Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
Verdict
Pros
- Fantastic, consistent 4K performance
- £250 cheaper than the Titan X
- Reasonably cool operation
Cons
- Overkill for 1080p and 1440p gaming
Key Specifications
- Review Price: £550.00
- 1,000MHz core clock
- 1,753MHz 6GB GDDR5 memory
- 8 billion transistors
- 2,816 stream processors
- Requires 1 x 6-pin and 1 x 8-pin power connectors
- Manufacturer: Nvidia
What is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti?
Updated: The GeForce GTX 980 Ti is the second most powerful graphics card from the last generation of Nvidia’s Maxwell graphics cards, sitting under the Titan X in terms of price and performance. With 4K ability and VR Ready certification, it’s a terrific graphics card that’s coming down in price all the time.
Since our original review of the 980 Ti, Nvidia has launched its first Pascal-based GPU, the GeForce GTX 1080. The GTX 980 Ti is one of the few GTX 1080 alternatives that actually comes off looking pretty good up against the new card. Part of this is down to its price; you can pick up a used GTX 980Ti for £400 or a new model for £550, and prices will surely tumble. Performance in the latest games running at 4K resolutions is still excellent, especially with an aftermarket card such as the overclocked version produced by EVGA. You can see a full list of the latest benchmarks in our GTX 1080 review, where an aftermarket GTX 980 Ti is also benchmarked.
With all of that said, if 980 Ti prices don’t drop a huge amount in the coming months it will start to look like a much poorer deal, so it’s worth hunting around for the best price if you want to save some money.
Below is our original review, written in July 2015.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti – Under the Hood
This card’s Ti suffix suggests it shares DNA with the cheaper GTX 980, but this isn’t the case – the GTX 980 Ti is built with the same GM200 Maxwell core found inside the mighty Titan X.
That means the new card’s specification is far closer to Nvidia’s top GPU than the cheaper, standard GTX 980. It has 2,816 stream processors – which is only 256 behind the Titan – and six graphics processing clusters and 24 streaming multiprocessors. That latter figure is only two short of the Titan X but six more than the GTX 980.
SEE ALSO: 2015’s Best Games Unveiled
The recycling of the GM200 core means the GTX 980 Ti also has 8 billion transistors and a 601mm2 die – almost twice the size of the chip inside the GTX 980.
The GTX 980 Ti’s stock and boost clocks of 1,000MHz and 1,075MHz are the same as those found in the Titan, although this is one area where the 1,126MHz GTX 980 pulls ahead.
However, there’s one area in which the GTX 980 Ti falls behind the more expensive Titan X: memory. Nvidia’s barnstorming Titan X has 12GB of GDDR5 RAM, but the GTX 980 Ti makes do with half that amount. It’s still clocked to the same speed of 1,753MHz, and it’s still plenty – most cards don’t even have close to 6GB, let alone double that number.
At extemes it may make a difference, but it’s unlikely to be noticeable. It’s more for use in high-end computing applications, whereas the 980 Ti is more suited to gaming.
In practical terms, then, expect performance closer to the Titan X. On paper, this makes the 980 Ti seem like a bargain at £550: far closer to the £400 GTX 980 than the Titan X, which usually retails for more than £800.
On the outside, the GTX 980 Ti and Titan X are similar too. Both have Nvidia’s swish aluminium cooler design, and both require single six- and eight-pin power connectors.
The GTX 980 Ti demands a more sizeable case: Nvidia’s reference model is 267mm long. In contrast, the AMD Fury X is much shorter since it uses a separate liquid cooler.
TrustedReviews Awards 2015: Winners announced
AMD’s older range doesn’t have anything that can compete with the GTX 980 Ti, with its nearest competitor falling well short of even the GTX 980. However, the new R9 series is expected to put up more of a fight.
The closest challenger will be the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X, which will cost around £510. It’s set to be an intriguing battle: the AMD card has only 4GB of RAM, but it has more stream processors and transistors than Nvidia’s card, and a faster core too.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti – How We Tested
We’ve loaded five games for this GPU test. Battlefield 4, BioShock Infinite and Crysis 3 all return from our previous reviews, and we’ve added Metro: Last Light and Batman: Arkham Origins to the mix. We’ve tested at 2,560 x 1,440 and 3,840 x 2,160 to see how the GTX 980 Ti will handle high-resolution single screens. We haven’t tested at 1080p, as we know this card is powerful enough to blast through any game at that lower resolution.
SEE ALSO: Best Gaming Headsets
We’ve used 3DMark’s Fire Strike test and four Unigine Heaven benchmarks to test theoretical performance, plus idle and load temperatures and power requirements have been taken to see which card is the coolest and most frugal.
Our test rig consists of an Asus X79-Deluxe motherboard, Intel Core i7-4960X processor, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk.
For prices, we visited the Scan website and noted down the cheapest stock-speed card we could find, although we will be referring to various overclocked and tweaked models available for each GPU – which will be more expensive – later on in the review.
Mike has worked as a technology journalist for more than a decade, writing for most of the UK’s most well-known websites and magazines. During his time writing about technology he’s developed obsessio…
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work.
Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming Windforce Review — Tom’s Hardware
Skip to main content
Tom’s Hardware is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s why you can trust us.
Gigabyte’s GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming might just be the fastest single-GPU graphics card we’ve ever tested. It features a custom PCB, binned and overclocked processor, and robust cooling.
Early Verdict
Gigabyte’s GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming is staggeringly powerful. It’s the first graphics card we’ve tested that delivers a satisfying gaming experience at 3840×2160. It’s easily the fastest single-GPU board to pass through our lab.
Today’s best Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti XTREME deals
No price information
For more information visit their website
Introduction And Product 360
Nvidia’s reference GeForce GTX 980 Ti is already one of the fastest boards on the market.
