Is a GTX 980 worth it at $370? Want to play @ 4k

[bystander36]

A single GPU that can handle 4K gaming is coming but I can't wait that long.
In 2016 I'm buying 2 of whichever Pascal card replaces the 980ti.
Right now 980ti SLI almost does 4K, when Pascal comes out just one "1080ti"won't cut it but 2 should.

4k gaming will remain a early adopter thing until a single video card can drive it properly.

Until the newest games are released with new, higher end settings to push the new high end GPU's at 1080p.

 

[Actaeon]

Ya, that was my point about selling off the 290Xs and getting a single 980Ti. Once it's overclocked to 1.5Ghz or so, it's more or less as fast as an R9 295X2 in FPS (sometimes faster, sometimes slower), but it should feel smoother and some games will take months to get SLI/CF support, while others will never get it at all. Let us know how 4K gaming is like for you after using 1080P. Can you actually notice the difference in clarity, less need for AA?

I haven't played yet as I am still trying to figure out stable overclocks, getting some conflicting results which make it difficult. I thought I figured it out as I had some good stability with Unigine Valley & Heaven. But when I run Fallout 4 I get driver crashes even at clock speeds lower than what Unigine was stable at. Hard to tell whether it is an issue with Fallout 4 or my overclock isn't stable for 'real world' gaming. I'm going to try stock clocks later today and see if it still crashes.

Anyway, that wasn't your question

So no true gameplay feedback but I did open Fallout 4, run my 'test', and walk around town a bit. The aliasing is far reduced and there is a noticeable increase in visual fidelity on my setup. Everything looks really 'smooth', no notice aliasing even up close to the TV. This is comparing 1920x1080 w/ TAA vs 3840x2160 w/ TAA. I haven't tried 4k without AA yet. All that said, Fallout 4 isn't all that visually impressive, the game itself does lack a bit of that wow factor. I am looking forward to seeing how 4k looks on a more graphical game.

The only downside so far is that the game isn't pegged at 60fps like it used to be. On my 290X @ 1080p, it was nearly pegged at 60fps all the time, though with some more demanding scenes dropping it to low-mid 30s. I've only gotten as low as low 40s with my 980 Ti so far, but it doesn't stick to 60fps as much as it used to. I guess the range is 'narrower' on the 980. Not consistently as high but not as low as the 290X. Not a huge deal, but something I noticed.

 

[Headfoot]

If the aliasing is reduced enough at 4k you ought to turn TAA off in Fallout 4. It really blurs the textures a LOT, surprisingly so. I am running ReShade to sharpen after TAA to bring back the fidelity (per this review a fellow forum denizen here linked http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout4_1.html), but if 4k doesnt have much aliasing you could save the performance and turn it off. Give it a shot and really look at the texture quality

 

[Arachnotronic]

Wait for the 16nm gen GPUs for 4K goodness.

 

[tential]

Wait for the 16nm gen GPUs for 4K goodness.

I'm finishing my playthrough now, then repeating it in 4K for 16 nm gen GPU.
I wonder how 720p Wii U games will look upscaled to a 4K monitor?

 

[ddogg]

I have a 780 SLI setup and game at 4k but I need to turn down settings to medium and a few on high and get 30-40fps(drops into the 20s also sometimes in which case I need to further drop settings). I was contemplating upgrading to 2x980TI but decided to hold off until the next gen cards. I suggest you do the same.

 

[Seba]

Wait for the 16nm gen GPUs for 4K goodness.

I was contemplating upgrading to 2x980TI but decided to hold off until the next gen cards. I suggest you do the same.

He already bought a GTX 980 Ti.

 

[Actaeon]

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Due to some awesome promotions & deals I was able to get a 980 Ti recently for less than what the 980 would have cost me when it was new. I thought a 980 Ti was good deal at that price, but I wouldn't have paid full price this far after it's release.

Big Pascal/GP100 will certainly be faster than Big Maxwell/GM200, but since I paid about what Small Pascal/'GP104' will launch at, I thought GM200 vs GP104 is a better comparison than GM200 vs GP100 for me.

Comparing a mid-high end card ("1080") of Pascal to the full high end card (980 Ti) of Maxwell, I figure they will be similar enough in performance and cost that it was a safe buy. Safe in the sense that I am not overpaying for the performance I am getting.

No doubt Pascal will be great and when a worthy upgrade is available (1080 Ti?) I will consider another upgrade. But until then, I'm enjoying some 4k gaming. I'll be sharing my experience with it so far in a separate reply.

