NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Video Card GPU Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Video Card GPU Review - Now that we have had some solid gaming time with the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, we will be putting it up against the GTX 980 and TITAN X video cards, in the full HardOCP GPU review format. We are including new games, The Witcher 3 and Grand Theft Auto V. We also look at VRAM utilization and power and temperature levels.
 
As Always, Great Review Brent.. thanks for this great reading..

wished to see some AMD cards popped in the review to get a baseline for imminent launch of AMD new cards.. =)..
 
Pretty amazing when video cards now have more memory that a lot of PC's. I really think it is showing an interesting shift in the world we play in. Even when the new nVidia architecture came out "2GB" was enough. Here we are only a short time later saying "4GB is getting sketchy". Just glad that AAA developers are trying to use the horsepower available to them again. But once the PS4 and the XONE get a few more years on them, probably start seeing worse ratios again where video cards are "too good".
 
i will say first that i didnt read the entire review.

i was looking at the VRAM usage page. i noticed that dying light hit 5.6gb on the ti and 6gb on the x. It makes me wonder if we have another 970 here. i know the cases where 6+gb of VRAM are hard to come by, but could you see if the ti is able to use all 6gb?
 
trick0502 said:
i will say first that i didnt read the entire review.

i was looking at the VRAM usage page. i noticed that dying light hit 5.6gb on the ti and 6gb on the x. It makes me wonder if we have another 970 here. i know the cases where 6+gb of VRAM are hard to come by, but could you see if the ti is able to use all 6gb?
Click to expand...

TitanX have a general more vRAM utilization... even if aren't close to those limits.. taking the same at 1440P you find the titan using 5000MB/4.8GB. and 980TI using 4795/4.6GB.
 
Great card and if we had your price I would buy it without a doubt, not so great deal for me though considering the Swedish price is around $890.
 
Araxie said:
TitanX have a general more vRAM utilization... even if aren't close to those limits.. taking the same at 1440P you find the titan using 5000MB/4.8GB. and 980TI using 4795/4.6GB.
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http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015..._980_ti_video_card_gpu_review/10#.VX8lYPlVhBc

you say that but looking at the chart tells me a different story. almost all of the games are +/- 100mb except that game. dying light is near the upper limit of the card so it makes me wonder if nv is doing another 970 on us. who wants to run the cuda memory app and post the results?
 
It's not. The ROP's are proven, which means the memory controller isn't split in anyway. Stop being an idiot.
 
We came to the same conclusion: the 980 Ti is the perfect single card solution available for 1440p.
 
Now that I have a new 27'' Dell monitor, my poor Asus 980 simply can't do 60fps anymore on Witcher 3, so i'm in dire need of a Ti but i'm gonna wait until the Gigabyte or Strix models get reviewed as the stock blower cooling is not acceptable in my book and I don't water cool.

And no, I don't like dealing with SLI, so don't bother throwing that book at me.
 
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twzTechman said:
But what about the AMD 295x2 cards - these are in same price range and I would think similar performance. Am I missing something?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202108
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I'm guessing the 295x2 would slightly come out ahead, but it is effectively still a dual GPU. If you were to add another 295x2 down the line, or a R9 290X, scaling past two GPUs is generally terrible.

I see a lot of benefit sticking with an almost fast single GPU, that way you get the option of adding another later and have great scaling, plus no issues on games that don't support multi-GPU.

Cards like the 980 Ti and probably AMD's own upcoming Fury make cards like the 295x2 irrelevant to me really.
 
I will be looking forward for the GTX 980 Ti SLI review at 4K.
Hopefully, 6GB will be enough otherwise I may have to look for a pair of used Titan X...
 
Araxie said:
yes I understand that, but I mean more in a versus 980TI approach.. that kind of reviews also help to know how much drivers can improve performance over time.. yes more work.. but it let us users have better comparisons overtime..
Click to expand...

Thanks for your thoughts.
 
So the acoustics are unchanged from the 980 and titan x? Seen plenty of people complaining about the fan noise being louder compared to the previous cards. :confused:
 
misterbobby said:
Pretty much every review has the 980 Ti reference being much louder than the reference 980. And the noise gap is widened more when you oc both cards.
Click to expand...

