Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti review: A ferocious graphics card at a fantastic price - williamsgrothe1954

How coiffe you make one of the best graphics card game available today flatbottom best?

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 980 already trumps the Radeon R9 290X in virtually every play benchmark—solidly in some tests, by a hair in others—while also operative far cooler, quieter, and more efficiently than AMD's senescence flagship. But with a parvenu generation of powerful Radeons buoyed away cutting-edge high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and a reported rising Fiji GPU right around the corner, Nvidia couldn't tolerate still. So the query stands: How do you make one of the best graphics cards even better?

Easy. Rather of trying to better on the GTX 980's already winning formula, the new $650 GTX 980 Ti takes its beating fondness from Nvidia's ferocious Titan X—the first single-GPU graphics add-in capable of gaming at 4K result.

But does it do so at the ultimate expense of the Titan X itself? Let's dig in.

Receive the GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Nvidia's GTX 980 Ti ditches the vanilla GTX 980's GM204 graphics processor unit (GPU) pro a cut-down version of the $1000 Titan X's bigger, badder GM200 chip.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti's technical inside information. (Pawl to enlarge.)

Where the GTX 980 packs 2048 CUDA cores running at 1050MHz (boosting to 1216MHz when needed), the GTX 980 Titanium comes with a beefy 2816—a couple on hundred shy of the Colossus X's 3072 cores, merely an utterly big boost over the 980. The GPU's clocked at the same 1000MHz (1075MHz boost) As the Titan X itself, and the GTX 980 Ti has the very number of ROP units and sensible 16 fewer texture units than its big brother Titan. Our Titan X followup has more detail about the GM200 GPU.

The GTX 980 Ti tops its namesake—which is seeing its terms slashed from $550 to $500—in the memory department, overly. The rising graphics card packs 6GB of onboard GDDR5 memory clocked at a speedy 7GHz, and it uses a wider 384-bit bus than the 4GB GTX 980, which taps a 256-bit interface. It may not be HBM, but fear not—the GTX 980 Ti is no slouch even at high resolutions, as you'll see later.

Beyond the GPU, the GTX 980 Ti cribs more features from the Colossus X. GM200 is a more power-hungry chip than GM204, so the GTX 980 Ti requires 6-pin and 8-pin tycoo connections to draw its 250-W TDP, compared to the GTX 980's dual 6-pins and 165W.

Port-Stephen Samuel Wise, the poster has a 3 of full-sized DisplayPort connections, a lonely HDMI 2.0 port, and threefold-link DVI. Design-wise, the GTX 980 Ti matches the same silver aesthetic Nvidia reference cards have been rocking since the 600-series days, rather than the Titan X's cool black exterior. The GTX 980 Ti also eschews the GTX 980's antimonial backplate in favor of open circuitry, ostensibly due to air flow concerns in multi-card setups.

The GTX 980 Ti also packs all the usual software features standard to Nvidia's Mx-settled GPUs, like Voxel Global Illuminance, Gameworks VR (erst dubbed VR Direct) for virtual reality gaming, Dynamic Super Answer, and Nvidia's astonishing Multi-Frame-Sampled Anti-aliasing (MFAA) technology, which smooths jagged edges at a level similar to traditional MSAA, but with a good deal less of a performance hit. They'Re all gripping and useful features, and we covered them in Thomas More item when the GTX 970 and 980 were discharged recently last year.

In a prebriefing, Nvidia's Tom Peterson also troubled that the Maxwell GPU architecture uncerlying the GeForce 900-series—including the GTX 980 Ti—will be DirectX 12 feature level 12.1-compatible.

While the infrastructure 12.0 translation of DX12 in Windows 10 includes the low CPU overhead, asynchronous compute, and closer-to-the-metal control options everybody's so excited about, supplementary sport levels add extra goodies.

Feature level 12.1 includes support for volume tiled resources, which use of goods and services volumetric pixels to produce more life-like smoke, fire, and fluid, as well as conservative rasterization, which more accurately determines whether a polygon covers part of a pixel. The effect's most noticeable with ray-derived shadows, Peterson says, which have fewer odd internal gaps and smoothed-forbidden edges when rendered with conservative rasterization than with tralatitious tech. (Click the image above for an expanded comparison.)

For a Thomas More detailed explanation, I extremely recommend reading AnandTech's article on DirectX 12's new version features.

Sufficiency stage-background. Happening to the benchmarks!

Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti benchmarks

As you might have guessed by glancing at the raw specifications, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti is an consummate beast when it comes to PC gaming. Though it's a wee bit tamer than its cock-a-hoop Titan X sib, pretty much everything is—AMD's inhumane treble-GPU Radeon R9 295×2 apart in games with proper CrossFire support.

