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NVIDIA Lifts Veil On GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Performance Reviews, Which Show Faster Speeds Than Titan X (hothardware.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the bang-for-your-buck dept.

MojoKid writes from a report via HotHardware: NVIDIA is officially launching its most powerful gaming graphics card today, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. It was announced last week at the Game Developers Conference and pre-orders began shortly thereafter. However, the cards will begin shipping today and NVIDIA has lifted the veil on performance reviews. Though its memory complement and a few blocks within the GPU are reduced versus NVIDIA's previous top-end card, the Titan X, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti makes up for its shortcomings with a combination of refinement and the brute force of higher memory clocks, based on new and improved Micron GDDR5X memory, faster core clocks and an improved cooler. For gamers, the good news is, the 1080 Ti retails for $699, versus $1200 for the Titan X, and it is in fact faster, for the most part. Throughout a battery of game tests and benchmarks, regardless of the resolution or settings used, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti performed on par with or slightly faster than the NVIDIA Titan X and roughly 30-35% better than the standard GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition. Versus AMD's current flagship GPU, the Radeon R9 Fury X, there is no competition; the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti was nearly 2x faster than the Fury X in some cases.

51 comments

  1. I still remember the SGI days by Pezbian · · Score: 2

    How far we've come since the SGI Indigo 2 Max Impact is just phenomenal.

    --
    In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
    1. Re: I still remember the SGI days by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I miss my real 4dwm, winterm, and middle mouse button PastedText in 1 click. None of the modern windows managers or emulated themes come close.

    2. Re:I still remember the SGI days by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Almost as if processing information requires very little matter and energy, and all our technology has to do is scale down as close as possible to the minimum required to represent a bit.

      But how long did it take to fly across the Atlantic when the SGI Indigo Max Impact shipped?

      Same as today? Oh...

      Looks like we haven't come that far after all. We're just better at entertaining ourselves.

    3. Re: I still remember the SGI days by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heh, haven't seen anyone who knows what page up/down keys are for for a while. Tend to feel sorry for these monkeys spinning the little rattly wheel like they're trying to make fire. Still got your three-button? I sure do. Had to replace the switches once in 20 years of service, broke some traces (common old PCB problem?) and had to fix it with jumpers, but it works like new now.

      Wish someone would pick up the MWM and fix it up some to support multiple displays and utf8. It's the closest thing to 4dwm out here.

    4. Re:I still remember the SGI days by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But does the Geforce GTX 1080 TI run teapot? ;) Ah the memories of those heavy keyboards and nice monitors..

    5. Re: I still remember the SGI days by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      None of the kids these days have ever even heard of SGI, yet they seem to know all about Nvidia, and some OpenGL. The real proprietary IRIS GL (non open) was amazing fast and ahead of it's time for early 90s, but it did totally suck if you didn't have SGI hardware just to open a X client remotely. Those old ass Indigo2s are still just fast today as far as graphic response if you're using them the same as in past. No they won't run Crysis kids, sorry. IRIX 6.5.30 mother fuckers!!!

    6. Re: I still remember the SGI days by xanadu-xtroot.com · · Score: 1

      What are you taking about? Middle Click still pastes. That's an X Server thing. It's got nothing at all to do with your WM/DE. I'm up to Plasma 5.9.something. Still middle-click-pasting. I have no idea if Wayland does that though. M.

      --
      I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
      I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
    7. Re: I still remember the SGI days by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've never used IRIX?

      "You can create a text file by selecting text in a window, then moving the mouse cursor onto the desktop background or onto the background of an Icon View window, and clicking the middle mouse button. A file named PastedText is created. It contains the text that you selected."

      All in just 1 god damn click.

  2. Moore's Law by pushing-robot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's funny how we say Moore's law is dead when it's about the only thing still kicking.

    Clock speeds, the x86 architecture, and software design are all more or less stagnant, which means your typical single-threaded business logic is barely running faster year upon year and CPU benchmarks are pretty flat.

    But anything parallel and transistor-hungry is improving by leaps and bounds: the 1080Ti is ~70% faster than its predecessor (with 50% more transistors), AMD is offering 8 cores for the price of 4, 32 for their server models, Intel's Phi is at 72... even smartphones are at 8-10 cores. As Moore predicted, dense ICs are packing more transistors every year, and it looks set to continue for the next several years at least.

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:Moore's Law by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The benchmarks are quite revealing though. Performance took a big step up in 4k and max settings, but if you only game at 1080p and nearly max settings then a fairly old card is still more than adequate.