If there is one silver lining to buying a titan x and returning is knowing how loud it gets especially after ocing. I just didnt like the noise level.
 
lee0539 said:
If there is one silver lining to buying a titan x and returning is knowing how loud it gets especially after ocing. I just didnt like the noise level.
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My 980 Ti will be going back. It was too loud an hot when oced even the smallest amount. I also had lots of other issues with it. I guess I will wait and see how the MSI Gaming card looks or maybe just go with the Evga ACX version.
 
Looks like a beast of a card for the price, and from what i've seen from overclocking around the web, This thing absolutely tears when bumped up even a little bit. Reports are coming in at over 20% more fps from overclocking, which is almost a new generation architecture worth of performance...INSANE. 2 of these in sli for 4k might finally be the first affordable 4k setup to his the market. LETS SEE THEM BENCHIES PLZ PLZ PLZ

check out the numbers of an overclocked G1 GAMING from GIGABYTE, ITS LITERALLY AS FAST AS 980 SLI. . .I N S A N E. . .

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_980_ti_g1_gaming_soc_review,36.html

this would be a crazy upgrade from 970 sli g1 gaming i have because the memory gets weird in certain games at 4k. . .finally, a setup to play 4k and not have to crank things down. . . 2 G1 GAMING 980ti's in SLI. . .BRUTAL TOOTLE.
 
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oldmanbal said:
Looks like a beast of a card for the price, and from what i've seen from overclocking around the web, This thing absolutely tears when bumped up even a little bit. Reports are coming in at over 20% more fps from overclocking, which is almost a new generation architecture worth of performance...INSANE. 2 of these in sli for 4k might finally be the first affordable 4k setup to his the market. LETS SEE THEM BENCHIES PLZ PLZ PLZ
Click to expand...
When you get 20% more out of it you will have one hell of a hot and loud running card. And in most gaming that actually needs that much power say at 4k you will end up throttling when under full load because of the power limit. Of course that will vary from game to game though.
 
misterbobby said:
When you get 20% more out of it you will have one hell of a hot and loud running card. And in most gaming that actually needs that much power say at 4k you will end up throttling when under full load because of the power limit. Of course that will vary from game to game though.
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G1 Gaming from gigabyte have a custom pcb to deliver about 30% more power without any stress on the card and the cooling is adequate and extremely quiet compared to crappy 2 fan designs like that terrible leaf blower acx 2.0 from evga which i sold the week i bought it.
 
Quote from the review:

To run Far Cry 4 at 4K you will need a tremendously fast video card that has not been launched yet
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My mind instinctively came up with "Fury" when I read this line, but it's probably just reading too far into it. :)
 
GuruX said:
Quote from the review:



My mind instinctively came up with "Fury" when I read this line, but it's probably just reading too far into it. :)
Click to expand...

You never know, that could be what they are inferring, but what if its Pascal?
 
I took it a lot simpler.
The card needed to run FC4 at 4K hasnt been launched yet.
Oh wait, thats exactly what they said lol.
No need to add anything more, no hidden meaning, straight forward English :p
 
Hmmm a 980Ti review just before an AMD announcement? that can't be a coincidence

Maybe the missing AMD results are just "postponed" to a later date ;);)
 
lol I just had a flashback to when I ran 2 voodoo2 12mb Diamond Monster 3dfx cards in SLI(the original SLI) in Quake2 at 1024x768 and thought that was heaven. Now we have 4k and a bagillion more pixels, but we keep wanting more :)
 
Thanks for the review guys, as always useful. Been holding off until you reviewed it. Now that's done I jumped in. (Take note advertisers, Kyle and Brent have influence ;) )

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JNavy89GT said:
lol I just had a flashback to when I ran 2 voodoo2 12mb Diamond Monster 3dfx cards in SLI(the original SLI) in Quake2 at 1024x768 and thought that was heaven. Now we have 4k and a bagillion more pixels, but we keep wanting more :)
Click to expand...

OMG you gave me a very similar flashback. i went from playing in software to 800x600 with a VooDoo2. It was unreal! I wonder what frame rate i'd get if i got a 980 Ti and ran Q2 @ 2560x1600! :D
 
Thanks [H] for another great review.