 

[Joepublic2]

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Due to some awesome promotions & deals I was able to get a 980 Ti recently for less than what the 980 would have cost me when it was new. I thought it was a 980 Ti was good deal at that price, but I wouldn't have paid full price this far after it's release.

Big Pascal/GP100 will certainly be faster than Big Maxwell/GM200, but since I paid about what Small Pascal/'GP104' will launch at, I thought GM200 vs GP104 is a better comparison than GM200 vs GP100 for me.

Comparing a mid-high end card ("1080") of Pascal to the full high end card (980 Ti) of Maxwell, I figure they will be similar enough in performance and cost that it was a safe buy. Safe in the sense that I am not overpaying for the performance I am getting.

No doubt Pascal will be great and when a worthy upgrade is available (1080 Ti?) I will consider another upgrade. But until then, I'm enjoying some 4k gaming. I'll be sharing my experience with it so far in a separate reply.

Agreed. These 16nm cards are definitely going to be a big perf/watt improvement but people should be realistic about their expectations. The top tier first generation 16nm cards probably won't be 600mm2 dies like this last generation of cards on a very mature 28nm process.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Due to some awesome promotions & deals I was able to get a 980 Ti recently for less than what the 980 would have cost me when it was new. I thought it was a 980 Ti was good deal at that price, but I wouldn't have paid full price this far after it's release.

Big Pascal/GP100 will certainly be faster than Big Maxwell/GM200, but since I paid about what Small Pascal/'GP104' will launch at, I thought GM200 vs GP104 is a better comparison than GM200 vs GP100 for me.

Comparing a mid-high end card ("1080") of Pascal to the full high end card (980 Ti) of Maxwell, I figure they will be similar enough in performance and cost that it was a safe buy. Safe in the sense that I am not overpaying for the performance I am getting.

No doubt Pascal will be great and when a worthy upgrade is available (1080 Ti?) I will consider another upgrade. But until then, I'm enjoying some 4k gaming. I'll be sharing my experience with it so far in a separate reply.

Congrats!

 

[Mondozei]

A single GPU that can handle 4K gaming is coming but I can't wait that long.
In 2016 I'm buying 2 of whichever Pascal card replaces the 980ti.
Right now 980ti SLI almost does 4K, when Pascal comes out just one "1080ti"won't cut it but 2 should.

4k gaming will remain a early adopter thing until a single video card can drive it properly.

Yeah, I'm playing on a 1440p monitor with an OC'd EVGA 980 SC+. Even with a 980 Ti, I wouldn't get the frames I want in top AAA games at 1440p(I prefer ULMB over G-Sync so I'm aiming for a solid 120 fps).

I mean just look at this:

Even if we assume Big Pascal is a 60% increase, that's still only around 66 fps. Even with a massive 90% increase, it remains at around 78.5 fps. You get a similar OC as in that chart and we'll see a 100 fps average. But that's assuming a 90% performance increase, which is highly unlikely for Big Pascal.

We won't see the kind of numbers I'm looking for until Volta at the earliest for 1440p and you can forget 4K being at 120 fps or above on average at ultra settings until the year 2020 or later. And this is with a game released in 2015. A state of the art game in the year 2018 or 2020 will be even more demanding, pushing the goal posts back further.

The solution to this is SLI, but in DX11 and below, SLI is essentially a broken hack. DX12 has potential to fix this but we won't see the fruits of that labor until we close to single dGPU parity on 1440p, thereby nullifying the effect for me at least, since I'm looking for a 32" 1440p monitor in the future. 4K will be a much later upgrade. So if you plan on being on 4K, all I say is good luck unless you're fine with going down heavily in visual fidelity or playing at low frame rates and/or not very demanding stuff in general.

 

[Actaeon]

So I finally got my first gaming session on the new setup last night and so far I am very pleased. I think I landed at a good spot with my overclock @ 1500mhz core/8200mhz memory. I was able to go higher on both core and memory individually, but combined that is where I've landed. I think the card is hitting the power limit when I'm pushing both, so I think that is restricting getting the maximum out of each. I think I can get more with a custom BIOS but I am okay with what I've got.

Anyway, I played Fallout 4 for a few hours last night on a few different visual settings. The most demanding scenes I have seen so far are when I am outdoors with fog/thunderstorms, lots of foliage/objects, overlooking long distances during the day time. Lots of God Ray action going on during this time. There is just a ton of stuff going on with the lighting, the special effects, the shadows, the number of objects being rendered.

