidia review...eanazag - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
No mantle is likely because it didn't give a great showing last time in the AMD mantle review. If I remember correctly, Thief maybe even had a performance regression with Mantle being used.Ammaross - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Because Mantle only has benefit in CPU-capped performance. When you run benchmarks on an i7 or better, Mantle has no tangible benefit and sometimes has regressions.Viewgamer - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Or even Mantle benchmarks for BF4 for that matter ?Ryan Smith - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Apologies. The Mantle results have to be added manually since our graphing system can't handle multiple results for the same card automatically. I had actually entered in the data but neglected to regenerate the graphs.SeanJ76 - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
Sounds like your not using EVGA PrecisonX 4.2.1, you can add as much voltage as you like to the 970 GTX FTW.........idiot.....P39Airacobra - Sunday, November 29, 2015 - link
Ok first of all EVGA Precision or the type of software has nothing to do with that, Also he has a valid concern about the V-Ram temps and the VRM. Also don't call people idiots! That's my Job! IDIOT!