Too bad I can't afford a new card at the moment. Maybe Pascal, I hope.
 
As soon as these cards are a little more readily available and I finish selling my two Gtx 580's, 680's, and R9 290's. I am going to purchase a pair of these.
Great review.
 
the review said:
None of these cards are really fast enough to enjoy this game at high settings at 4K on their own, SLI will be needed.
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Great review, but I have to disagree with this statement. It's fine to say "4K gaming at 60fps requires SLI setup X," but 'enjoyment' and 'playability' are much more subjective. I am greatly enjoying The Witcher 3 in 4K at high settings on a single 970. I haven't checked the fps, but by my standards, it is 'playable' for an RPG. HairWorks is off, of course, but HBAO+ is on.

4K gaming is not out-of-reach if you can't afford an SLI setup.
 
I don't know where they come off saying the 980Ti fan noise is the same as the 980... that's just not true at all. I've had both reference cards and the 980Ti is significantly louder, quite loud overall (similar to a dust buster). I haven't seen anyone say differently except for this review.

Also, for witcher graphics comparisons, all you have to do to run at Ultra on a 980 or 980Ti (including Hairworks ON) is turn down the foliage distance to High and for the 980, shadows to High as well. I can get a smooth 60 FPS on the 980Ti and just over 50 average on the 980 using all Ultra settings except for those settings. Try them! Foliage distance makes almost no noticeable difference unless studying screenshots, therefore the 980Ti can truly run Witcher 3 at 60 FPS solid with everything at Ultra but that one setting.

I do have my 980Ti OC'd a bit (+175/+250), so at reference clocks you may have to turn down shadows to High to maintain 60 FPS at all times, but not if you can handle 56 FPS.
 
Great article, thank you.

I was disappointed to not spot anything about noise levels.

I did spot one egregious grammar error: in several places you use 'less' when you should use 'fewer' e.g. 'less CUDA cores' when it should be 'fewer CUDA cores'.

You note that the 980 Ti is clocked slightly higher than the Titan X; it would be most useful to see the performance difference when the clocks are identical.
 
GuruX said:
Quote from the review:



My mind instinctively came up with "Fury" when I read this line, but it's probably just reading too far into it. :)
Click to expand...
All this hype over Fury, I can't help but remember the HD 2900 XT... Everyone was saying how that was supposed to finally knock the 8800 GTX off the top of its pedastal. The [H] review came out, and ATi fanboys raged while calling [H] dishonest at best, and liars at worst. Those were fun times. Drivers were going to fix everything, amirite?
 
I'm in the "stock cooler is louder than F*ck" camp. I don't have a 980ti, but a titan-x and I removed that stock cooler asap. Slapped on a hybrid cooler. It's the best $100 I ever spent. If you game with headphones (earplugs really), than the stock cooler noise might be fine but my computer sits on top of my desk 2-3ft from my head. I even have a noise dampened case (corsair 550d), and a near silent psu and case fans, noctua cpu cooler, etc. Soon as I fired up a game that stock cooler sounded like I was vacuuming my room. It's not a high pitched whine or anything but just massive amounts of air movement through a small area.

Hybrid is not noticeable after the initial 30secs or so after boot. There is some gurgling when the pump first starts. Not sure on how the aftermarket air coolers are but the GPU is 250W, so don't expect miracles with air.

Other than the lack of noise data, the review was good. Glad to see my titan-x is a hair faster than the 980ti. If I was buying now I'm sure I would go the 980ti, but I also don't have any regrets getting the titan-x back when I did.
 
would have loved to see an OC section. like others have stated, the gigabyte 980ti soc g1 whatchamacallit is sporting some pretty crazy performance numbers (if theyre to be believed).

i have a gigabyte 770 4GB windforce rev. 2, and with a custom fan profile, it never goes over 69 degrees, i have the vram +1000mhz and the core +150mhz at stock voltage. i've never seen vram OC 1ghz!:eek: and im not done pushing the card. (770s arent anything to write home about, but hey, it was used and super cheap).

getting another 200mhz or so out of the 980ti core doesnt seem too hard, so it wouldnt been fun to see what performance that yielded.
 
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