I first tested with visual effects turned on to Ultra/Max and with TAA enabled. This is a step above the 'Ultra' preset as God Rays increased from High to Ultra. In that demanding scene FPS dropped into the low 30s. Changing God Rays from Ultra to High, FPS jumps up by about 10. Disabling TAA gives you about another 5. So the minimum FPS range in that demanding scene was anywhere between 30-45fps depending on your settings. The game was very playable at all setups above for me though I did appreciate the smoothness from the higher rates.

The visual impact of changing God Rays from Ultra to High was about nothing. I still see the beams of light flowing through the objects from the light source and the game looks the same to me. Nvidia has an interesting comparison page up where you can see the same scene with God Rays from Ultra to Medium. No difference. The performance penalty wasn't worth it and I won't be using Ultra.

TAA's impact was a bit noticeable even with 4k resolution. It kind of 'smooths' out objects/people into the scene. With TAA disabled, objects do stick out a little more as their edges aren't blurred but it still looks good. I am a little unsure if I'll use TAA or not.

4K in general was very nice. The jagged edges of 1080p are gone. Without AA you can still see the edges of objects with a very high contrast to one another but this is only visible when pixel peeping or staring hard and not easy to see during regular gameplay. TAA removed it completely and edges were hard to see even pixel peeping up close.

If you are OK with 40-60 FPS and don't mind an occasional dip into the 30s, gaming at 4k is very possible. If 40s are your minimum, you might have to disable some unnecessary special effects such as God Rays or Hairworks. Not a big deal since their benefit is so minor IMO.

If you want minimum 60fps @ 4k with max settings that is tough and I don't think we are ready for that yet, just way too many pixels to push around. You can probably get there by dropping some more important visual settings but I would rather drop the resolution at that point. If you're looking to max out your 144hz monitor and have a locked 120+ fps, you probably won't be looking at 4k for a while as that is even taxing on 1440p.

I know this was tested only using one game and despite it not looking very good, it is quite demanding. There will be a few tougher games and you may have to make more concessions around special/visual effects for them, but overall my experience in trying 4k has been a positive one.

I know this was a super long post, so if ya stuck with it, thank you. I know this was tested only using one game and despite it not looking very good, it is quite demanding. There will be a few tougher games and you may have to make more concessions around special effects for them, but overall I think 4k gaming is very reasonable.

 

[Mondozei]

Nice report. :thumbsup:

But Fallout 4 is a generally undemanding game, visually. Yes, it's unoptimised for the most part(but much less so on NV than on AMD). It's interesting to read your thoughts on it regardless, but I'd love to see a few more games thrown in there. Which do you got and are planning to play over the next couple of days?

 

[Seba]

You should set God Rays to Low, because it looks exactly the same as on highest setting, but it is less demanding on the graphics card.

 

[Headfoot]

Look closely at the textures with TAA off vs On. The textures get blurred to crap with TAA on unless you use a post-fx sharpen filter like ReShade, and that screws up the Godrays with a screendoor effect

 

[amenx]

Look closely at the textures with TAA off vs On. The textures get blurred to crap with TAA on unless you use a post-fx sharpen filter like ReShade, and that screws up the Godrays with a screendoor effect

To me the game looks fantastic with TAA + reshade and sharpening with god rays off.

 

[Headfoot]

I do that too, but reshade with godrays on greatly exacerbates the screen door effect that the godray effect already has. It's pretty awful in some spots. Preferable to the muck texture blur you get with TAA without ReShade though.

 

[Actaeon]

Nice report. :thumbsup:

But Fallout 4 is a generally undemanding game, visually. Yes, it's unoptimised for the most part(but much less so on NV than on AMD). It's interesting to read your thoughts on it regardless, but I'd love to see a few more games thrown in there. Which do you got and are planning to play over the next couple of days?

Yeah, I agree FO4 doesn't look very good. It looks like something from 2012 but I figured the game itself was stressful enough especially in scenes like the one I described earlier to estimate performance. But maybe you are right and this is not the best example. I'll give another game a try.

For PC I am currently playing Fallout 4 and the new Starcraft 2 expansion. I just switch between them whenever I feel like mixing it up but my guess is none of those will be that interesting .

