• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

GTX 980 - Underwhelmed, is it just me?

Associate
Joined
16 Dec 2014
Posts
301
Hi all,

I have replaced my SLI setup of two GTX 660ti's for one GTX 980. I have always thought my SLI setup was pretty good and never have to turn many settings down too much for decent 60 FPS gaming. But I can't help but be completely underwhelmed by the performance of the 980 so far.

I have noticed non to slim FPS increase on the games I play most frequent. Those are Project Cars, Far Cry 4 and Battlefield 4.

It is faster here and there but no where near what I expected, Project Cars was the least improved still only getting 30-60 fps on highest settings at 1080p and I was getting that on my old cards. Also lots of FPS drops too at various points round the track which I think is unacceptable for a £400 gpu.

The new card also suffers from horrid coil whine so without a shadow of a doubt its going back, but I am struggling to decide if I should get a replacement when there is practically no difference from my old SLI setup.

Any thoughts?

660 Ti SLI should be faster than a single 980
 
Associate
OP
Joined
16 Mar 2011
Posts
824
Location
Leeds
One thing I am going to check when I get home is my BIOS is set right for the PCI-E lanes. I know they run in x8 on SLI so need to make sure its back to x16. It should do it automatically but worth a look.
 
Soldato
Joined
24 Oct 2005
Posts
16,277
Location
North East
Run a few benchmarks for ppl here to compare for you, like 3d mark and some ingame ones if you have em. Check the bios for any optimization tricks u can do. Post a gpuz screenshot perhaps of idle and full usage (click the question mark near bus interface and run the inbuilt benchy to get it running full) Check sensors tab when having it running the benchy and post a screenie of boosted clocks etc.

Check if vsync is on/off if expecting more than 60fps. Check if the games you play have any patches or tweaks needed for performance.

Latest drivers are 347.09 make sure u have em. http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/80913/en-us

Also use this to clean your system of drivers if you want to and then reinstall the latest drivers by downloading the 347.09 from nvidia site (dont use old drivers then update them through gf experience).

http://www.wagnardmobile.com/DDU/

Also i think i read that the more drivers you have in Project Cars the less its gpu dependent and more cpu dependent so say your having 21 drivers its then ur cpu thats the issue unless you oc to 4 or more ghz .
 
Last edited:
Associate
OP
Joined
16 Mar 2011
Posts
824
Location
Leeds
Run a few benchmarks for ppl here to compare for you, like 3d mark and some ingame ones if you have em.

Check the bios for any optimisation tricks u can do.

Post a gpuz screenshot perhaps of idle and full usage (click the question mark near bus interface and run the inbuilt benchy to get it fulling full) Check sensors tab when having it running the benchy and post a screenie of boosted clocks etc.

Check if vsync is on/off if expecting more than 60fps.

Check if the games you play have any patches or tweaks needed for performance.

Latest drivers are 347.09 make sure u have em.

Will do, don't know when I'll get round to it all like!
 
Caporegime
Joined
30 Jul 2013
Posts
28,822
If you wanted, here's my Heaven run on a Palit Jetstream 980 GTX

image001.jpg


Edit: I'm underwhelmed with the Nvidia scaling options. No matter what I selected I couldn't get 1080p to appear fullscreen on my 4k TV via DisplayPort.

The AMD 295x2 does it automatically.

I tried changing the settings to override programs, use the Display scaler, always fill the screen etc etc in the Nvidia control panel thing and nothing worked.

To be fair I didn't have a HDMI mini cable so I couldn't test it in the HDMI 2.0 slot, but even so...

I'm glad that's not my primary gaming PC, and I will be using it on a 1080p TV anyway.

Also the coil whine was awful. I'd never heard coil whine before, and I honestly don't have coil whine in my X99 Tri-fire "workhorse"

But then we're comparing an ATX 1200w SuperFlower Platinum PSU vs a 600W SFX PSU.
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
15 Jun 2009
Posts
2,189
Location
South London
You are correct. I'm not sure what I was thinking. 980 beats a pair of 660 Ti's by about 1200 points in FSE

I think in game is a more important comparison rather than synthetic benchmarks. This is where the op is not seeing any real performance gains.

I don't know what research the op done that suggested there would be a big increase over a 980 but from my knowledge SLI 660Tis are not far off TItan performance.

http://youtu.be/L1dN4aN6vS0

It's a shame that there is still no real single GPU that can obliterate Keplers previous high end performance. I assume that coming from a 660Ti SLI setup that was serving the op very well the 980 is not enough of an upgrade to see any huge jumps in game. I would guess the rumored 965Ti SLI with the 192bit bus or even 970 SLI would have made a much more noticeable upgrade.