      I wish reviewers would review cards for non-gaming use too. Will the fans ramp up if I have two 4k displays with browsers and Kicad open?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:Moore's Law by dunkelfalke · · Score: 0

      Are you seriously comparing a PCIe board to a CPU?! WTF are you smoking? Graphics card have a GPU, memory and a transformer on them. Have you never seen a naked graphics card or what? The GPU itself is smaller than any PC CPU. So yes, they are packing more into the same space because a graphics card itself is like a motherboard and even Mini-ITX motherboards are larger.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    3. Re:Moore's Law by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Graphics cards are also LARGE. A PCIe board takes up more room than even the largest of processors in the x86 line in all its history.

      Are you high?
      The GPU is smaller or at most the same size as the CPU.

      1080Ti and Titan X Pascal have a die size of 471 square millimeters. That is the largest chip up to date.
      Ryzen 1800X has a die size of a little bit over 195 square millimeters. Yes, that's smaller than the GPU die size but really not that big of a difference.
      Latest Intel's CPU die size are notoriously difficult to find, I can't be arsed to dig for them but then again, we're comparing small things and small things.

      Maybe you included the whole PCB? In that case, it's incorrect. The CPU itself is supported by the motherboard's PCB, too.
      Comparing a GPU chip including its PCB against a CPU without its supporting PCB is apples and oranges. Hell, it's cats and potatoes.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    4. Re:Moore's Law by EMN13 · · Score: 2

      High-end GPUs have been larger than CPUs for many, many years now. It's a matter of perspective whether you find 471 mm^2 a significant step up from 195mm^2.

      You might e.g. compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... die sizes and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Really old generations aren't listed with die sizes there, but even the first generation that is (geforce 8xxx) includes e.g. the GeForce 8800 GTS (nov 2006) at 484 mm^2

      Even a 10-core (modern) broadwell-E chip is around half that (http://hothardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-6950x-extreme-edition-10-core-cpu-review-broadwell-e-arrives lists that as 246mm^2)!

    5. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I bet ledow (319597) is high because he smoked all the caps on his motherboard and power supply! X^D

    6. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The benchmarks are quite revealing though. Performance took a big step up in 4k and max settings, but if you only game at 1080p and nearly max settings then a fairly old card is still more than adequate.

      First Yogi Berra. Then John Madden. Now AniMoJo, paraphrased: "If you don't care about gaming performance, then you won't notice an improvement on a better card." Thank you Captain Obvious! :P

    7. Re:Moore's Law by RogueyWon · · Score: 1

      The 1080 Ti isn't really pitched at people still playing games at 1080p. The 970, which is a few years old now, is still a pretty solid choice for 1080p gaming and its direct successor, the 1070, is overkill (and just fine for 1440p in many cases). Hell, running a lot of games on a 1080 Ti at 1080p, you will probably only see a modest improvement in performance over older cards before you hit CPU-constraints anyway.

      The 1080 Ti is really designed for two things; 4K gaming and VR (and, to some degree, people wanting to do 1080p or 1440p gaming at 120Hz). Both of these make much better use of its capabilities. The rapid growth in affordable 4K monitors around 18-24 months ago was a bit of a shock to the system for a lot of people. Running games at 4K requires a huge escalation in resources compared to 1080p, which had been the de facto standard for a long, long time. The 970 and 980 both choked on 4K. The 980 Ti could manage it acceptably (and with a few image quality compromises) in some games, but was still overall more of a 1440p card. Even the 1080 wasn't really up to scratch. The benchmarks seen so far for the 1080 Ti show something that looks much more like an actual single-card 4K gaming solution (even though getting there fully will probably have to wait for Volta).

      Then there's VR, which benefits from being able to hold very high framerates (while outputting more than one image) to counter-act motion sickness.

    8. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People keep saying these top of the line GPUs are overkill for 1080p, but that's only if you can live with bad quality. Levels of anti-aliasing that are actually effective bring GPUs to their knees even at 1080p.

    9. Re:Moore's Law by RogueyWon · · Score: 2

      To some extent, that's going to depend on the size of your screen. Larger screens will show up a lack of anti-aliasing a lot more harshly than smaller ones. I suspect a lot of people still gaming at 1080p don't have massive screens (though of course there will be plenty of exceptions).

    10. Re:Moore's Law by Highdude702 · · Score: 1

      $150 40" refurb RCA TV 1080p on a gtx1070. Looks great on ultra and high settings.