With the added benefits of a factory-overclocked binned GPU, a custom PCA and high-end cooling, Gigabyte’s GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming promises even more performance.
Nvidia launched its gaming flagship last May to rave reviews, particularly from those who were dismayed by the Titan X’s comparable performance and much higher price tag. In fact, much of the time, Nvidia’s GTX 980 Ti is faster than the mighty Titan X.
That’s interesting because the 980 Ti employs a slightly cut-down version of the GM200 GPU (it sports 2816, rather than 3072 CUDA cores). Further, Nvidia specifies that the 980 Ti includes 6GB of GDDR5 rather than the 12GB found on the Titan X. If you want the complete comparison, check out our Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Review.
The 980 Ti has a base core clock rate of 1000MHz. Nvidia’s board partners have some freedom to adjust that frequency, and Gigabyte really pushes the envelope. Its GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming ships with the core cranked up to 1216MHz and GPU Boost rated for 1317MHz.
Gigabyte also tunes the board’s memory, pushing Nvidia’s 7 GT/s transfer rate to 7.2 GT/s. As a result, the company says it achieves up to 33 percent more performance than the reference version.
Specifications
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti
Check Amazon
View Site
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti
$589
View at Walmart
View at Walmart
View at Amazon
263 Amazon customer reviews
☆☆☆☆☆
Sapphire Radeon R9 390
View Site
Product 360
The GPUs used in Gigabyte’s GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming are specially selected; each one goes through the company’s GPU Gauntlet sorting process. Additionally, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming employs Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable VGA technology.
Its PCB has a special coating that Gigabyte says protects against damage from moisture, dust and corrosion. This board further benefits from the same high-grade chokes and capacitors found on the GeForce GTX Titan X. A 12+2-phase power design helps maintain proper load balancing.
Enthusiasts familiar with Gigabyte’s graphics portfolio will notice that the GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming looks like some of the company’s other cards. The big difference, of course, is that its thermal solution is quite a bit larger than most of the other boards with WindForce 3X coolers.
Overclocking a large, hot GPU necessitates a capable heat sink, and Gigabyte’s starts with a copper plate that directly contacts the memory modules and processor. Heat pipes draw energy away from the plate and into two sets of vertically oriented aluminum fins.
Five 12mm copper heat pipes meet right above the GPU in a tight cluster, and then spread out into the second set of fins. The area above the GPU also benefits from two 8mm U-shaped copper pipes that improve the rate at which thermal energy moves away from the sensitive electronics.
All of that copper contributes to the GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming’s 1347-gram weight. This isn’t the heaviest graphics card we’ve ever tested, but it’s up there.
Copper and aluminum are great materials for dissipating heat, but they’d quickly be saturated without cool air moving across the card’s surfaces. Gigabyte’s WindForce 3X triple-fan cooler is found on many of the company’s boards. But it made a change to the center fan for this particular model.
Notice that the middle fan’s blades pitch a different direction than the left and right fans. The center fan spins clockwise, moving air in the same direction as the fans on either side of it.
Gigabyte also adds RGB LED light rings behind each fan, which you can control through the bundled OC Guru II software.
On some of the lower-end WindForce-equipped products, such as the GTX 950 Xtreme Gaming, the heat sink shroud is made of plastic. Gigabyte springs for higher-quality material on its GeForce GTX 980 Ti, building the shroud out of 2mm-thick brushed aluminum.
It’s painted mostly black, but there’s a silver stripe across the bottom-rear fan. The silver parts are additional pieces of metal that get glued on.
The top edge of the shroud features Gigabyte’s WindForce logo, which is lit by LEDs set to the same color as the fan rings. There’s also a light to indicate when the fans stop spinning.
If you measure the GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming from its I/O bracket to the edge of its exoskeleton-like shroud, the card is 11.5 inches long. From top to bottom, it’s 4.75 inches tall. The heat sink and shroud actually extend beyond the length and height of the PCB. Without them, the circuit board would only measure 10.5 by 4.25 inches.
Flip the board over and you’ll find an aluminum back plate covering the PCA.
Most of Nvidia’s cards support multi-card configurations, and the GeForce GTX 980 Ti lets you connect as many as four boards together for improved performance. Gigabyte’s GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming has the two interconnects you’d need to enable such a setup.
But because its PCB is taller than reference, you’d likely need a flexible link cable to connect 980 Tis from another board partner.
You’ll need a power supply with plenty of output, as suggested by the pair of eight-pin auxiliary inputs. Gigabyte installs its connectors recessed somewhat into the heat sink, but the latches face outward, making it easier to remove the cables. Both inputs have a corresponding indicator light just below the latch. These LEDs stay lit when the power source is stable; they flash to alert you of a problem.
There’s an additional six-pin power connector on the back of the card, along with a button marked Xtreme. Pressing the button toggles LN2 mode and activates the extra plug. Unless you’re using extreme cooling, avoid messing with this setting.
Gigabyte’s GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming has all of the outputs you’d expect, including three full-sized DisplayPort connectors, HDMI 2.0 and one DVI-I port. From them, you can drive up to four monitors at a time.
Gigabyte clearly dedicated some effort to ensuring its heavy board doesn’t get damaged in shipping. There’s over an inch of closed-cell foam protecting all sides of the card from impact. Beneath the graphics card, you’ll find a driver disc and setup guide. You also get a Y-connector that takes two six-pin PCIe cables and creates a single eight-pin connector in case your power supply doesn’t have the requisite leads.
High-end graphics cards sometimes come bundled with extras that add value, and Gigabyte’s GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming card is no exception. Apparently, the company expects its customers to take part in some pretty intense action, because Gigabyte includes an Xtreme Gaming sweatband in the box.
