The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTBattlefield 4
Kicking off our benchmark suite is Battlefield 4, DICE’s 2013 multiplayer military shooter. After a rocky start, Battlefield 4 has since become a challenging game in its own right and a showcase title for low-level graphics APIs. As these benchmarks are from single player mode, based on our experiences our rule of thumb here is that multiplayer framerates will dip to half our single player framerates, which means a card needs to be able to average at least 60fps if it’s to be able to hold up in multiplayer.
Battlefield 4 is going to set the pace for the rest of this review. In our introduction we talked about how the GTX 980 Ti may as well be the GTX Titan X, and this is one such example why. With a framerate deficit of no more than 3% in this benchmark, the difference between the two cards is just outside the range of standard run-to-run experimental variation that we see in our benchmarking process. So yes, it really is that fast.
In any case, after stripping away the Frostbite engine’s expensive (and not wholly effective) MSAA, what we’re left with for BF4 at 4K with Ultra quality puts the 980 Ti in a pretty good light. At 56.5fps it’s not quite up to the 60fps mark, but it comes very close, close enough that the GTX 980 Ti should be able to stay above 30fps virtually the entire time, and never drop too far below 30fps in even the worst case scenario. Alternatively, dropping to Medium quality should give the card plenty of headroom, with an average framerate of 91.8fps meaning even the lowest framerate never drops below 45fps.
Meanwhile our other significant comparison here is the GTX 980, which just saw its price cut by $50 to $499 to make room for the GTX 980 Ti. At $649 the GTX 980 Ti ideally should be 30% faster to justify its 30% higher price tag; here it’s almost exactly on that mark, fluctuating between a 28% and 32% lead depending on the resolution and settings.
Finally, shifting gears for a moment, gamers looking for the ultimate 1440p card will not be disappointed. GTX 980 Ti will not get to 120fps here (it won’t even come close), but at 77.7fps it’s well suited for driving 1440p144 displays. In fact and GTX Titan X are the single-GPU cards to do better than 60fps at this resolution.
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FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
Thumbs up daroller, 1920x1200 and only 980TI is capable of driving it properly without eye candy loss and fps failures.People claim I'm crazy but then I never have to worry about my settings and I can seamlessly choose and change and view and analyze and I'm never frustrated "having to turn down the settings" to make things playable.
The rest of the world stretches livability to the limit and loves stressing everything to the max an grinding it all down to pathetic perf, all the while claiming "it's awesome !"
In other words, stupidity is absolutely rampant.
Yojimbo - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Value is not performance per price. Value is what benefit is achieved by the purchase of the product. I'll repeat my previous post by asking how can you assume that purchasing a card has "unreasonable value"? If I, as someone who is in the market for a video card, have a range of options to choose from for myself, how can you off-the-cuff judge how much I should be willing to spend to get a better experience (higher resolution, more detailed graphics, smoother game play, etc) from a higher-priced offering compared with a lower-priced offering? You have no idea what my value of those experiences are, so how can you judge whether the cards offer good value or not?The people buying those high priced cards are buying them because in their minds they are getting more value from them at the higher price than they would be getting from the lower-priced alternatives. Now people don't always make the most accurate decisions. They can be fooled, or they can have misconceived notions of what they are going to be getting, but the point is that they THINK they are getting more value at the time of purchase.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Or they can simply afford it and want the *best* for other reasons such as being able to max out visuals without ever worrying about VRAM issues. It's wrong to assume such purchases are down to incorrect value judgements. You're imposing your own value perception on someone else.chizow - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Yeah, unfortunately anyone who actually buys high-end GPUs understands price and performance goes out the window the higher you go up the product chain. Nvidia made their value play to the masses with the 970 at an amazing $330 price point, memory snafu notwithstanding, and the card has sold incredibly well.There was no reason for them to drop prices further, and I think most observers will recognize the $650 price point of the 980Ti is actually very aggressive, given there was absolutely no pressure from AMD to price it that low.
Kjella - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
If AMD gets to launch first and nVidia must respond, it seems like they're trading blows. If nVidia makes a preemptive strike now, they make AMD's launch seem late and weak. They know AMD is betting on Win10 driving sales, so they could read their launch plan like an open book and torpedo it out of the gate. I think this will be a miserable month for AMD, it's hard to see how GCN-based cards are going to compete with Maxwell, HBM or not.chizow - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Yep, Nvidia just pre-emptively torpedoed AMD's product launch and set pricing again. All very impressive how Nvidia has gone about 28nm product launches despite the uncertainty we'd see anything new until 14/16nm after word 20nm was cancelled.PEJUman - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I don't think Nvidia is dumb enough to launch 980TI without knowing where FIJI would lay on their stack. I think this is more of a powerplay from them saying, 'here's your price point AMD, good luck'like you said, the fact is they have no competitive pressure on titan X, why ruin it's pricing now if you don't know where FIJI would land.
here's my guess:
Nvidia just torpedoed their titan X, mainly because FIJI probably around 97% of titan X, and AMD was about to ask 850~1000 USD for it. now Nvidia will launch this 980TI at 650 to control the price. (which I bet they have been readying for quite some time, simply waiting for the right time/price point)
Peichen - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I think you are right. Fuji was estimated to be close to Titan but cheaper by $200. Now Nvidia delivered a Fuji-like card for $650, Fuji cannot go above $650. In fact, consider Fuji to be limited to 4GB and hot enough to have a watercooled version, Fuji might have to go below $600 with bundle game or $550 without bundle to make any sense. With the big chip and expensive memory Fuji is using, AMD/ATI's margin on those card are going to be slim compares with Nvidia.PEJUman - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
yeah... time to buy AMD stock options :)In all honestly though, I really would like to have them around, if only for the 2 horses race...
bloodypulp - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
For christsake... it's Fiji. NOT Fuji.