    11. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pixel density doesn't really help with shimmering and thin geometry popping in and out.

    12. Re:Moore's Law by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Large 1080p tv sets are widely available and very cheap these days...

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    13. Re:Moore's Law by Cederic · · Score: 1

      The 1080 Ti is really designed for two things; 4K gaming and VR (and, to some degree, people wanting to do 1080p or 1440p gaming at 120Hz).

      Yeah, the question for me isn't whether I upgrade from a 1070 to the 1080Ti, it's whether I upgrade from a 1440p screen and a 1070 to a 4k screen and the 1080Ti.

      Unless I turn on a lot of anti-aliasing all the games I own run at 1440p and max settings with great framerates already, and a 27" monitor at 1440p doesn't really need AA.

    14. Re:Moore's Law by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Agreed, mathematically it's "almost 2.5 times the surface" but really, at those dimensions there's not much of a difference.
      But take a look at transistor count and you'll know why the die difference exists.
      Ryzen 1800X has 4.8 billion transistors while GTX 1080 has 7.2 billion transistors. Hence the die size difference (well some of it of course).

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  3. What about drivers? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    Are there great Linux drivers? Are they removing features from the Windows version so you have feature parity with Linux? Oh, well, fuck you Nvidia.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re: What about drivers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There are for FreeBSD, and guess what, we have no problems with binary drivers whatsoever :p By the way, I'll go and tweak my system configuration by editing /etc/rc.conf now, while blasting Megadeth at full volume mixed by a sound system that doesn't require a truckload of daemons to get the job done.

    2. Re: What about drivers? by naubol · · Score: 1

      Never change, FreeBSD fanboys.

      --
      Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
    3. Re: What about drivers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Alsa doesn't need any daemons either. It's just that some distros are dumb enough to keep using them.

    4. Re: What about drivers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "we have no problems with binary drivers whatsoever"
      and you have a whore's license too. what's your point?

    5. Re: What about drivers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes! BSD and Megadeth reporting in!

      How did you know?

  4. WTF ? by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    What do they mean they're launching it today ? I've had a 1080Ti since November - and I had a month-long import delay after ordering in October last year !

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    1. Re:WTF ? by RogueyWon · · Score: 1

      I... rather suspect that you are mixing up which card you have. Either that, or you have an "Nvidya G-Forks 1080Ti" with a suspicious amount of Chinese script on the packaging and curiously disappointing performance.

      The GTX 1080 was launched in May 2016. The Titan X (Pascal) in August 2016. You might also be thinking of the lower-end GTX 1050 Ti, which launched in October 2016.

    2. Re:WTF ? by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      Yeah, memory failure - it is the 1050 I got, which I got in October when it launched.
      I'm not home so couldn't check for myself if the model matched.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    3. Re:WTF ? by MojoKid · · Score: 1

      You definitely did not have a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (note with the "Ti" on the end, that's key), since November. The CEO of the company just announced them on 2/28 on NDA lift and they just began shipping in market yesterday.

    4. Re:WTF ? by MojoKid · · Score: 1

      ahh. that makes sense then. :)

  5. Faster than the Titan... by RogueyWon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The "faster than a Titan" thing has been causing a bit of angst. The early reviews and benchmarks do indeed show that the 1080 Ti outperforms the Titan X (Pascal) in many cases. It's not universal; some games and benchmarks still favour the Titan by a tiny margin, but those are a minority.

    But the sheer price of the Titan X (which was unprecedented in the Pascal series) has driven a lot of extra discontent this time around, especially as the 1080 Ti came out with a lower price than a lot of observers had been expecting (there were confident predictions from usually-reliable sources that it would be $200 north of where it actually landed). If you need a bit more salt in your diet, take a look at some of the threads over on the Nvidia forums today from disgruntled Titan X owners.

    This is, however, pretty much par for the course in the high-end PC game and it's not as though Nvidia haven't slipped into a predictable cycle over their last few generations (at least since the 700-series) that makes clear how things work. If you want to buy a card that is "top of the range", you've basically got three options:

    1) Buy the *80 card that arrives with the first wave of consumer cards in each generation. You will get a few months at the top of the tree, until the release of the (massively more expensive) Titan. This is always the cheapest of the three options, but also the most time-limited.

    2) Buy the Titan that comes out a few months after the *80. This will have an absurd price tag - often twice that of the *80. It will be the fastest thing around for, in general, 6-9 months, and even then, the next card may only match it rather than beating it.

