The New King Of High-end: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review

[PAGETITLE=Introduction][Top Ad] With AMD rumored to launch its next-generation GPUs soon, I suppose there's no better time than the present for NVIDIA to strike with a card that could act as a swift kick to the red team's chest. NVIDIA's latest is called the GeForce GTX 980 Ti; it slots just under the TITAN X, and costs $649. Based on what we knew last week, I had taken a guess that the 980 Ti would be priced at $749. Now that I've put the card through its paces, I still would have guessed $749 if I wasn't told different. With its 980 Ti, NVIDIA really wants to make a statement. Considering this is just the start of the review, I am putting an awful lot of hints as to what I think of the card on the table, but believe me, it's worth looking through all of the results. AMD side, the 980 Ti even harms the appeal of NVIDIA's own $1,000 TITAN X to some degree. Again... this card is a statement. Statement or not, I am sure the card's aesthetics won't surprise anyone. Once again, NVIDIA's latest high-end card uses the same cooler that other recent cards have, and that's not a bad thing. I haven't seen too much bad said about the look of these cards, so NVIDIA is continuing to make sure everyone has a chance at owning one (well, those willing to shell out enough money for one, that is.) NVIDIA GeForce Series Cores Core MHz Memory Mem MHz Mem Bus TDP GeForce GTX TITAN X 3072 1000 12288MB 7000 384-bit 250W GeForce GTX 980 Ti 2816 1000 6144MB 7000 384-bit 250W GeForce GTX 980 2048 1126 4096MB 7000 256-bit 165W GeForce GTX 970 1664 1050 4096MB 7000 256-bit 145W GeForce GTX 960 1024 1126 2048MB 7010 128-bit 120W The TITAN X has close to 10% more cores than the GTX 980 Ti, but as we'll see throughout the performance results, that doesn't make it 10% faster. Both cards share a lot of the same specs, but even then, that 10% core boost doesn't do a whole lot. What sets TITAN X apart, then, is its mammoth 12GB framebuffer, and tying into that, one thing that sets the 980 Ti apart from the non-Ti is a 50% VRAM boost. I feel very confident in saying that unless you're running triple 4K monitors, 6GB of VRAM is going to prove sufficient for a while. With a 6GB framebuffer, it's inevitable that people are going to question whether or not the final 500MB is crippled. In talking to NVIDIA, I was told that no... it's a solid 6GB partition. That being the case, it's hard to not imagine that at the root, this card is just a TITAN X with some tweaks made. Does that mean that the extra cores could be unlocked through a BIOS flash? I'm not sure, but it wouldn't surprise me. On the topic of performance, NVIDIA considers its 980 Ti to be a direct follow-up to the 780 Ti, which was a follow-up to the GTX 680. As seen below, NVIDIA says that the 980 Ti is almost 2x faster than the GTX 680 at 1080p, while it's closer to 3x at 4K. It might be hard to find in stores, but the official GTX 980 Ti packaging can be seen below. You'll be able to score this if you purchase the card directly through NVIDIA, although I'm told that some Best Buy locations may have it as well. Ever since the GTX 980 launch, NVIDIA has provided similar boxes for its highest-end GPUs: Here's the latest card with its bigger brother, TITAN X. I'd assume that the GTX 980 Ti uses the exact same cooler as the GTX 980, unlike the TITAN X, which uses a vapor chamber cooler. Just a moment ago, I mentioned that the 980 Ti could use the exact same base as the TITAN X, and if the back of the cards are anything to go by, that really does seem to be the case. The only significant difference that I can spot is that the 980 Ti lacks the memory chips on the outside PCB - to be expected given the VRAM has been halved to 6GB. For ports, the 980 Ti includes a single DVI, single HDMI, and triple DisplayPort. Like its 250W big brother, TITAN X, the 980 Ti also requires both an 8-pin and 6-pin connector. There's a lot more I could talk about here, but given a tight timeframe, I'll have to save some for later. So without further ado, let's tackle our testing methodology, and then dive right into performance results. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Test System & Methodology] At Techgage, we strive to make sure our results are as accurate as possible. Our testing is rigorous and time-consuming, but we feel the effort is worth it. In an attempt to leave no question unanswered, this page contains not only our test-bed specifications, but also a detailed look at how we conduct our testing. Our Graphics Card Test Machine. The below table lists our testing machine's hardware, which remains unchanged throughout all GPU testing, minus the GPU. Each card used for comparison is also listed here, along with the driver version used. Graphics Card Test System Processors Intel Core i7-4960X - Six-Core @ 4.50GHz Motherboard ASUS P9X79-E WS Memory Kingston HyperX Beast 32GB (4x8GB) - DDR3-2133 11-12-11 Graphics AMD Radeon R9 280X 2GB - Catalyst 13.12 AMD Radeon R9 285 2GB (MSI Twin Frozr IV) – Catalyst 14.30 AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB - Catalyst 13.12 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB - GeForce 340.52 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3GB - GeForce 331.93 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB - GeForce 331.93 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 2GB (EVGA SuperSC) - GeForce 350.12 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB (ASUS Strix) - GeForce 344.11 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4GB - GeForce 352.90 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB - GeForce 352.90 NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN X 12GB - GeForce 352.90 Audio Onboard Storage Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD Power Supply Cooler Master Silent Pro Hybrid 1300W Chassis Cooler Master Storm Trooper Full-Tower Cooling Thermaltake WATER3.0 Extreme Liquid Cooler Displays Acer XB280HK 28" 4K G-SYNC Monitor Et cetera Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Important Note: The GTX 960, 980, 980 Ti and TITAN X were tested using a different motherboard (ASUS X99-DELUXE) and processor (Intel Core i7-5960X, overclocked to 4GHz) than what's listed here. We don't ordinarily change test platforms without retesting everything, but overall, performance is extremely similar between the two platforms (based on 3DMark results). Once Windows 10 is released, and with stable graphics drivers, we will be performing a GPU test suite overhaul and then retest all cards. Notes About Our High-end System The goal of our performance content is to show you as accurately as possible how one product compares to another - after all, you're coming to us for advice, so we want to make sure we're giving you the best possible information. Typically, one major step we take in ensuring that our performance results are accurate is to make sure that our test systems are void of all possible bottlenecks, so for that, high-end components must be used. In the case of our graphics card test system, the processor chosen has six cores and is overclocked far beyond reference clocks. Most games nowadays are not heavily CPU-bound, but by using such a chip, we feel that we completely rule it out as a potential bottleneck. The same can be said for the use of an SSD (as opposed to latency-ridden mechanical storage), and even our memory, which is clocked at the comfortable speed of DDR3-2133. Why this matters to you: Our test PC is high-end, and it's very likely that you'd encounter a bottleneck quicker than us. Our goals are to rid all possible bottlenecks, whereas yours is to build the PC you need. In our case, we need to go overboard to attain as accurate a representation of a graphic card's performance as possible. If your PC has at least a modern (~2-years-old) quad-core or better processor, and at least 8GB of fast memory (DDR3-1866+), that chances of you running into a bottleneck with today's hottest game is admittedly low. If you're using lower-end gear, you can absolutely expect that the rest of your system could be a bottleneck. It should be noted, though, that if you're seeking out a lower-end graphics card, the importance of a bottleneck would of course be lessened. Unfortunately, we're not able to test a single card on multiple PC configurations; each single card we test takes at least 3 hours to test, with another 2 hours added on for each additional resolution, and at least another 1~2 hours for our Best Playable results (for up to 11 hours of mostly hands-on testing for a high-end model). Please bear all of this in mind. If you're unsure if your PC could prove to be a bottleneck, our comments section exists for such questions. When preparing our test-beds for any type of performance testing, we follow these guidelines: General Guidelines No power-saving options are enabled in the motherboard's BIOS. No virus scanner or firewall is installed. The OS is kept clean; no scrap files are left in between runs. Machine has proper airflow and the room temperature is 80°F (27°C) or less. To aid with the goal of keeping accurate and repeatable results, we alter certain services in Windows 7 from starting up at boot. This is due to the fact that these services have the tendency to start up in the background without notice, potentially causing inaccurate test results. For example, disabling "Windows Search" turns off the OS' indexing which can at times utilize the hard drive and memory more than we'd like. The services we disable are: Windows Defender. Windows Firewall. Windows Search. Windows Update. For further fine-tuning, we also use Windows' "Classic" desktop theme, which gets rid of the transparency that can sometimes utilize a GPU in the background. Vendor Favortism. Sometimes, either AMD or NVIDIA will work with a game studio to help their development process along. As history has proven, this often results in a game that is tuned better for one vendor over the other, although sometimes the tides can change over time, resulting in the competing vendor offering the better experience. One of our goals is to provide as neutral a benchmarking suite as possible, so while it's impossible to avoid games sponsored by either of these companies, we can at least make an effort to achieve a blended list. As it...

The New King Of High-end: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review

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Rob Williams