MORE: Best Graphics CardsMORE: All Graphics Content
- 1
Current page:
Introduction And Product 360
Next Page How We Test
Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware.
He has been writing for us for more than four years.
Tom’s Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site .
©
Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street,
New York,
NY 10036.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Review — Tom’s Hardware
Skip to main content
Tom’s Hardware is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s why you can trust us.
Today’s best Radeon R9 290X deals
No price information
For more information visit their website
Introduction
Fewer than three months have passed since Nvidia took the wraps off of GeForce GTX Titan X, and the company is already launching another GM200-based graphics card called GeForce GTX 980 Ti. It’s about $400 cheaper than the flagship’s street price.
Yet, we’re told it only gives up a few percentage points of performance. Is there still a reason to lust after the Titan X? Could you, in good conscience, spend $500 on the 980 knowing that this monster exists (yes, the 980 is dropping $50, according to Nvidia)? Is this move preempting AMD’s upcoming ultra-high-end Fiji unveiling?
Any answer to that last question would be purely speculative. But we weren’t expecting to see a Titan X derivative so soon. Nvidia introduced its original GeForce GTX Titan in February of 2013 and followed up nine months later with GeForce GTX 780 Ti, also based on the GK110 GPU. Those cards were decidedly not built for the same customers. The Titan had one of its SMX clusters turned off, a then-unprecedented 6GB of memory and a GPU equally adept at 3D and double-precision math. Meanwhile, the 780 Ti featured a full 2880 CUDA cores and 240 texture units for graphics supremacy, higher clock rates and a $300-lower price tag. Most gamers with money to spend had little trouble choosing 780 Ti over the Titan.
Unfortunately, there was also a good reason to ding it: Nvidia armed GeForce GTX 780 Ti with 3GB of memory, and the rumored 6GB models never materialized. Two years ago, that was fine for 2560×1440. And 4K screens weren’t really “a thing” yet; those that did exist were $3000+ affairs. We did, however, figure out that 3GB wasn’t enough RAM to game smoothly on a trio of QHD displays (>11 million pixels). Later, we also ran into situations where 4K (>8 million pixels) was held back by the card’s available memory.
Today’s monitor market looks nothing like it did then. Ultra HD screens start under $500. Nvidia’s G-Sync variable refresh rate technology is almost 18 months-old. And AMD’s FreeSync equivalent is gaining momentum as well. We have to assume that anyone shopping for a high-end graphics card in 2015 is at least considering an upgrade to 4K.
Tweaking GM200 For GeForce GTX 980 Ti
Nvidia knows where the display market is heading, and it isn’t about to shortchange this generation’s Titan-derivative in the memory department.
Beyond adding more on-board GDDR5 than 780 Ti, the company’s Maxwell architecture utilizes available bandwidth to greater effect—something we first observed last February from GeForce GTX 750 Ti and its GM107 GPU. GM200 is built even more robustly than that early implementation of Maxwell. Each of its SMMs sports 96KB of shared memory and a 48KB texture/L1 cache, while a large 3MB L2 cache minimizes requests made to DRAM as much as possible. All of those hardware-oriented changes, combined with new color compression schemes, make playable performance at 4K a more realistic goal for certain single-GPU systems.
That’s the good news. But because Nvidia’s GeForce GTX Titan X already features a fully-enabled GM200 processor, there’s really no way to make the 980 Ti faster. This creates a bit of an issue for differentiating two high-end cards based on the same ASIC.
How about characterizing their strengths in compute-oriented workloads? Last generation, the Titan was capable of around 1.
5 TFLOPS of double-precision math. Nvidia artificially dialed the 780 Ti to 1/8 of that, or roughly 210 GFLOPS, creating a nice split between them. But the same option isn’t available today, since GM200 gives up its compute potential altogether in favor of efficient gaming. As a result, the Titan X and 980 Ti are both limited to native FP64 rates of 1/32.
So, with Titan X already out there, selling for more than $1000, the company’s only option seemed to be a surgical incision, trimming away some of GM200’s resources and creating a GeForce GTX 980 Ti that’s slightly less potent than Titan X, but more compelling than GeForce GTX 980 (and a big upgrade over 780 Ti).
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti
$589
View at Walmart
View at Walmart
View at Amazon
263 Amazon customer reviews
☆☆☆☆☆
GeForce GTX Titan X
Check Amazon
View Site
GeForce GTX 980
$249
View at Amazon
View at Amazon
View at Walmart
775 Amazon customer reviews
☆☆☆☆☆
At least the haircut isn’t dramatic.
We’re still looking at GM200 and its six Graphics Processing Clusters. Only, across that sextet, two Streaming Multiprocessors are disabled. With 128 CUDA cores per SMM, you’re down 256, yielding a total of 2816 cores across the processor. Similarly, the loss of eight texture units per SMM results in a GPU with 176 (instead of 192).
You might guess that fusing off ~8% of GM200’s shader and texturing resources would result in a corresponding performance drop in games bound by those parts of the graphics pipeline. But Nvidia claims that the difference between GeForce GTX Titan X and 980 Ti is minor.
The company doesn’t seem to be worried. It isn’t trying to compensate with higher clock rates—GeForce GTX 980 Ti is marketed at the same 1000MHz base and 1075MHz GPU Boost clock rates as Titan X. And the GPU’s back-end doesn’t change either. From our Titan X story:
“GeForce GTX 980’s four ROP partitions grow to six in (GeForce GTX 980 Ti).
With 16 units each, that’s up to 96 32-bit integer pixels per clock. The ROP partitions are aligned with 512KB slices of L2 cache, totaling 3MB in GM200. When it introduced GeForce GTX 750 Ti, Nvidia talked about a big L2 as a mechanism for preventing bottlenecks on a relatively narrow 128-bit memory interface. That’s not as big of a concern with GM200, given its 384-bit path populated by 7 Gb/s memory. Maximum throughput of 336.5 GB/s matches the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, and exceeds GeForce GTX Titan, GeForce GTX 980 and Radeon R9 290X.”