Speaking of the Titan X, one area where the GTX 980 Atomic number 2 differs significantly is in its onboard memory capacitance. The new graphics card sports alone 6GB of RAM.

Well, "only."

That may non sound the likes of much in a world where the Titan X packs an insane 12GB of Aries and AMD's forthcoming flagship will arrive riding new HBM technology, but don't equal mistaken—6GB is Sir Thomas More than enough to handle today's games straight-grained at 4K resolution. Ultra-high resolutions use up far more memory than play at 1080p OR flat 2560×1440, peculiarly as you ramp risen anti-aliasing options, only 6GB of RAM should take everything you confuse at it and come out beamish and still hungry.

The Witcher 3: Hazardous Hunt running at 4K. Damn, that gritty has more or less beautiful sunsets. (Click to enlarge.)

And that's good, because while the GTX 980 Ti isn't quite A potent as the Titan X, information technology's still the second plug-in ever with the firepower to game adequately at 4K resolutions by its lonesome—no multi-card SLI apparatus necessary.

Just let's dive into the details before I scram too far ahead of myself.

I tested the GTX 980 Cordyline terminalis using a 4K Dell UltraSharp monitor and PCWorld's votive graphics card examination rig. I detail the system of rules in full in PCWorld's bod templet, but here's the Cliffs Notes version:

• Intel's Core i7-5960X with a Corsair Hydro Series H100i closed-loop piddle tank, to eliminate any electric potential for CPU bottlenecks affecting graphical benchmarks
• An Asus X99 Gilded motherboard
• Corsair's Retribution LPX DDR4 retentivity, Obsidian 750D full tower case, and 1200-watt AX1200i power supply
• A 480GB Intel 730 series SSD
• Windows 8.1 Pro

Nvidia's MFAA technology can assistanc boost your frame rates at home, but I injured it during testing to avoid giving GeForce cards an unfair advantage. For comparison, the GTX 980 Ti is going up against the Titan X and the archetype GTX 980 (duh), as well American Samoa AMD's Radeon 290X and dual-GPU R9 295×2. You'll find the odd GTX 980 SLI results assorted in, as well.

I wanted to include GTA V results, but the game inevitably to get in touch to the Rockstar Social Nightclub to corroborate its license every time your swap out your graphics card, and the GTX 980 Cordyline terminalis and its drivers weren't allowed to touch the 'Earning prior to their official unveiling. Unfortunately.

Next page: Functioning benchmarks and a final verdict on Nvidia's GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics notice.

So initiatory up, rent's look after at the benchmark results for Middle-globe: Shadow of Mordor. This critically acclaimed game (though non by us) offers an optional Ultra HD Texture pack that give the axe murder your graphics batting order's skeletal system buffer at high resolutions. In point of fact, the game warns you against using the texture face pack if your GPU has little than 6GB of RAM (though you can still use it connected cards with less memory). The game was tested by using the Medium and Peaky quality presets, then away victimization the Ultra HD Texture bundle off and manually cranking every graphics option to its highest useable setting (which Darkness of Mordor's Ultra setting doesn't actually cause).

There's no Radeon R9 295×2 data uncommitted because the game perpetually crashes every time I attempt to vary any visual settings—including the resolution—with both AMD's stable WHQL drivers as comfortably as its latest forthcoming beta drivers. Click whatever graph in this article to blow up it.

Speaking of hammering hardware, Quiescence Dogs: Definitive Edition May exist a recent make over of an older (and surprisingly large) game, but IT however chews up and spits out graphics card game for breakfast. The latest and greatest artwork card game can't hit 60fps on Ultra settings in this bad boy—even at 2560×1600.

Just the Radeon flagship fires some guns in the high-minded Metro Last Light Revived, a recent remake of the gritty, atmospheric Subway system Last Light. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti, meanwhile, waterfall just a a couple of frames per second shy of the mighty Titan X, as it does in completely the gaming benchmarks. We test the gimpy with SSAA disabled, as it's an utmost build of anti-aliasing that slashes frame rates by 40 to 50 percent. You wouldn't use SSAA in-game, and we don't test with it.

Alien: Isolation is the most terrifying xenomorph experience since the original Alien movie. It's also a beautiful game that scales well across graphics hardware of all types and potency.

Bioshock: Infinite is getting a bit drawn-out in the tooth and virtually every graphics card available today handles it wonderfully, but it's yet a fine illustration for the relieve-popular Unreal Engine 3. (UE4 can't come fast enough, though.)

