GeForce GTX 980 Ti Revisited: How does it fare against the GTX 1070 and RTX 2060?

Today we're revisiting an old friend, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and we're doing and so with a 36 game criterion covering the 1080p and 1440p resolutions. Nosotros're particularly interested to see how it performs confronting more modern GPUs like the GTX 1070 and the GeForce RTX 2060. So in a way we suppose yous could telephone call this more than of a GTX 980 Ti vs. GTX 1070 vs. RTX 2060 test.

About a yr ago we reviewed the RTX 2060 for the get-go time. We happened to miss the official launch because Nvidia "lost" our sample in the mail but that meant nosotros didn't have to rush our tests and we ended up with the full hog and provided a massive 36 game test.

Looking back at that data, we found that the RTX 2060 was able to beat the GTX 1070 Ti past a slim margin, making it 13% faster than the vanilla GTX 1070. We didn't include older GPUs at the time similar the GTX 980 Ti, and then the Maxwell-based flagship was absent from that feature. Information technology volition be interesting to see if those margins have inverse, while also taking a look at how much faster the RTX 2060 is when compared to the GTX 980 Ti.

The GTX 980 Ti was released dorsum in mid-2015 for $650 and the RTX 2060 in early 2022 for $350. That makes the modern Turing GPU iii and a one-half years newer and almost 50% cheaper. The 980 Ti was a beast of a GPU, it shared the same 601mm2 die with the Titan X and although not all SM units were enabled, it still packed an impressive 2816 CUDA cores, 6GB of GDDR5 retentiveness on a 384-bit wide retention bus, and enjoyed a memory bandwidth of 336.5 GB/s.

A twelvemonth later the GTX 1070 arrived and although it packed just 1920 CUDA cores -- 32% fewer than the 980 Ti -- thank you to a ~lx% increase in clock speed, operation ended upwardly being very similar and this was largely due to Nvidia moving from TSMC's 28nm process to what at the time was their latest 16nm manufacturing.

The jump to the 12nm process with the RTX 2060 was less extreme, but here we got an entirely new architecture. Notably, the RTX 2060 dice is 42% larger than the GTX 1070 and although the core count has only increased by a fiddling over 10%, the cores are much wider and support technologies such as existent-time ray tracing.

Despite the massive increase in die size, Nvidia sold the RTX 2060 for a little less than the Pascal-based GTX 1070. In a manner they had to, every bit the newer GPU had more features just was just marginally faster. Turing is the more modern architecture, featuring better support for DX12 and Vulkan. So over again, it'll be interesting to encounter if that margin has grown and where -- in other words, which games are favoring Turing today.

Our exam setup consists of the MSI GTX 980 Ti Gaming (graphics card names were a little simpler back then) pitted against the MSI RTX 2060 Gaming Z and GTX 1070 Gaming X. Powering the GPU test rig is the Intel Core i9-9900K overclocked to 5 GHz with 16GB of DDR4-3400 memory. Every bit usual, rather than having 36 private graphs, nosotros'll wait at almost a dozen of the more interesting games and then jump into the operation breakup graphs. For the word, we'll be focusing on the 1440p results...

Benchmarks

Doom Eternal is an interesting game to start with as it makes heavy utilize of async compute and this is a technology neither the Maxwell or Pascal architectures were able to utilize at the hardware level.

At 1440p the fundamental reward the GTX 1070 has over the 980 Ti is the 8GB VRAM buffer, that and what is likely better driver optimization. The end result means the 980 Ti was most 20% slower. Even so information technology'south the RTX 2060 and it'south more modern compages that really excels in this championship, reaching almost 100 fps on average and that meant the 980 Ti was 31% slower.

It's also worth noting that the 2060 makes out fifty-fifty ameliorate at 1080p as the 980 Ti is also express to a 6GB retention buffer. Whereas information technology was eighteen% faster than the GTX 1070 at 1440p, it's a whopping 36% faster at 1080p equally the retentivity constraints are less of an outcome at this lower resolution.

Moving to Resident Evil iii we detect a state of affairs where the GTX 1070 is no faster than the GTX 980 Ti. If annihilation, it'southward a fiddling slower. This was also the instance with Resident Evil 2 -- both games use the aforementioned engine and look very similar.

With 68 fps on average at 1440p, the 980 Ti fairs very well in this championship. The RTX 2060 was faster, but this time past only a thirteen% margin, so while that is certainly progress, it'due south non a ton of it.