Whereas the Titan X sports 12GB of GDDR5 memory, though, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti comes with 6GB at the same 7 Gb/s. That’s hardly a compromise, we’d say. Six gigabytes is plenty for 4K or three QHD screens in Surround. Don’t expect to see 12GB versions down the road, either. Nvidia doesn’t plan to chew into Titan X sales with a beefed-up 980 Ti.
- 1
Current page:
Introduction
Next Page Meet The GeForce GTX 980 Ti
Tom’s Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.
Visit our corporate site .
©
Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street,
New York,
NY 10036.
Review and testing of video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti — i2HARD
NVIDIA once again indulges its fans: now they will have something to comfortably play new games in the gaming industry. In the spring of this year, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti video card was introduced, on a powerful …
The company NVIDIA once again indulges its fans: now they will have something to comfortably play new games in the gaming industry. This spring, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti video card was introduced, based on a powerful Maxwell graphics chip. New graphics accelerator GM200 boasts 2816 stream processors and 176 texture units. The base frequency of the GPU is 1000 MHz, and the effective memory frequency is 7010 MHz. The amount of video memory GDDR5 amounted to an impressive 6 GB. The memory bandwidth has also been increased — it works on a 384-bit bus.
In addition, the new product fully supports the new DirectX 12, all the delights of which we will see soon. And in the already released games Far Cry 4 and The Witcher 3, GeForce GTX 9 users80 Ti will be able to experience all the effects of NVIDIA GameWorks: advanced visualization of dynamic wool and fabrics, interactive smoke and an improved particle system.
NVIDIA has presented a reference sample of a new video card to our editorial office. And we were happy to test its capabilities for you in various games and synthetic benchmarks.
Specification
- Graphics Clusters: 6
- Streaming Multiprocessors: 22
- Stream processors: 2816
- texture blocks: 176
- Rending blocks: 96
- Basic frequency GPU: 1000 MHz
- Boost Clock: 1075 MHz
- Kesh L2: 3 MB
- Memory size: 6144MB GDDR5
- Memory bus: 384-bit
- Process technology: 28 nm
- Number of transistors: 8000 million
- Interfaces: 3 x DisplayPort, 1 x Dual-HDMI, 1 x Dual-HDMI Link DVI
- Form factor: dual slot
- Supported DirectX version: 12.
1 - Power connectors: one 8-pin and one 6-pin
- Wattage: 250 W
- Recommended PSU: 600 W : 92° C
Memory Frequency: 3505 MHz
MB 9002 data: 7 Gbps
Design
Appearance
The reference design of the novelty is identical to the flagships of previous years. The casing completely covers the entire video card. Silver plastic with black inserts looks solid, there is a transparent tinted window through which you can see the radiator. Lots of screws for a non-standard hex screwdriver. The length of the video card is only 270 mm.
On the side, in the center, the inscription GeForce GTX with green illumination. Using the driver, you can customize the backlight indication, up to the color and music accompaniment.
Along the edges of the inscription — interfaces for connecting two SLI bridges and two connectors for connecting additional power — 6 and 8 pins.
The video connector interfaces are located in two rows: one DVI at the bottom, three DisplayPort and one HDMI at the top.
The reverse side shows us the printed circuit board textolite, not covered by a metal plate. Here we see a lot of screws, unscrewing which we can remove the entire cooling system.
Cooling system
From the far end we see an air intake grille, which is blown by the turbine through the entire length of the case, cools the radiators, and is thrown out through the front panel ventilation grilles.
On the bottom of the radiator we see thermal pads through which heat is removed from transistors and memory chips. A nickel-plated copper base of a separate heatsink contacts the GPU die.
PCB
The PCB houses the GM200-310-A1 processor. It has a protective metal frame around it.
12 SKhynix H5GQ4h34MFR R2C memory chips are soldered around the perimeter of the video processor.
There are six phases to power the processor and two phases to power the memory.
The power controller is assembled on a small separate board.
Two connectors for connecting a fan and LED backlight.
First, let’s test the capabilities of the cooling system. Let’s load the video card with the FurMark V1.10.2 program. the readings will be recorded by the GPU-Z program. Testing was carried out in an open case, while case fans did not affect the cooling of the video card.
At rest, the temperature was 47 ° C at a fan speed of 1050. At the same time, it was not audible at all. The overall noise level was 37 dB. As the temperature rises, the speed increases and the noise from the cooling system increases.
Up to 80 °C, the fan speed was less than 2000, with these indicators the video card is very quiet, the noise level is not more than 45 dB.
Under load, the temperature rose to 85 ° C, the speed increased to 2618. The noise increased to 50 dB. The temperature does not rise above this value, the cooling system tries to keep it within these limits by increasing the fan speed.
Next, let’s test the capabilities of the video card in overclocking.
To do this, we will use the EVGA PrecisionX 16 utility.
Softvoltmod, although available, has not been used yet, the cooling of the reference solution leaves much to be desired. It was possible to increase the GPU frequencies to 1250 MHz, while Boost Clock raised the frequency in some games to 1452 MHz. The memory frequency was raised to 1964 MHz. For more efficient cooling during overclocking, the speed of the video card fan was fixed at 3000 rpm. With such aggressive settings, this made it possible to keep the temperature of the video processor below 80 ° C.
Synthetic tests
These tests are interesting because they allow you to compare different game builds. By running these benchmarks on your gaming computer, you can compare the numbers and decide whether you need to change your video card to something more powerful, or leave everything as it is.
3DMark packages first. All default settings.
3DMark 11:
This test did not pass with increased frequencies: the levels did not load, giving an error.
