EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ Graphics Card Review

For about as long as GPU-accelerated games have existed, an ideal performance target has been 60 frames-per-second. Owing thanks to this is the standard 60Hz monitor, which delivers its best result when the framerate matches its refresh rate. To make sure the monitor’s refresh rate and game’s framerate keep aligned, to avoid visible tearing, VSync should be enabled.

While I believe our Best Playable results will appeal to any gamer, they could especially prove useful to those intrigued by livingroom gaming or console replacements. The goal here is simple: With each game, the graphics settings are tweaked to deliver the best possible detail while keeping us as close to 60 FPS on average as possible.

Because our Metro Last Light and Total War: SHOGUN 2 tests are timedemos, and because this kind of testing is time-consuming, I am sticking to six out of the eight games I test with for inclusion here.

To make things simple, most of the Best Playable settings for EVGA’s 980 Ti Superclocked+ match the settings I used for the reference 980 Ti. There are some exceptions, though, where I was able to notch some setting higher thanks to the higher clock speed. So with that, let’s get on with it:

	Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC+	53		60
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Environment:	Very High	Shadow:	Very High
	Texture:	High	Reflection:	High
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	God Rays:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	HBAO+ (Low)	Volumetric Fog:	On
	Motion Blur	On
NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti	57		62
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Environment:	Very High	Shadow:	High
	Texture:	High	Reflection:	High
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	God Rays:	Low
	Ambient Occlusion:	HBAO+ (Low)	Volumetric Fog:	On
	Motion Blur	On

As powerful as the 980 Ti is, it’s not able to “max out” Black Flag at 4K and hit 60 FPS. By “maxed out”, I mean use High HBAO+, as well as High God Rays. With EVGA’s card, I came close; keeping HBAO+ to Low and God Rays to High, an even 60 FPS could be attained.

	Battlefield 4
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC+	42		66
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Texture Quality:	Ultra	Texture Filtering:	Ultra
	Lighting:	Ultra	Effects:	Ultra
	Post Processing:	Ultra	Mesh:	Ultra
	Terrain:	Ultra	Terrain Decoration:	Ultra
	Anti-aliasing Deferred:	Off	Anti-aliasing Post:	Off
	Ambient Occlusion:	HBAO
NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti	39		59
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Texture Quality:	Ultra	Texture Filtering:	Ultra
	Lighting:	Ultra	Effects:	Ultra
	Post Processing:	Ultra	Mesh:	Ultra
	Terrain:	Ultra	Terrain Decoration:	Ultra
	Anti-aliasing Deferred:	Off	Anti-aliasing Post:	Off
	Ambient Occlusion:	HBAO

Settings between the two cards were matched here, with EVGA’s giving us a sweet boost beyond 60 FPS.

	Crysis 3
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC+	40		59
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	Texture:	Very High
	Effects:	High	Object:	High
	Particles:	Medium	Post Processing:	Medium
	Shading:	Medium	Shadows:	Medium
	Water:	Medium	Anisotropic Filtering:	x16
	Motion Blur:	Medium	Lens Flares:	Yes
NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti	41		59
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	Texture:	Very High
	Effects:	High	Object:	High
	Particles:	Medium	Post Processing:	Medium
	Shading:	Medium	Shadows:	Medium
	Water:	Medium	Anisotropic Filtering:	x16
	Motion Blur:	Medium	Lens Flares:	Yes

It seems at 4K, getting a performance boost is going to require a lot more GPU horsepower. Despite the clock boost of the EVGA card, performance was matched here.

	Dying Light
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC+	51		66
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Texture Quality:	High	Shadow Map Size:	High
	Foliage Quality:	High	View Distance:	60%
	Ambient Occlusion:	Off	NVIDIA HBAO+:	Off
	NVIDIA Depth of Field:	On	Motion Blur:	On
	Antialiasing:	On
NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti	45		60
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Texture Quality:	High	Shadow Map Size:	High
	Foliage Quality:	High	View Distance:	60%
	Ambient Occlusion:	Off	NVIDIA HBAO+:	Off
	NVIDIA Depth of Field:	On	Motion Blur:	On
	Antialiasing:	On

As we saw with Battlefield 4, EVGA’s card supplies a nice performance boost with Dying Light over the reference 980 Ti.

