The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2015 6:00 PM ESTCivilization: Beyond Earth
Shifting gears from action to strategy, we have Civilization: Beyond Earth, the latest in the Civilization series of strategy games. Civilization is not quite as GPU-demanding as some of our action games, but at Ultra quality it can still pose a challenge for even high-end video cards. Meanwhile as the first Mantle-enabled strategy title Civilization gives us an interesting look into low-level API performance on larger scale games, along with a look at developer Firaxis’s interesting use of split frame rendering with Mantle to reduce latency rather than improving framerates.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the GTX 980 Ti and GTX Titan perform within a few percent of each other. Under Civilization the gap between the two is a hair larger than in other games, at 3-4%, but this is also as large of a gap as you’ll see for average framerates. Even here the two are for all meaningful purposes tied.
Meanwhile on an absolute basis, the GM200 twin remain the only single-GPU cards to crack 60fps, with GTX 980 Ti delivering 70.5fps at the game’s most extreme setting. This is once again well ahead of the GTX 980 – beating it by 34% at 4K, though by less at lower resolutions where we start to get CPU-bottlenecked.
I also want to quickly touch upon how the GTX 980 Ti compares to the last-generation high-end GK110 Kepler cards, the GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti. Against GTX 780 in particular, in this test we see the GTX 980 Ti deliver 70-80% better performance. With this being the 2 year anniversary of the GTX 780’s release, this is especially notable since it’s such a good example of how performance has improved specifically at this $649 price point in the last 2 years. GM200 in general is not this fast versus GK110 – there’s only so much to be done at 28nm – but against GTX 780 in particular NVIDIA’s latest card looks quite good. Even GTX 780 Ti is not entirely immune, with GTX 980 Ti beating it by around 45% at 4K.
When it comes to minimum framerates the same story continues; the two GM200 cards are very close to each other, staying within 5%. At worst, you can say that the 7-17% performance advantage over the GTX 980 isn’t very impressive, though this is admittedly a game that’s not too far off from being CPU-bottlenecked.
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ComputerGuy2006 - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Well at $500 this would be 'acceptable', but paying this much for 28nm in mid 2015?SirMaster - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Why do people care about the nm? If the performance is good isn't that what really matters?Galaxy366 - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
I think the reason people talk about nm is because a smaller nm means more graphical power and less usage.ComputerGuy2006 - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Yeah, we also 'skipped' a generation, so it will be even a bigger bang... And with how old the 28nm is, it should be more mature process with better yields, so these prices look even more out of control.Kevin G - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Even with a mature process, producing a 601 mm^2 chip isn't going to be easy. The only larger chips I've heard of are ultra high end server processors (18 core Haswell-EX, IBM POWER8 etc.) which typically go for several grand a piece.chizow - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Heh, I guess you don't normally shop in this price range or haven't been paying very close attention. $650 is getting back to Nvidia's typical flagship pricing (8800GTX, GTX 280), they dropped it to $500 for the 480/580 due to economic circumstances and the need to regain marketshare from AMD, but raised it back to $650-700 with the 780/780Ti.In terms of actual performance gains, the actual performance increases are certainly justified. You could just as easily be paying the same price or more for 28nm parts that aren't any faster (stay tuned for AMD's rebranded chips in the upcoming month).
extide - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
AMD will launch the HBM card on 400 series. 300 series is an OEM only series. ... just like ... wait for it .... nVidia's 300 series. WOW talk about unprecedented!chizow - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
AMD already used that excuse...for the...wait for it...8000 series. Which is now the...wait for it....R9 300 OEM series (confirmed) and Rx 300 Desktop series (soon to underwhelm).NvidiaWins - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
RIGHT! AMD has been backpedaling for the last 3 years!Morawka - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
980 was $549 at release.. So was the 780Nvidia is charging $650 for the first few weeks, but when AMD's card drops, you'll see the 980 Ti get discounted down to $500.
Just wait for AMD's release and the price will have to drop.