I did just pick up Witcher 3 on sale but haven't played it yet. I remotely logged into my PC, launched the game with everything on Ultra/Highest but disabled Hairworks and AA. Not a good real world test, but panning the camera around the house it was anywhere between 35-50fps depending on where the camera was pointed. Certainly should expect less than that during normal gameplay/outdoors. If too low I'll have to look at what settings I can play with that will free up some framerates without much image quality impacts, I just cranked everything up. I'm thinking of stuff like HBAO+ and Shadows should help without hurting IQ much. I'll do some further testing and hopefully there will be a stressful scene early in the game. I don't want to play it just yet as I've already got too many games going on.

I did play some Starcraft 2 last night. With maxxed everything and AA enabled I did bottom out at around 30fps on a pretty intense battle. Most of the game hovered between 40-60fps depending on what was going on. Interestingly some of the cut scenes (not pre-rendered, using the engine) were a little more variable and I saw a few dips into the upper teens. Yikes, choppy for sure. It is just people talking, so it is kind of of weird that would be stressful. Fortunately there really is no input as you're just listening to people talk but it isn't nearly as smooth as I'd like. For anyone that has played the game, I'm referring to when you talk to someone on your ship/base and hearing their story. I might disable AA and see much that helps performance.

Anyway, what I think I've determined is that it may be necessary disable some settings to make 4K playable for demanding games. This is not totally unexpected as I did not think a single 980 Tis could really max out all games at 4K. However, I do think it is entirely possible to play games at 4K having both good image quality and framerates. Demanding games would require optimized settings. Some settings to disable are no brainers like GodRays and Hairworks. Some are debatable like AA and Shadow Quality. I think where it will really get interesting is if I will have to disable stuff I would actually want to keep such as higher quality textures and shaders. At that point it may be better dropping down to 1440p or 1800p.

And of course how much optimizations that need to be done before its just better to drop resolution will be up to each person and their tolerances towards minimum framerates. I do appreciate the fluidity of high framerates, but I do think some games play fine at lower frame rates. I probably would want something closer to 60fps on a twitch/competitive shooter but 30FPS is ok for something like Starcraft/Civilization.

You should set God Rays to Low, because it looks exactly the same as on highest setting, but it is less demanding on the graphics card.

I think I'll do that! I didn't try going any lower than 'High' when I was testing. But after looking at the Nvidia comparison slider I think I might jut put it to low. I wonder what the performance difference is between low and high.

Look closely at the textures with TAA off vs On. The textures get blurred to crap with TAA on unless you use a post-fx sharpen filter like ReShade, and that screws up the Godrays with a screendoor effect

Thanks, I think I'll keep TAA disabled. I have noticed the 'screen door' effect on objects lit up by God Rays. I didn't realize TAA was causing the problem. I also don't think AA is all that necessary at this resolution and among the first things I'd disable if I want some better framerates.


Sorry for my long posts. I can get quite verbose. Appreciate all of the feedback so far.

 

[Actaeon]

Just did some more testing with Witcher 3. I went through parts of the tutorial where I ran from my quarters to the fighting grounds and did some sparring with the guy in charge of the camp. Gameplay stuck really close to the 40-45fps mark, pretty smooth. I ran off to the edge of the practice area to try to make it render more things. So I was looking at stuff like the mountains, the buildings, the other people fighting, and foliage, I was able to get it down to about 35fps. Weird thing is that 35fps on Witcher 3 feels much smoother than on Fallout. Kind of weird.

Anyway, very positive results from that test. It was hard to tell how smooth it was during the initial testing when I was using a remote desktop, it was so choppy but thats a network thing. Now that I was able to test it I figured it would have dropped like a rock as soon as I got out from my house. I don't know if this is representative of the rest of the game play/environments but I thought the frame rates were very playable. This is with everything maxxed out/Ultra, disabled AA & Hairworks. I did leave HBAO+ on.

I really wish there was a way for me to log framerates in a chart easily so I can share my framerates. I tried through Riva monitoring, but its only within the app itself.

Another interesting thing is boost clock speeds dropped a bit. In other games it'll go between 1500-1512mhz. In this game GPUZ said it was running at 1480mhz.

 

[Actaeon]

I'll just keep posting any impressions until I get bored

Played some more SC2 with AA disabled. Gameplay was pretty solid with 60-50fps even in bigger battles. More than plenty for this kind of game.

Cut scenes are still really taxing for some reason. Didn't see it in the teens this time but occasionally low 20s. Very weird, but at least its a cut scene.