3DMark – Fire Strike:
As the video core frequency increases, this test demonstrates a significant increase in values: the increase was 20%.
Now Unigine tests:
Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0
In this test, the average fps increased, while the minimum and maximum remained unchanged.
Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0
This test responds better to video card overclocking — an increase of about 25%.
Gaming tests
Potential buyers are most concerned about the video card’s performance in games. After all, this video card is bought for this. In games, testing was carried out on a monitor with a resolution of 2560 × 1080. The quality settings were set to the highest possible (you can see them on the screenshots). V-sync has been disabled to demonstrate maximum fps. The results were recorded by the Fraps program. In some games, for clarity, there are videos of the gameplay recorded using the utility ShadowPlay — included in the GeForce Experience driver.
The videos monitored by MSI Afterburner were recorded using the same program, it clearly demonstrates not only fps, but also the loading of the video core, video memory, and their frequency.
GTA 5
The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt
9000 9000
256
Far Cry 4
Watch Dogs
Assassin’s Creed Rogue
Call of Duty Advanced Warfare0002
Need for Speed Rivals
As we can see from the tests, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics card copes without problems with all games at the highest settings. This is especially noticeable in the minimum frames per second. At the same time, an excellent realistic picture is demonstrated in the novelties of the gaming industry. The performance of the GTX 980 Ti will be sufficient for both 4K resolution and multi-monitor configuration. A large amount of memory is designed for just that. The games we tested didn’t use much video memory, 3700 — 4200 MB maximum.
Conclusion
Maxwell GPU-based graphics accelerator demonstrates impressive performance today. Only the Titan X is more powerful, but it also costs a lot more. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti has good overclocking potential, but overclocking enthusiasts should wait for the release of video cards with non-reference CO. It remains to wait for the release of Windows 10 and games with DirectX 12.1 to enjoy the realistic picture that the new product from NVIDIA can draw.
In the review, there was no comparison of new items with competitors or with the flagships of past years. But judging by the tests, the GTX 980 Ti outperforms its predecessor GTX 980 by 20-30%, and its advantage over the Radeon R9 290X is generally unrivaled. Let’s wait for the release of a full-fledged rival in the face of the Radeon R9 Fury X or Radeon R9 390X, and then it will be possible to make a full-fledged comparison.
Pros
- Excellent gaming performance
- Large memory
- Good overclocking potential
- Full DirectX 12.
1 support - Compact chassis
Cons
- Noisy CO under load
GeForce GTX 980 Ti [in 14 benchmarks] 9002
NVIDIA
GeForce GTX 980 Ti
- PCIe 3.0 x16 interface
- Core frequency 1000
- Video memory size 6 GB
- Memory type GDDR5
- Memory frequency 7.0 Gbps
- Maximum resolution
Description
NVIDIA started GeForce GTX 980 Ti sales on June 2, 2015 at a suggested price of $649. This is a desktop graphics card based on Maxwell architecture and 28 nm manufacturing process, primarily aimed at gamers. It has 6 GB of GDDR5 memory at 7.0 Gb/s, and coupled with a 384-bit interface, this creates a bandwidth of 336.5 Gb/s.
In terms of compatibility, this is a two-slot PCIe 3.0 x16 card. The length of the reference version is 26.7 cm. An additional 6-pin + 8-pin power cable is required for connection, and the power consumption is 250 W.
It provides good performance in tests and games at the level of
46.
73%
from the leader, which is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti.
GeForce GTX
980 Ti
or
GeForce RTX
3090 Ti
General information 9999 (A100 SXM4)
Value for money
To obtain an index, we compare the characteristics of video cards and their cost, taking into account the cost of other cards.
- 0
- 50
- 100
Features
GeForce GTX 980 Ti’s general performance parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. They indirectly talk about the performance of the GeForce GTX
0 API Support
APIs supported by GeForce GTX 980 Ti, including their versions.
| DirectX + |
Benchmark tests
These are the results of GeForce GTX 980 Ti non-gaming benchmarks for rendering performance. The overall score is set from 0 to 100, where 100 corresponds to the fastest video card at the moment.
Overall benchmark performance
This is our overall performance rating. We regularly improve our algorithms, but if you find any inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in the comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.
GTX 980 Ti
46.73
- Passmark
- 3DMark 11 Performance GPU
- 3DMark Vantage Performance
- 3DMark Cloud Gate GPU
- 3DMark Fire Strike Score
- 3DMark Fire Strike Graphics
- GeekBench 5 OpenCL
- 3DMark Ice Storm GPU
- GeekBench 5 Vulcan
- GeekBench 5 CUDA
- Octane Render OctaneBench
- SPECviewperf 12 — Showcase
- SPECviewperf 12 — Maya
- Unigine Heaven 4.
0
Passmark
This is a very common benchmark included in the Passmark PerformanceTest package. He gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation by running four separate tests for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the latter is done in 4K resolution if possible), and a few more tests using DirectCompute.
Benchmark coverage: 26%
GTX 980 Ti
13853
3DMark 11 Performance GPU
3DMark 11 is Futuremark’s legacy DirectX 11 benchmark. He used four tests based on two scenes: one is several submarines exploring a sunken ship, the other is an abandoned temple deep in the jungle. All tests make extensive use of volumetric lighting and tessellation and, despite being run at 1280×720, are relatively heavy. Support for 3DMark 11 ended in January 2020 and is now being replaced by Time Spy.
Benchmark coverage: 17%
GTX 980 Ti
23057
3DMark Vantage Performance
3DMark Vantage is an outdated DirectX 10 benchmark.
It loads the graphics card with two scenes, one of which is a girl running away from some kind of military base located in a sea cave, and the other is a space fleet attacking defenseless planet. Support for 3DMark Vantage was discontinued in April 2017 and it is now recommended to use the Time Spy benchmark instead.