Dragon Senesce: Inquisition is a beautiful, massive unfit—one of the best of 2022, as a matter of fact. It runs connected the Same Frostbite 3 engine used to power Battlefield 4, but despite the ungenerous ties Ea's technical team enjoys with AMD—and heavy AMD promotion for the game—DAI doesn't appear to bring on nice with the R9 295×2's dual GPUs, seemingly utilizing only one at once disregardless whether you'atomic number 75 using AMD's WHQL OR beta drivers.

I also proved the systems using cardinal synthetic, merely well-respected benchmarking tools: 3DMark's Fire Strike and Unigine's Valley.

To run power and thermal information, I ply the grueling, worst-case-for-GPUs Furmark benchmark for 15 minutes, taking temperature information at the end using Furmark's reinforced-in tool atomic number 3 well as SpeedFan. Power is measured happening a whole-system basis, rather than the GPU itself, by plugging the PC into a Watts Astir cadence rather than the wall socket itself.

The Radeon R9 295×2 runs cool and quiet thanks to its merged closed-loop water cooler, but none of these cards—barring the reference R9 290X—are loud whatsoever. Anecdotally, the GTX 980 Ti's sound levels are comparable with to the Titan X's: louder than Nvidia's other 900-series Maxwell-settled cards, to live sure, merely still nowhere near crying enough to bother you in a echt-world scenario. Especially a gambling one.

The stern line, and the existential question

There you have it: The Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti is a beast. IT's one of just two single-GPU graphics cards capable of gaming at 4K.

The unchanged caveats hold as with the Titan X, of course. You won't be able to crank the eye candy to Ultra settings at 4K—you'll require to stick to High settings, lest your game devolve into a slideshow. And even on High settings, you'll see form rates shy of the buttery-diplomatical 60 frames per second threshold in most titles.

That's perfectly acceptable for many gamers, but if it's not for you, you could disenable anti-aliasing entirely—smoothing out jaggies isn't as necessary on such a pixel-packed screen, and AA comes with a sizeable performance hit—surgery investing in an Nvidia G-Sync-compatible monitor, which syncs the review rates of your GPU and your presentation to pop screen tearing and stuttering. G-Sync simply creates a superior, smoother visual experience overall. Or you could always turn to an SLI surgery CrossFire apparatus—if you're willing to cover with the headaches built-in with a multi-card solution in exchange for much raw firepower.

But block all that. What's really interesting about the GTX 980 Atomic number 2 is that it even exists, at least in its current form.

This graphics card brushes up against the $1000 Titan X's lofty performance for $350 less anda free copy ofBatman: Arkham Knight—fundamentally eliminating the practical need for Microcomputer gamers to deliberate the pricier card whatsoever. There's petite reason to spend $1000 for a Giant X over a $650 GTX 980 Ti even if you've got cash spilling out of your pockets.

The GeForce GTX 980 Si removes the need for altogether only the about demanding gamers to take the brute Titan X (pictured).

Yes, the Colossus X offers an insane 12GB of RAM, but frankly, that's overkill for today's games. On the far side gaming, its deficiency of two-base hit-precision drifting point performance severely limits the Titan X's appeal for many GPU compute tasks, though the card still excels at single-precision performance.

The GTX 980 Atomic number 2's 6GB of memory is more than adequate for gaming unless you're going nuts with the opposing-aliasing settings at 4K solving, and it will likely be sufficiency for a patc. Sure, if you're running a multi-monitor apparatus with several 4K displays for 8K or 12K play, you're going to want the larger 12GB frame buffer of the Titan X—and a SLI setup that basically dedicates a Titan X to from each one screen. But if that's you, you're not just the 1 percent, you're the 0.00000001 percent.

Further reading: Tested: Nvidia GeForce and AMD Radeon art cards for all budget

So why does the GeForce GTX 980 Si even be? Clean look at its divulge timing.

Later a long delay, AMD's regular to reveal its new flagship Radeon graphics card any day now, powered by a spick-and-span Fiji GPU and that revolutionary high-bandwidth memory, which should theoretically rock 'n' roll at extremist-top resolutions. But it's also rumored to be capped at 4GB memory capacity.

A-ha. Suddenly the $650 GTX 980 Cordyline terminalis—and its not 4GB, not 8GB, only 6GBof RAM—starts to make a lot Sir Thomas More sense, even if information technology obliterates most of the Titan X's positioning in the grocery.

And suddenly, I'm a great deal Sir Thomas More concerned in seeing the price and performance details for AMD's forthcoming flagship, because this is what Nvidia put-upon to return the Radeon's release, and the GeForce GTX 980 Ti is zilch little of one perdition of a artwork wag at one hell of a Mary Leontyne Pric.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/427683/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review-a-ferocious-graphics-card-at-a-ferocious-price.html

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