    3) Buy the *80 Ti that comes out 6-9 months after the Titan. This will generally give you framerates in most games in the +/- 3% range of the Titan, but for a price much closer to the *80. This will hold its place at the top for anywhere from 9 to 15 months, until the release of the next generation of cards. In the next generation, the *80 will outperform the last generation *80 Ti and the *70 will offer broadly comparable (maybe slightly better) performance for around half the price.

    I've been going for the *80 Ti route for a while now, on the grounds that the price/performance ratio tends to hold up better over time. I'm seeing complaints at the moment from people who bought a Titan within the last few weeks, which is just bizarre. The 1080 Ti has been known to be close to release since January, so why anybody would take the plunge on a Titan at $1200 under those circumstances is beyond me.

    I'm working from home today and waiting for my 1080 Ti to be delivered. I wish I could say I'm not bouncing up and down in my chair going "SQUEEEEEE!!!" like a 12 year old girl at a One Direction concert, but I'm not sure how convincingly I could make that case.

    1. Re:Faster than the Titan... by Kjella · · Score: 1

      I think the 10xx series still caught a few people off guard though because 28nm to 16nm gave it a huge boost causing a lot bigger performance difference and caused more impatience than usual. I doubt they'll skip a node like that again and I think the 1080 Ti is tactically priced to make 1080 owners want to sell & upgrade squishing the $500 market they expect Vega will launch in. I mean 30-35% performance increase for 40% higher MSRP is as close to linear as you're likely to get.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:Faster than the Titan... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Totally agree about the Ti series. Not even just the *80's but all the Ti series, they're a great mix of price and performance. I've been running the Ti's since forever. My needs consist of lots of screens, and stable performance under Linux. Posting now from a Phenom, GTX 650 Ti, Kernel 4.4.14, monitor 2 of 4. Works great.

    3. Re:Faster than the Titan... by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      Actually yes there's a saying that 10nm is a crappy node again and GPUs are likely to go straight for 7nm (those nm sizes being creative accounting)
      It's a new normal to get two GPU architectures on the same process node, we all expect a 16nm Volta.

    4. Re:Faster than the Titan... by dj245 · · Score: 1

      The "faster than a Titan" thing has been causing a bit of angst. The early reviews and benchmarks do indeed show that the 1080 Ti outperforms the Titan X (Pascal) in many cases. It's not universal; some games and benchmarks still favour the Titan by a tiny margin, but those are a minority.

      But the sheer price of the Titan X (which was unprecedented in the Pascal series) has driven a lot of extra discontent this time around, especially as the 1080 Ti came out with a lower price than a lot of observers had been expecting (there were confident predictions from usually-reliable sources that it would be $200 north of where it actually landed). If you need a bit more salt in your diet, take a look at some of the threads over on the Nvidia forums today from disgruntled Titan X owners.

      This is, however, pretty much par for the course in the high-end PC game and it's not as though Nvidia haven't slipped into a predictable cycle over their last few generations (at least since the 700-series) that makes clear how things work. If you want to buy a card that is "top of the range", you've basically got three options:

      1) Buy the *80 card that arrives with the first wave of consumer cards in each generation. You will get a few months at the top of the tree, until the release of the (massively more expensive) Titan. This is always the cheapest of the three options, but also the most time-limited.

      2) Buy the Titan that comes out a few months after the *80. This will have an absurd price tag - often twice that of the *80. It will be the fastest thing around for, in general, 6-9 months, and even then, the next card may only match it rather than beating it.

      3) Buy the *80 Ti that comes out 6-9 months after the Titan. This will generally give you framerates in most games in the +/- 3% range of the Titan, but for a price much closer to the *80. This will hold its place at the top for anywhere from 9 to 15 months, until the release of the next generation of cards. In the next generation, the *80 will outperform the last generation *80 Ti and the *70 will offer broadly comparable (maybe slightly better) performance for around half the price.

      I've been going for the *80 Ti route for a while now, on the grounds that the price/performance ratio tends to hold up better over time. I'm seeing complaints at the moment from people who bought a Titan within the last few weeks, which is just bizarre. The 1080 Ti has been known to be close to release since January, so why anybody would take the plunge on a Titan at $1200 under those circumstances is beyond me.

      I'm working from home today and waiting for my 1080 Ti to be delivered. I wish I could say I'm not bouncing up and down in my chair going "SQUEEEEEE!!!" like a 12 year old girl at a One Direction concert, but I'm not sure how convincingly I could make that case.