Benchmark coverage: 17%
GTX 980 Ti
48631
3DMark Cloud Gate GPU
Cloud Gate is a legacy DirectX 11 feature level 10 benchmark used to test home PCs and low-end laptops. It displays several scenes of some strange teleportation device launching spaceships into the unknown at a fixed resolution of 1280×720. As with the Ice Storm benchmark, it was deprecated in January 2020 and 3DMark Night Raid is now recommended instead.
Benchmark coverage: 14%
GTX 980 Ti
98958
3DMark Fire Strike Score
Benchmark coverage: 14%
GTX 980 Ti
14339
3DMark Fire Strike Graphics
Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark for gaming PCs.
It features two separate tests showing a fight between a humanoid and a fiery creature that appears to be made of lava. Using resolution 1920×1080, Fire Strike shows quite realistic graphics and is quite demanding on hardware.
Benchmark coverage: 14%
GTX 980 Ti
16961
GeekBench 5 OpenCL
Geekbench 5 is a widely used benchmark for graphics cards that combines 11 different test scenarios. All of these scenarios are based on the direct use of the processing power of the GPU, without the use of 3D rendering. This option uses the Khronos Group’s OpenCL API.
Benchmark coverage: 9%
GTX 980 Ti
40025
3DMark Ice Storm GPU
Ice Storm Graphics is an obsolete benchmark, part of the 3DMark package. Ice Storm has been used to measure the performance of entry-level laptops and Windows-based tablets. It uses DirectX 11 feature level 9 to render a battle between two space fleets near a frozen planet at 1280×720 resolution.
Support for Ice Storm ended in January 2020, now the developers recommend using Night Raid instead.
Benchmark coverage: 8%
GTX 980 Ti
443119
GeekBench 5 Vulkan
Geekbench 5 is a widely used benchmark for graphics cards that combines 11 different test scenarios. All of these scenarios are based on the direct use of the processing power of the GPU, without the use of 3D rendering. This option uses the Vulkan API from AMD and the Khronos Group.
Benchmark coverage: 5%
GTX 980 Ti
52856
GeekBench 5 CUDA
Geekbench 5 is a widely used benchmark for graphics cards that combines 11 different test scenarios. All of these scenarios are based on the direct use of the processing power of the GPU, without the use of 3D rendering. This option uses NVIDIA’s CUDA API.
Benchmark coverage: 5%
GTX 980 Ti
35714
Octane Render OctaneBench
This is a dedicated benchmark for measuring graphics card performance in OctaneRender, which is a realistic GPU rendering engine created by OTOY Inc.
, available either as a standalone program or as a plug-in for 3DS Max, Cinema 4D and many other applications. It renders four different static scenes and then compares the render times to the reference card, which is the GeForce GTX 9 at the moment.80. This benchmark does not measure gaming performance and is intended for professional 3D artists.
Benchmark coverage: 4%
GTX 980 Ti
126
SPECviewperf 12 — Showcase
Benchmark coverage: 2%
GTX 980 Ti
90
SPECviewperf 12 — Maya
This part of the SPECviewperf 12 workstation benchmark uses the Autodesk Maya 13 engine to render a superhero power plant with over 700,000 polygons in six different modes.
Benchmark coverage: 2%
GTX 980 Ti
139
Unigine Heaven 4.0
This is an old DirectX 11 based benchmark, a newer version of Unigine 3.0 with relatively minor differences.
It depicts a medieval fantasy city spread over several floating islands. The benchmark is still occasionally used despite its significant age, and it was released back in 2013.
Benchmark coverage: 1%
GTX 980 Ti
2550
Mining hashrates
GeForce GTX 980 Ti performance in cryptocurrency mining. Usually the result is measured in mhash / s — the number of millions of solutions generated by the video card in one second.
| Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) | 784 Mh/s | |
| Decred / DCR (Decred) | 2.4 Gh/s | |
| Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) | 21.57 Mh/s | |
| Monero / XMR (CryptoNight) | 0.7 kh/s | |
| Zcash / ZEC (Equihash) | 461 Sol/s |
Game tests
99
Popular games
- Full HD Preset
2 Low4 - Full HD
Medium Preset - Full HD
High Preset - Full HD
Ultra Preset - 1440p
High Preset - 1440p
Ultra Preset - 4K
High Preset - 4K
Ultra Preset
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 45-50 |
| Assassin’s Creed Odyssey | 45-50 | |
| Assassin’s Creed Valhalla | 45-50 | |
| Battlefield 5 | 45-50 | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 45-50 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 45-50 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 45-50 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 45-50 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 45-50 | |
| Hitman 3 | 45-50 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 45-50 | |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 45-50 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 45-50 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 45-50 |
| Assassin’s Creed Odyssey | 45-50 | |
| Assassin’s Creed Valhalla | 45-50 | |
| Battlefield 5 | 45-50 | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 38 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 45-50 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 45-50 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 45-50 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 45-50 | |
| Hitman 3 | 45-50 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 45-50 | |
| Metro Exodus | 45-50 | |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 45-50 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 33 | |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 45-50 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 45-50 |
| Assassin’s Creed Odyssey | 46 | |
| Assassin’s Creed Valhalla | 45-50 | |
| Battlefield 5 | 94 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 45-50 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 77 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 45-50 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 72 | |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 59 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 45-50 |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 54 | |
| Hitman 3 | 45-50 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 45-50 | |
| Metro Exodus | 45-50 | |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 45-50 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 45-50 |
| Assassin’s Creed Odyssey | 45-50 | |
| Assassin’s Creed Valhalla | 45-50 | |
| Battlefield 5 | 45-50 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 45-50 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 45-50 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 45-50 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 45-50 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 45-50 |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 32 | |
| Hitman 3 | 45-50 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 45-50 | |
| Metro Exodus | 45-50 | |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 45-50 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 23 | |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 44 |
| Assassin’s Creed Odyssey | 18 | |
| Assassin’s Creed Valhalla | 45-50 | |
| Battlefield 5 | 40 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 45-50 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 30 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 45-50 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 42 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 45-50 |
Relative capacity
Overall GeForce GTX 980 Ti performance compared to its nearest desktop counterparts.