Where we do see a pregnant step forward for the Turing based GPU is in Rainbow Six Siege. Hither the RTX 2060 was a whopping 35% faster than the GTX 980 Ti and almost forty% faster than the GTX 1070.

Rainbow Six Siege is a compute-heavy championship and previously this meant AMD's 5th gen GCN products walked all over Nvidia's Pascal GPUs, such as the GTX 1070. Even so the upgraded Turing cores tackled that weakness and now information technology's Nvidia who enjoys an advantage in this title, even when compared to Radeon Navi GPUs.

The bound forrard seen hither is incredible, though information technology has to be said, with 79 fps on average the GTX 980 Ti still delivered impressive performance at 1440p.

The 980 Ti likewise performs very well in Telephone call of Duty: Modern Warfare, spitting out over sixty fps at all times during our test, for an average of 81 fps. Information technology was as well just vii% slower than the GTX 1070, though information technology did trail the much newer RTX 2060 by a 24% margin.

The RTX 2060 does perform well in this title, even at 1440p and a 23% functioning uplift over the GTX 1070 is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

This game also supports ray tracing and is therefore heavily optimized for Turing. We've witnessed Pascal GPUs such as the GTX 1060 performing quite poorly relative to competitors, in this example the RX 580. So while we're sure Turing improvements assistance here, nosotros'd wager that driver optimization is playing its part also.

The GTX 980 Ti performed well in F1 2022 using the new DX12 mode, hither it was just 11% slower than the GTX 1070, only more importantly was able to provide smooth playable functioning at 1440p with 76 fps on boilerplate. The RTX 2060 was 32% faster and 18% faster than the GTX 1070, so a reasonable performance uplift in this latest F1 title.

Fortnite besides supports DX12 now and using this API we meet comparable performance between the GTX 980 Ti and GTX 1070 at 1440p using the maximum quality preset. For competitive-blazon quality settings either will work just fine.

The RTX 2060 does offer a 23% performance heave and perhaps not the kind of gain you'd expect to encounter in this title.

Another popular battle royale game where the GTX 1070 and 980 Ti are evenly matched. Both GPUs average only over lxx fps. The RTX 2060 was nigh 20% faster at 1440p, which is a strong performance atomic number 82 and certainly not a bad generation-on-generation functioning uplift.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider remains a visually impressive game fifty-fifty when it's been eighteen months since it launched. As you can come across it'southward a demanding one, fifty-fifty at 1440p. Hither the 980 Ti failed to reach a lx fps average, equally did the GTX 1070, both rendering just over 50 fps. This made the 23% boost offered past the RTX 2060 quite noticeable.

World War Z is yet some other championship where the GTX 1070 and 980 Ti are very evenly matched and it'due south another championship where both hands button above sixty fps at 1440p using the maximum in game quality settings. The RTX 2060 was around 18% faster then a reasonable performance uplift there, but it has to be said the 980 Ti hardly looks outdated.

The Gears 5 results are interesting, the GTX 1070 is conspicuously faster than the 980 Ti at 1080p, offering a 12% performance upgrade. However at 1440p the results come together and here the 1070 is simply six% faster, verging on a margin of mistake-type departure. The RTX 2060 is only 13% faster than the GTX 1070, though we see a like margin betwixt the two at both tested resolutions.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint has recently been updated to support Vulkan and this has led to big performance gains for mod GeForce GPUs -- gains of up to 20%.

Information technology seems clear that Nvidia has not optimized for the 980 Ti and Maxwell as the GTX 1070 was a whopping 18% faster at 1440p. A similar result to what nosotros saw with some other new title, Doom Eternal.

Last up we have Earth of Tanks and equally is often the case with older titles, we see very fiddling divergence in performance between the three GPUs, particularly at 1440p. We're talking a x% or lower margin between the slowest and fastest GPU. This can be attributed to improve commuter optimization for older GPUs and or the inability to take reward of modernistic features supported by newer GPUs.

For the about office the GTX 980 Ti still looks to exist handling itself rather well, though there are some titles such as Ghost Recon Breakpoint, which appear to lack proper driver optimization and therefore will crave gamers to reduce graphics settings for smooth performance at 1440p. Since we've merely looked at a dozen of the tested games, let'southward see how these GPUs compared beyond all 36 games.

