GTX 980 - Underwhelmed, is it just me?

[richardirv]

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?

 

[richardirv]

I know, i read up about this before taking the plunge and decided the increase should be worth it but at the moment it's defo not worth a £400 upgrade.

I don't really wanna go down the route of a format, I did perform a clean install with the drivers but I must admit I didn't go to the Nvidia web site and download them fresh I just used the ones in the Nvidia folder on my hard drive. I assumed the cards all run off the same driver. If not this could be a reason..

 

[richardirv]

Will double check the drivers but geforce experience said everything was up to date.

Its the Palit GTX 980 Super JetStream 4GB

 

[richardirv]

Is that 2600k oced?

I wouldn't think 2600k at stock would bottleneck the card, but maybe...

Its overclocked slightly with the RAM XMP profile in the BIOS. Think its running at 3.6. It does run at 4.8 fine but never noticed a difference in games so leave it on the XMP profile as its much more stable.

 

[richardirv]

Thanks for that, I am still running Win 7 64bit, not been tempted by 8.1 yet. Does it make any difference for games?

If I keep the card long enough I will do some benchmarks with you but if the RMA goes through quickly I'll be back on the SLI setup pretty soon and to be honest I am not sure I will replace them again any time soon.

 

[richardirv]

I am trying to hold on for Windows 10, I am so gutted about all this I really hope there is something that can be fixed.

Was so giddy installing it and then my heart sank when I saw the FPS.

 

[richardirv]

Well the driver I used was the latest driver for the 660ti but aren't they all just the same driver that supports multiple gpu's?

If you search for the 980 driver its the same as when you search for the 660ti driver. Thats why I didn't re download, I thought it would be the same as I already had.

 

[richardirv]

I am pretty sure the drivers are ok but not at home right now to double check. I thought I had done enough research to guarantee the performance increase was worth it but if it isn't then I'm not too worried, I'll just save my money for the next generation card. The 660ti was a pretty decent card and overclocker in its day so as an SLI package it is still doing a decent job.

 

[richardirv]

Yeah I think your right, apart from the poor man bit! LOL

I was also hoping that being the single card I would get less frame drops and stutter but it seems just as prominent if not worse on the 980.

To be fair I have had very little time to fully test everything.

 

[richardirv]

Are you saying the driver is different for the 980 vs the 660ti?

 

[richardirv]

So you've bought a 980, moaned about it and at the very very least one would expect is to update your drivers and you havent even done that ? lol

Always one to lower the tone! Do you know 100% they are different?

 

[richardirv]

I will I will, I work till 9pm! hehe.. Still pretty sure they already are though!

 

[richardirv]

Aren't they unified drivers nowadays?

Still, best to download the latest drivers from NVidia's website. Hopefully it'll sort you out.

Yep, that's what I have been saying!

 

[richardirv]

Did everyone miss the bit where I said I performed a clean driver install?

 

[richardirv]

They are unified like Bonjour said, this means its one driver for a range of GPU's.

If you select 980 and download 347.09 then select 660ti and download 347.09 you end up with 2 copies of the same file = same driver!!

If someone has evidence to suggest this is wrong please tell me (without insulting my intelligence)

 

[richardirv]

I am not trying to insult your intelligence but you are in fact wrong, one is optimised for the 600/700 series however the 900 series uses a new AA technology (MFAA) and has it's own dedicated flags as seen in Nvidia inspector, I tend to let Geforce experience handle driver updates for me now day's.

Case and point example would be when the 900 series came out they had their own driver revision and the 4-700 series used a different revision.

Regardless of them being the same size and driver name now one is still optimised to handle the 900 series new tech.

Ok if you are correct, and to be honest I hope you are, why when you choose your driver on the web site for the 980 does it say below compatible products. There is a large list of graphics cards that it says this driver works for, 660ti is included. How does that work? I really do think people are not understanding the fact that these are unified drivers!

 

[richardirv]

Don't worry about being silly fella, its seems more normal the way you described it, I could be me with mud on my face just as easy!! hehe

Can anyone confirm either way?

 

[richardirv]

Not so fast there!!!! We don't know for sure yet!! hehe

 

[richardirv]

Phew! Thanks for that! Downside is it does mean that I have another issue on my machine or there really isn't that much difference between the 660ti SLI & the 980! Not a significant one anyway!

 

[richardirv]

I would have thought that the experience is smoother? Better minimum fps.

I need to do more testing yet to be fair!