AMD Radeon RX 6600
103.94
NVIDIA RTX A2000 12GB
101.05
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
100.79
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti
100
AMD Radeon RX 5600XT
99.83
AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
98.44
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
97.41
AMD competitor
We believe that the nearest equivalent to GeForce GTX 980 Ti from AMD is Radeon RX 5600 XT, which is approximately equal in speed and lower by 1 position in our rating.
Radeon RX
5600XT
Compare
Here are some of AMD’s closest competitors to the GeForce GTX 980 Ti:
AMD Radeon RX Vega 64
105.71
AMD Radeon RX 5700
105.
52
AMD Radeon RX 6600
103.94
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti
100
AMD Radeon RX 5600XT
99.83
AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
98.44
AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition
97.15
Other video cards
Here we recommend several video cards that are more or less similar in performance to the reviewed one.
Radeon RX
Vega 56
Compare
GeForce GTX
1070
Compare
GeForce GTX
1070 Ti
Compare
Radeon RX
Vega 64
Compare
Titan X
Pascal
Compare
GeForce GTX
1080
Compare
Recommended Processors
According to our statistics, these processors are most often used with the GeForce GTX 980 Ti.
Core i7
6700K
4%
Ryzen 5
3600
3.3%
Core i7
4790K
3.3%
Core i5
10400F
2.9%
Ryzen 5
2600
2.6%
Core i3
10100F
2.4%
Core i7
4790
2%
Core i7
4770K
1.7%
Core i5
9400F
1.7%
Core i5
6600K
1.
6%
User rating
Here you can see the rating of the video card by users, as well as put your own rating.
Tips and comments
Here you can ask a question about the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, agree or disagree with our judgements, or report an error or mismatch.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti
The most productive one -Processor accelerator of the game class
Content
- Part 1 — Theory and Architecture
- Part 2 — Practical acquaintance
- Synthetic test results
Corguses
Corps
Developer ID : Nvidia Corporation (Nvidia trademark) was founded in 1993 in the United States. Headquarters in Santa Clara (California). Develops graphic processors, technologies.
Until 1999, the main brand was Riva (Riva 128/TNT/TNT2), from 1999 to the present — Geforce. In 2000, the assets of 3dfx Interactive were acquired, after which the 3dfx / Voodoo trademarks were transferred to Nvidia. There is no production. The total number of employees (including regional offices) is about 5,000 people.
Part 1: Theory and architecture
Quite recently the announcement of Nvidia’s top new product from the «titanium» premium series — Geforce GTX Titan X — has died down, and here we are again getting acquainted with an almost equally powerful video card, but already from the familiar Geforce GTX 900 line. Nvidia has prepared its response to the competitor’s new top solution expected soon (I can’t even believe that we will see it soon) and decided to release it for sale a little earlier than the rival’s video card. Actually, they have been ready for this answer for a very long time, even Geforce GTX Titan X did not come out immediately, as soon as such an opportunity presented itself, and today’s hero is a minimal modification of this solution, largely repeating its characteristics.
We have already written many times about new Nvidia products based on the latest Maxwell architecture graphics processors, and we have covered, perhaps, almost all issues related to the operation of these video cards: all architectural changes, novelties in functionality, performance issues. It would seem that there is nothing more to write about. But lately, there has been evidence of new technologies that should work in order for the gaming PC hardware market to continue.
For example, towards the end of the year, the long-awaited update of the Microsoft graphics API in the form of DirectX 12 is expected, which we will write about in more detail below. It is impossible not to note the growing interest in the use of ultra-high resolution information output devices — in the so-called 4K resolution. With the sharp price cuts of related monitors and TVs, an increasing number of PC users are getting these displays.
Players have doubled the number of 4K monitors in the past year, and this is just the beginning.
All Nvidia graphics cards based on Maxwell architecture chips are also well prepared for 4K resolution support, they have special optimizations for working in such conditions, support effective frame buffer information compression methods, and are the only ones on the market that support HDMI 2.0 video output, which allows you to connect 4K- TVs in full resolution at a refresh rate of 60 Hz.
Virtual reality devices are considered another factor (so far only potential) of growth. VR helmets, goggles and other similar devices are expected to be widely available next year, and in order to popularize virtual reality, it is important that users have sufficiently powerful graphics cards based on the latest generation GPUs that have special optimizations for VR and generally provide high performance with minimal delays. All this also applies to video chips of the Maxwell family in full measure.
At the moment, Nvidia has already released several solutions based on second-generation Maxwell chips, and today another model joins them — Geforce GTX 980 Ti.
This is a top-level solution that provides 3D performance only slightly worse than the most powerful Geforce GTX Titan X. The new product features great mathematical and textural power, this GPU includes 2816 streaming cores and is equipped with six gigabytes of fast GDDR5 memory. A novelty from the top price segment will allow future users to forget about problems and brakes for several years, playing all modern PC games.
Since the Nvidia video card model under consideration is based on the top-end second-generation Maxwell GPU architecture, which we have already reviewed and which is in many ways similar to the chips of the previous Kepler architecture, it is useful to familiarize yourself with earlier articles before reading this material. about Nvidia video cards:
- [04/22/15] Nvidia Geforce GTX Titan X — The most powerful single-processor accelerator
- [09/19/14] Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 — Follower of Geforce GTX 680, outperforming even GTX 780 Ti
- [12.
