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Have NVidia missed the bus?

Kaapstad

Kaapstad

Kaapstad

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I was looking at this article because I am interested in the 5960X CPU but some of the benchmarks in it really shocked me. They were using a pair of GTX 980s at 1080p, 1440p and 2160p to check SLI scaling.

For 1080p and 1440p the scaling looked fine and what you would expect, 1080p was showing the effects of a CPU bottleneck and 1440p was getting very good scaling as there was no CPU bottleneck so no problems there.

What really stood out though was the poor scaling @2160p and the associated loss of performance, at this resolution there is absolutely no CPU bottleneck with 2 cards so why was the scaling bad?

They had done some runs with the Heaven 4 bench which was useful as it makes comparing cards on different PCs and CPUs easy as the CPU (providing it is a modern intel quad or better) does not really effect the result.

So what I decided to do was test some 290Xs on Heaven 4 using the same 2160p settings they used to compare scaling. For anyone who does not know Heaven 4 is NVidia's home ground when it comes to benching and their cards are very hard to beat on it.

Below is the settings and results the review site got for a pair of 980s

SigIPXE.jpg


http://www.ocaholic.co.uk/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1461&page=2



Here are my 290X scaling results using stock cards and my 4930k @4.0ghz. The same Heaven 4 settings as they used @2160p


1 card
IJj5Fmj.jpg



2 cards
QITlpqx.jpg



3 cards
GA8nv33.jpg



4 cards
5Pvy9wm.jpg





So for my 290Xs the scaling was -

1 Card = 377 Scaling = 100%
2 Cards = 748 Scaling = 198%
3 Cards = 1113 Scaling = 295%
4 Cards = 1446 Scaling = 383%


So what is going on here, not only is the scaling a lot better @4K on my 290Xs but my 2 stock cards managed to beat a pair of slightly overclocked GTX 980s on NVidia's home ground @4K.

Have NVidia missed the bus?
 
I dont think overall there worried about 4k tbh as its a small portion of the market, Yes it is growing and its still a important bit But it is in the minority and as most of us realise the 980 might be the current flagship but longer term they are a midrange card
 
I've seen this replicated else where, I'll try dig the link out . there's benchmarks showing only around 70% scaling even with two cards out there , will try find them for you to have a butchers at . Hopefully next set of drivers will sort something
 
triss said:
I dont think overall there worried about 4k tbh as its a small portion of the market, Yes it is growing and its still a important bit But it is in the minority and as most of us realise the 980 might be the current flagship but longer term they are a midrange card
Click to expand...

I can't wait for the Maxwell Titan to launch, that will be fun next year.:D
 
MasterOC said:
I've seen this replicated else where, I'll try dig the link out . there's benchmarks showing only around 70% scaling even with two cards out there , will try find them for you to have a butchers at . Hopefully next set of drivers will sort something
Click to expand...

I don't think new drivers will do anything much if they have not nailed it by now. The SLI profiles are already working fine @1080p and 1440p which points to the problem being elsewhere. If anything the performance and SLI profile of the GTX 980 is very similar to the GK104 cards, SLI worked great, very good performance @1080p and 1440p but above that performance dropped off at high resolution. One area new drivers sometimes help performance cards with is to raise/remove a CPU bottleneck but on this occasion that won't make the slightest difference @4K.
 
Yeah, I think this is down to the 256bit bus myself. The 980 should have had 6GB on a 384 bit bus.

It's a bit of a shame, but I don't think 4k is ready for prime time anyway, this is the age of 1440p144, the RoG Swift is the monitor to go with.

Next year when we have GM200 (I don't believe it will come this year, we will have Tesla and Quadro cards with it but not a titan or a 990Ti or whatever, just like with the 600 series when the GK110 was Tesla/Quadro only), 4k will be good.

I bought my 2560x1600 monitor in the 8800GTX days, I tried three of those in SLi (awful scaling back then), I tried two 2900XTs in Crossfire, and I spent years trying to keep up with that screen. I then went to two 4870X2s in 4 way crossfire (yay microstutter!). I don't feel I have really gotten a system to do 1600p justice until the 980. The 7970 on release day was close, but trifire was awful (possibly as games had advanced etc).

The lesson I learned was never to buy a screen ahead of the curve by so much. 1080p is still the standard, I'll stick with 1440p/1600p until that's the standard, then go to 4k, but never two standards ahead again.
 
It sure seems that way, or Nvidia is trying to catch up to the "bus"....lol
I read a review on another reviewer site for 980 4 way sli, and it was disappointing to say the least. I am sure that same reviewer site will start hammering away like a parrot on frame times for multi gpu set ups pretty soon, if history is any indication.

Don't know what's going on, but on the surface,it would appear that Nvidia would rather have its install base using two way sli at most... But where does this leave multi gpu users?
It would be interesting to see how AMD's new cards scale once released...
 
Hi there

9xx is designed for 1080P gaming and 1440P, something they do extremely well!

Anything higher, like 2160P and 4k then 295 X2 is still the King and maybe even 780Ti in SLI configuration is better too, though only 3GB of VRAM could then limit it.
 
980?

Christ my 970 scores 1654 at the High preset. Didn't realise it was that 'good'

Interesting article though
 
If this imply anything, it is probably highlighting 256-bit bus weakness for the UltraHD res.

So Nvidia users that want to game on 4K res, the Titan Black is probably still the go-to card.
 
I don't think Nvidia ever expected these card's mainstream use to be for 4k.

Lets be honest here, in a few years time when 4k becomes more mainstream I suspect we will be needing far more than 4gb of vram to play the top new games at 4k with the maximum texture resolution available.
 
as said how many actually game at 4k literally no one.

4k isnt even going to be a standard almost dead before its out.
 
Gibbo said:
Hi there

9xx is designed for 1080P gaming and 1440P, something they do extremely well!

Anything higher, like 2160P and 4k then 295 X2 is still the King and maybe even 780Ti in SLI configuration is better too, though only 3GB of VRAM could then limit it.
Click to expand...

Any news on the Maxwell Titans?
 
Gibbo said:
Hi there

9xx is designed for 1080P gaming and 1440P, something they do extremely well!

Anything higher, like 2160P and 4k then 295 X2 is still the King and maybe even 780Ti in SLI configuration is better too, though only 3GB of VRAM could then limit it.
Click to expand...

Even though I don't have 295 x2, I may have to agree with you, based on some of the reviews that I have seen.
 
Do AMD use their Tessellation cheat in Unigine where they only render tessellation at a fraction of the requested level? could be hitting some sort of tessellation limit on NVidia if so.
 
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