Operation Breakup

At 1080p, the GTX 980 Ti was on average 5% slower than the GTX 1070. The but outlier hither was The Sectionalization 2 where the 980 Ti was for 26% slower for some reason.

Removing that issue changes the average by a single percentage, making the 980 Ti ~four% slower. For the most part, you're looking at little to no difference betwixt these two GPUs, 21 of the 36 games tested saw a margin of 5% or less which nosotros typically deem a describe.

Moving to 1440p reduces the margin to four% and removing The Division 2 doesn't change anything in that average. 22 of the 36 games saw a margin of v% difference or less, which confirms these GPUs are very evenly matched.

When compared to the RTX 2060, the GTX 980 Ti was xx% slower on average at 1080p. The Partitioning 2 forth with Doom Eternal are weak titles for the Maxwell part.

The old GTX 980 Ti trails the RTX 2060 by a similar margin at 1440p. For this friction match up it was xix% slower on average. Certainly it'south on the more than demanding, newer, or more than technically avant-garde games where the RTX 2060 gets away from the GTX 980 Ti.

The margins are much smaller in titles such as World of Tanks, War Thunder, For Honor and Resident Evil 3, for example. Whereas they're quite considerable in titles such as Doom Eternal, The Partitioning two, Control, Clay Rally ii.0, Strange Brigade, Rainbow 6 Siege, Blood-red Dead Redemption 2, Assassinator'southward Creed Odyssey, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and well… a few others, y'all get the indicate.

What We Learned

While the GTX 980 Ti is starting to testify its age, the one time mighty flagship GPU however has some fight in it, which is bang-up to see. We have to admit, the initial intention of this benchmark session was to investigate how well the 980 Ti stacked up against the newer GTX 1070 in 2022, nosotros often found ourselves more interested in the battle between the GTX 1070 and RTX 2060.

But we'll stop ourselves from jumping right to that and talk a piffling more about the 980 Ti versus the GTX 1070. Final time we compared these two caput to head in a large range of games the 980 Ti was actually ane% faster or basically identical and that's still mostly true today. The games that tipped the results in the 1070'due south favor include The Division 2, Ghost Recon Breakpoint and Doom Eternal.

None of those titles were tested earlier and in our opinion the 980 Ti probably shouldn't exist that much slower, and then nosotros suspect this is a result of Nvidia failing to optimize for older hardware.

The GTX 980 Ti is 5 years old now and nosotros're pretty confident that Nvidia abandons all optimizations effectually the vi yr old marker. This can be seen when looking at Kepler-based GPUs. We suspect we're getting to a bespeak where the GeForce 900 series will start to fall away in newer titles. If yous happen to be second-manus shopping, keep that in listen.

Lets at present shift gears to the RTX 2060...

Upon release we found information technology was ~13% faster than the GTX 1070. In today's test the RTX 2060 was twenty% faster on average, so which games are responsible for the overall improvement in performance?

The biggest contributor is Control, a newer championship that wasn't role of the previous test. Command is as well an Nvidia sponsored championship and a great deal of time has been invested into making sure RTX series GPUs evangelize maximum performance, largely so ray tracing doesn't result in a consummate slideshow.

Interestingly, Strange Brigade performance has also been dramatically improved and this title does make use of async compute. Although non a popular championship, information technology is frequently used for benchmarking, so it doesn't surprise me that Nvidia has made an try to optimize performance for Turing-based GPUs here.

The RTX 2060 was also 39% faster in Rainbow Six Siege, but that'due south not much different to the 33% win information technology enjoyed using the older DX11 version. Nvidia has optimized Turing for Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, originally the 2060 was twenty% faster, now with upgraded drivers and multiple game patches, it's 33% faster. Red Dead Redemption 2 is another new game that massively favors the 2060.

Between new games that better utilise mod GPUs and Nvidia's focus on commuter optimizations for Turing, the RTX 2060 has been able to further distance itself from the GTX 1070 and consequently the GTX 980 Ti. For those of yous however rocking the GTX 980 Ti, overall we'd say it'south holding upward well and y'all're probably reasonably satisfied with the experience, just we suspect it'll first to fall away now and upcoming generations should meet information technology outpaced for around $200.

The GeForce GTX 1070 is yet a solid purchase merely with Nvidia focusing its attention on Turing and futurity generations supporting ray tracing and DLSS, it'll be interesting to see how well Pascal ages over the side by side few years. No doubt, nosotros'll have plenty more benchmark content in the time to come that will monitor the situation.