03.14] Nvidia Geforce GTX 750 Ti — Maxwell starts small… despite Maxwell - [22.03.12] Nvidia Geforce GTX 680 — new single processor leader 3D graphics
So, let’s look at the detailed characteristics of the Geforce GTX 980 Ti video card based on the GM200 graphics processor.
| Geforce GTX 980 Ti graphics accelerator | ||
|---|---|---|
| Parameter | ||
| Texturing units | 176 active (out of 192) texture addressing and filtering units with support for FP16 and FP32 components in textures and support for trilinear and anisotropic filtering for all texture formats | |
| ROP units | 6 wide ROPs (96 pixels) with support for various anti-aliasing modes, including programmable and with FP16 or FP32 frame buffer format. Blocks consist of an array of configurable ALUs and are responsible for generating and comparing depth, multisampling and blending | One 8-pin and one 6-pin connectors |
| The number of slots occupied in the system building | 2 | |
| Recommended price | $ 649 (USA), 399990 RUB (Russia) | |
Geforce GTX 980 Ti received the name familiar to the latest Geforce series — they simply added the prefix Ti to the name of the less powerful solution. The novelty does not replace other solutions in the current product line of the company, but builds it up from the top, without crowding out the premium Titan X and dual-chip Titan Z. Well, below it is the Geforce GTX 9 model80 based on the less complex GM204 chip. 
Naturally, the prices for all other motherboards in the Geforce GTX 900 series have also changed. For the GTX 980, the recommended price is now set at $499, the GTX 970 will cost from $329, and the GTX 960 — from $199. Very good prices, although a competitor can lower them even more — they simply have nothing else to do. 
The GPU contains six GPC clusters, consisting of 24 multiprocessors, but in this model two of them were disabled — mainly so that the Titan X was still a little faster, justifying its name and price. 
5 GB out of the available 4 GB in this model are extremely slow access). Nvidia didn’t allow this situation again and the read speed from all 6 GB of memory is equally high here. 
The GM200 GPU in the GTX 980 Ti has a 384-bit memory bus (six channels of 64-bit each), and GDDR5 video memory chips in the amount of six gigabytes operate at an effective frequency of 7 GHz. Which gives the same 336.5 GB / s as the expensive older model. That is, in terms of memory bandwidth, the new product is already 50% faster than the younger GTX 980 model. /With. By itself, the advantage in memory bandwidth is very important in graphics tasks, but other factors can limit the memory and data caching subsystem, which prevent it from showing high efficiency and using the full capabilities of the GPU and video memory. So, in order to solve these potential problems, the chips of the second generation of the Maxwell architecture introduced a new generation of the memory subsystem, which uses the available memory bandwidth more efficiently. 
Additionally, each of the SMMs in the GM200 chip has its own 96 KB shared memory, while the L1 cache and texture cache are combined into a 48 KB area per multiprocessor. This solution favorably distinguishes the new GPUs from the Kepler family, which used a shared memory of 64 KB, which was also an L1 cache. All this is complemented by a generous 3 MB L2 cache. As a result, even with a negative difference in memory bandwidth compared to competing solutions, Nvidia video cards usually perform just as well. 
You can also check out features like hardware support for accelerated VXGI global illumination calculation, new full-screen anti-aliasing methods, and improved DirectX 12 graphics API capabilities.0003 
While G-Sync was previously inferior to competing technology from AMD in this indicator, now users of Nvidia graphics cards and related monitors can use 3D applications with fine synchronization and in windowed mode. 
All this can significantly improve performance, especially when it is limited by a large number of draw calls. More importantly, these features are supported on all Geforce graphics cards since the GTX 400. 
For example, you can use liquid simulation to simulate smoke in games, as Nvidia showed in several demos: 
And with the usual rasterization method and the ray tracing algorithm in the shadows, unpleasant artifacts are obtained. Turning on conservative rasterization helps get rid of them, which provides this shadow rendering algorithm with perfect pixel accuracy. 
Many, many years ago, quite primitive by modern standards, VR helmets were produced by many companies, were quite massive with poor image quality, and at the same time cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars. With the improvement of technical capabilities, several companies have taken up the projects of helmets and glasses of virtual reality, the most notable of which has become Oculus. 
The biggest problem with VR is the long delays between the physical action of the player (turning the head) and the image on the screen — literally every millisecond counts here! It is at a glance that we will not notice small delays, but our brain will notice everything. Hence all the problems with dizziness and nausea, which they are now trying to solve, first of all. 
These same lenses create the feeling of virtual reality, providing a corresponding ultra-wide view with a large field of view. 
And when the image distortion required by VR devices, a huge part of the pixels is simply discarded to no avail. Pixels on the periphery of the frame are compressed several times, and many of them are simply not needed (see the illustration above). In the middle, the pixels remain almost one to one, and from the edges, a large area noticeably decreases in the final VR image — this is an inefficient approach. 
On conventional GPUs without multi-projection support, it would be necessary to draw the same geometry several times into several buffers, and this feature allows you to project the geometry into several buffers at once in one pass. 
9 engine0003 
Thus, the new product has 38% more ALUs and TMUs, and significantly more ROPs. Yes, and in terms of PSP it has a serious advantage. In general, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti is cut down by about 10% compared to the GTX Titan X (in terms of the number of ALUs and TMUs, the most important ones for a video chip), and in terms of ROPs and memory bandwidth, it is completely on par. 
Nvidia gives specific examples of games tested at the highest resolutions: 
1 from the DirectX 12 graphics API). 
Similarly, the number of texture units has been reduced. But the number of rasterization units and memory channels remained the same, as a result, the new memory subsystem includes six 64-bit channels (384-bit in total), through which 6 GB of memory operating at a frequency of 7 GHz are connected. 