	Grand Theft Auto V
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC+	52		64
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	FXAA:	On	MSAA:	Off
	NVIDIA TXAA:	Off	Population Density:	100%
	Population Variety:	100%	Distance Scaling:	100%
	Texture Quality:	Very High	Shader Quality:	Very High
	Shadow Quality:	Very High	Reflection Quality:	Very High
	Reflection MSAA:	Off	Water Quality:	High
	Particles Quality:	High	Grass Quality:	Very High
	Soft Shadows:	PCSS	Post FX:	High
	Motion Blur:	0%	DoF Effects:	Off
	Anisotropic Filtering:	16x	Ambient Occlusion:	Normal
	Tessellation:	Off
NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti	48		59
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	FXAA:	On	MSAA:	Off
	NVIDIA TXAA:	Off	Population Density:	100%
	Population Variety:	100%	Distance Scaling:	100%
	Texture Quality:	Very High	Shader Quality:	Very High
	Shadow Quality:	Very High	Reflection Quality:	Very High
	Reflection MSAA:	Off	Water Quality:	High
	Particles Quality:	High	Grass Quality:	Very High
	Soft Shadows:	PCSS	Post FX:	High
	Motion Blur:	0%	DoF Effects:	Off
	Anisotropic Filtering:	16x	Ambient Occlusion:	Normal
	Tessellation:	Off

I am not sure about you guys, but simply looking at that mammoth list of graphical settings gives me a headache. Fortunately, I didn’t need to tweak anything here, given both cards are so similar, but once again, EVGA’s card gave a notable boost. What a difference 100MHz makes, right?

	GRID 2
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC+	61		70
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Multisampling:	8x MSAA	Night Lighting:	High
	Shadows:	Ultra	Advanced Fog:	On
	Particles:	Ultra	Crowd:	Ultra
	Cloth:	High	Ambient Occlusion:	Ultra
	Soft Ambient Occlusion:	On	Ground Cover:	High
	Vehicle Details:	High	Trees:	Ultra
	Objects:	Ultra	Vehicle Reflections:	Ultra
	Water:	High	Post Process:	High
	Skidmarks:	On	Advanced Lighting:	On
	Global Illumination:	On	Anisotropic Filtering:	Ultra
NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti	53		61
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Multisampling:	8x MSAA	Night Lighting:	High
	Shadows:	Ultra	Advanced Fog:	On
	Particles:	Ultra	Crowd:	Ultra
	Cloth:	High	Ambient Occlusion:	Ultra
	Soft Ambient Occlusion:	On	Ground Cover:	High
	Vehicle Details:	High	Trees:	Ultra
	Objects:	Ultra	Vehicle Reflections:	Ultra
	Water:	High	Post Process:	High
	Skidmarks:	On	Advanced Lighting:	On
	Global Illumination:	On	Anisotropic Filtering:	Ultra

Maxed out, GRID 2 runs perfect on either the reference 980 Ti or EVGA’s clock-boosted version. It is worth pointing out, though, that EVGA’s card even manages to keep the minimum FPS at 60+.

	Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC+	57		66
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Anti-aliasing:	Normal	High-res Textures:	On
	Shadow Resolution:	High	Shadow Filtering:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	On	Motion Blur:	High
	World Density:	Extreme
NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti	52		62
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Anti-aliasing:	Normal	High-res Textures:	On
	Shadow Resolution:	High	Shadow Filtering:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	On	Motion Blur:	High
	World Density:	Extreme

As beautiful as Sleeping Dogs is, it’s one setting in particular that obliterates performance: anti-aliasing. Once that’s dropped down to normal levels, both cards deliver excellent performance.

	The Crew
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC+	55		60
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Geometry:	Ultra	Shadows:	High
	Textures:	Ultra	Environment Mapping:	Ultra
	Depth-of-Field:	High	Motion Blur:	High
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	Grass:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	SSAO
NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti	58		60
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Geometry:	Ultra	Shadows:	Medium
	Textures:	Ultra	Environment Mapping:	Ultra
	Depth-of-Field:	High	Motion Blur:	High
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	Grass:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	SSAO

The Crew is the second game in this list that benefited from the clock boost of EVGA’s card, not for an FPS boost, but rather a graphics boost. The result is being able to increase the Shadows from Medium to High.

	Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC+	49		59
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Texture Detail:	Ultra	Shadow:	Ultra
	Parallax:	On	Tessellation:	On
	Texture Filtering:	16x	Ambient Occlusion:	Field AO + HBAO+
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA
NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti	57		72
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 3840×2160	Texture Detail:	Ultra	Shadow:	Ultra
	Parallax:	On	Tessellation:	On
	Texture Filtering:	16x	Ambient Occlusion:	Field AO
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA

With Blacklist, there’s two routes to choose between: A) Keep full-on ambient occlusion, or B) Reduce ambient occlusion and gain 10+ FPS. Whatever you decide to do, EVGA’s 980 Ti is going to deliver some great performance.