Or if real patience is an option then full fat Maxwell, although it's likely to be overpriced because they have sold the 980 as if it's a high end card like the 680 so the price is only going up.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
17 Aug 2003
Posts
20,158
Location
Woburn Sand Dunes
it is a high end card, its the fastest card nvidia have released so far. it's nothing but top end. I dont get this notion that it should be a mid-range card purely because we know bigger maxwell-based gpus are going to be released. it's nonsense.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
21 May 2012
Posts
31,940
Location
Dalek flagship
it is a high end card, its the fastest card nvidia have released so far. it's nothing but top end. I dont get this notion that it should be a mid-range card purely because we know bigger maxwell-based gpus are going to be released. it's nonsense.

Actually it is not the fastest card NVidia have launched I can think of a couple that are faster.:D:)
 
Associate
Joined
15 Jun 2009
Posts
2,189
Location
South London
it is a high end card, its the fastest card nvidia have released so far. it's nothing but top end. I dont get this notion that it should be a mid-range card purely because we know bigger maxwell-based gpus are going to be released. it's nonsense.

Ok then it's a high end card with mid range specs if that is more graphically correct ;) when you consider they have put 800+ less cuda cores on it than a 780Ti and lowered the memory bandwidth then you should see where my opinion is coming from.

In my opinion it's the successor to the original 680. In which case the high end GK110 completed the picture. Does it make it more real if i say its midrange now or in 6 months by which time full fat Maxwell would probably have been released already?
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Aug 2003
Posts
20,158
Location
Woburn Sand Dunes
Ok then it's a high end card with mid range specs if that is more graphically correct ;) when you consider they have put 800+ less cuda cores on it than a 780Ti and lowered the memory bandwidth then you should see where my opinion is coming from.

the number of cuda cores isnt a metric because maxwell uses them more efficiently. So yes, there are less of them, but that's all that means. you cant logically decide if a gpu is high/mid/low range based on technical information, and especially when you are only concerning yourself one one piece; what matters is the performance and the 980 is up the top there. It's not as fast as existing 780/290 owners wanted, no, but that doesn't change anything.

In my opinion it's the successor to the original 680. In which case the high end GK110 completed the picture. Does it make it more real if i say its midrange now or in 6 months by which time full fat Maxwell would probably have been released already?

no, it would still be a top end card. it doesn't suddenly become mid-range because there's now a faster card out - there's a massive gulf between the 970/980 and any mid-ranged card.

Actually it is not the fastest card NVidia have launched I can think of a couple that are faster.

Alright, single gpu card lol.
 
Last edited:
Permabanned
Joined
30 Apr 2014
Posts
681
it is a high end card, its the fastest card nvidia have released so far. it's nothing but top end. I dont get this notion that it should be a mid-range card purely because we know bigger maxwell-based gpus are going to be released. it's nonsense.

The 980 is all that Nvidia are going to give people (holding the big guns back to milk twice) until Amd release their high end 390x/390 and therefore maybe called their high end at the moment but if Amd had already released their 390x/390 Nvidia would be giving us full fat Maxwell now. A card with a 256bit bus in this day and age is never the real high end even if it beat's one year+ old tech from Amd.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
17 Aug 2003
Posts
20,158
Location
Woburn Sand Dunes
The 980 is all that Nvidia are going to give people (holding the big guns back to milk twice) until Amd release their high end 390x/390 and therefore maybe called their high end at the moment but if Amd had already released their 390x/390 Nvidia would already be giving us full fat Maxwell. A card with a 256bit bus in this day and age is never the real high end even if it beat's one year+ old tech from Amd.

if it had a 512bit bus, it would have only made a top end card faster. if the 390x was already here, the 290 probably would have been released earlier as well! that's all speculation though :p
 
Last edited:
Permabanned
Joined
30 Apr 2014
Posts
681
if it had a 512bit bus, it would have only made a top end card faster.

Then it would be at least a good increase in performance over Amd's old tech. You can't really call it top end when it's not really a huge boost over the 290x or the 780ti. Yes its power consumption is good but someone with these old tech cards are not getting much of an improvement if they swapped to the 980 as the big gun Maxwell with higher bus, shaders, rops is being held back until Amd release the 390x.
 
Back
Top Bottom