      The "faster than a Titan" thing has been causing a bit of angst. The early reviews and benchmarks do indeed show that the 1080 Ti outperforms the Titan X (Pascal) in many cases. It's not universal; some games and benchmarks still favour the Titan by a tiny margin, but those are a minority.

      But the sheer price of the Titan X (which was unprecedented in the Pascal series) has driven a lot of extra discontent this time around, especially as the 1080 Ti came out with a lower price than a lot of observers had been expecting (there were confident predictions from usually-reliable sources that it would be $200 north of where it actually landed). If you need a bit more salt in your diet, take a look at some of the threads over on the Nvidia forums today from disgruntled Titan X owners.

      This is, however, pretty much par for the course in the high-end PC game and it's not as though Nvidia haven't slipped into a predictable cycle over their last few generations (at least since the 700-series) that makes clear how things work. If you want to buy a card that is "top of the range", you've basically got three options:

      1) Buy the *80 card th

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
  6. $700 card to run console ports? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No thanks.

    1. Re:$700 card to run console ports? by Robyrt · · Score: 1

      The PC exclusive Ashes of the Singularity is a standard in graphics benchmarks, including the one from the article. Even clearly console-oriented games like Dark Souls 3 are significantly better in graphical quality, framerate and load times with expensive hardware like this.

  7. Biased? by ProzacPatient · · Score: 1

    Maybe I'm out of the loop on something but I can't help but feel this review is inherently biased because they're comparing the 16nm 1080 Ti versus the much older 28nm dual-GPU Fury X (and it should be noted most games can only run on a single GPU without serious problems). With that said wouldn't it be more appropriate to measure it against the 16nm Polaris-based RX 480?

    1. Re:Biased? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It would not be appropriate given that the RX480 is a budget friendly $200 card while the GTX 1080 Ti is a pricey beast at $700.
      A better comparison there would be the GTX 1060 given the price point.

    2. Re:Biased? by RogueyWon · · Score: 2

      The real comparison will be with the AMD Vega line, which is expected within the next month or two.

      Nvidia is clearly worried that AMD have something good up their sleeves on that front, or we would not have seen a 1080 Ti with these specs at this price point.

    3. Re:Biased? by dj245 · · Score: 1

      The real comparison will be with the AMD Vega line, which is expected within the next month or two.

      Nvidia is clearly worried that AMD have something good up their sleeves on that front, or we would not have seen a 1080 Ti with these specs at this price point.

      Or maybe yields are better than expected. Or maybe the market analysis says that this price point results in more profit based on the marginal cost curve. Maybe they just have an aggressive new manager whose bonus is tied to units sold. To say "Nvidia is clearly worried" is putting an awful lot of certainty onto a purely speculative statement.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    4. Re:Biased? by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      You're mistaken a bit, Fury X is a single GPU board. The dual GPU one is the Radeon Pro Duo, which is likely very rare.

    5. Re:Biased? by ProzacPatient · · Score: 1

      My mistake. Thanks for pointing that out!

    6. Re:Biased? by epine · · Score: 1

      Or maybe yields are better than expected. Or maybe the market analysis says that this price point results in more profit based on the marginal cost curve. Maybe they just have an aggressive new manager whose bonus is tied to units sold. To say "Nvidia is clearly worried" is putting an awful lot of certainty onto a purely speculative statement.

      The pricing dance is extremely complex, but there's no question here about whether Nvidia's Magic Margin spreadsheet includes a giant column of anticipated AMD price-performance points, or that those estimated numbers have been trending up lately, on the back of AMD's strong showing with their new core design (which soon projects to drive the APU end of their product line, too).

      Whether this be a Nervous Nonchalant Nelly magic-margin spreadsheet or a Cold Cowering Calculus magic-margin spreadsheet is another matter entirely.

      Uh, wait a minute ... I think I just got my Magic Eight Ball attributional wires crossed with those authoritative asspull alliterations.

  8. I've only read 2 reviews by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    PCWorld's review was bizarre, in some ways (didn't evaluate the Titan (Pascal)), but interesting in others (had an OC'd 1080 and the Fury X, iirc). Tom's Hardware review showed the 1080 Ti to be TEMPERATURE LIMITED, indicating no (significant) OC until water cooling is included. Odd business decision for the Founders edition to be running so hot, but I suppose their "partners" insisted on the FE to be air cooled. BTW, Vega is expected "by mid-June", but looks like Nvidia blinked first.

  9. fuck you nvidia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    fuck you and your slaveware.