The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTSynthetics
As always we’ll also take a quick look at synthetic performance. Being a virtual copy of the GTX Titan X, GTX 980 Ti should perform very similarly here, just as we've seen in our gaming tests.
Compared to GTX Titan X, GTX 980 Ti does technically lose 2 Polymorph Engines as a result of losing 2 SMMs. However as with our games, this doesn’t really hinder GTX 980 Ti, leading it being within a few percent of GTX Titan X on tessellation performance.
As for texel and pixel fillrates, the results are both as-expected and a bit surprising. On the expected side, we see the GTX 980 Ti trail GTX Titan X by a bit, again taking a hit from the SMM loss. On the other hand we’re seeing a larger than expected drop in the pixel fill rates. GTX 980 Ti loses some rasterization throughput from the SMM loss, but a 15% drop in this test is much larger than 2 SMMs. Just to be sure we checked to make sure the ROP/MC configuration of GTX 980 Ti was unchanged at 96 ROPs, so while we can explain 10% or so (GTX 980 Ti doesn't have its clockspeed advantage in such a short test), we're at a loss to fully explain the last 5%. The short run time of the test also makes it more varaible than other tests, so that may be the last 5%.
Though in either case, despite what 3DMark is telling us, we aren’t seeing any signs of GTX 980 Ti struggling at 4K versus GTX Titan X. So if there is a meaningful difference in pixel fillrates, it’s not impacting game performance.
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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.