GTX 980 - CPU bottleneck?

[Ghâzh]

Anything less than 8GB VRAM isn't enough too keep up with games for XBone and PS4 over the course of the next 5 years as both systems have access to at least that much memory for graphics.

They don't and even if they did. How in the hell would you go about using 8GB of VRAM with a system that can hardly push 1080p at 60fps?

[nocturnus]

Anything less than 8GB VRAM isn't enough too keep up with games for XBone and PS4 over the course of the next 5 years as both systems have access to at least that much memory for graphics.

That's incorrect. Even if this comment is kinda out of the blue, memory isn't the only performance determining factor. PC is in fact far superior and it's consoles that won't be able to keep up with current mid/high end PCs, never mind future builds.

I'll probably order the MSI GTX 970 Gaming Monday, since I have no interest in multi-screen gaming and have been satisfied with both my MSI 670 and 770 cards.

[glo]

The similarity in temperatures I'd blame solely on the fact that Nvidia reference has 80c as a temperature target and will adjust its fan speed to hit 80 degrees while under load. Doesn't matter what the voltage. They consume considerable less energy so there is less heat output overall.

I was referencing how their power consumption got to be similar to 7xx (minus the Ti and Titan, I guess).



Most of the tests pegged it at the same consumption as a 770, which also ran around the same temperatures. Hell, it's only 20w~ less than a 780 under typical gaming loads.

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Anything less than 8GB VRAM isn't enough too keep up with games for XBone and PS4 over the course of the next 5 years as both systems have access to at least that much memory for graphics.

Yeah that's not how it works, consoles use that 8GB for OS, actual RAM and lastly VRAM.

I'll also repost my last response to you when you made a similar claim in another thread, I guess you missed it:

That's not really how it works, there's unfortunately a ton of misinformation about VRAM usage among the gaming community, mostly due to simply not understanding how it works.

Basically (super simplifying here), there's two main uses for your VRAM. Assets that are in use on-screen, and cached assets for later use. Most decently coded games will cache as much crap as they can after initial use for quicker access next time around. That means that even a 6GB card in theory would get filled up after playing for some time in said games.

You can see this in action by monitoring memory usage in-game after an hour or so of play. You can then exit the game and load into the area you left, and you'll see a dramatically lower number. That lower number is roughly the minimum amount of VRAM that the game requires.

[Ghâzh]

I was referencing how their power consumption got to be similar to 7xx (minus the Ti and Titan, I guess).



Most of the tests pegged it at the same consumption as a 770, which also ran around the same temperatures. Hell, it's only 20w~ less than a 780 under typical gaming loads.

You can't just look at the temperature when the GPU Boost 2.0 in itself is meant to set it at just that 80C point and adjust fan speed accordingly. The 980 is more quiet then 780 which means that the fan is running slower.

If you want some relevant evidence at the cooler being worse then on 780ti / 780 you'll wanna take a look at the overclocking results. At 125% TDP (205W) overclock the card is pulling around the same amount of power as 780ti (370W) for a full system but it's 2 dB louder meaning the fan has to work harder to dissipate the same amount of heat to keep the card at the same temperature.

[glo]

You can't just look at the temperature when the GPU Boost 2.0 in itself is meant to set it at just that 80C point and adjust fan speed accordingly. The 980 is more quiet then 780 which means that the fan is running slower.

I'm well aware of how "boost" works, it's irrelevant, however. The cards are outputting the heat that they're outputting, regardless of how they get to that point. Please read the charts on this page:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/n...-980-review/21

Look at the 770 vs 980 numbers

- Same amount of heat/wattage being dissipated
- Same temperature at load
- Same noise levels under load

From the above 3 facts, when can easily conclude that the cooler is performing in near identical fashion to the 7xx series.

[Stormspark]

Hey guys,

I'm considering the GTX 980 for my regular pc that's running with a 3770K @ 4.6ghz. I was wondering if my relatively 'old' cpu won't bottleneck the GTX 980.

Also, in The Netherlands they only have the Nvidia reference card in stock. Regardless of its beauty (it does look good, doesn't it?) is the reference model any good? Or should I wait for Asus/MSI cards?

I also understand that the GTX 970 is a better card bang-for-buck.

What do you guys think?

Thanks in advance!

Um, if you've overclocked your 3770k to 4.6 GHz, it literally isn't possible to have a better CPU at this point in time. If you were able to overclock a 4790k (the current best gaming CPU) to 4.6, it would theoretically perform *slightly* better than yours, but the difference would be minimal. But overall, Haswell does not overclock as well as Ivy Bridge did, so yours probably still has a slight advantage.

The Haswell-E CPU's are actually slower for gaming than the 4790k anyway. Their only advantage is having 6/8 cores and 12/16 threads. Games do not use this many cores, not even things like Crysis 3, and high end games like that tend to be GPU-bound anyway.

[Ghâzh]

..From the above 3 facts, when can easily conclude that the cooler is performing in near identical fashion to the 7xx series.

I can only speculate here but the 980 is putting more load on the CPU because a faster card gives it more to work with. This would be apparent when you look at the furmark results (20W less power consumption). So basically, same temperature, same noise levels but it consumes less power. Also, and I know that it's not always straightly corresponding to the actual power consumption, but 770 has TDP of 230 (versus 165 of 980).

[nocturnus]

Um, if you've overclocked your 3770k to 4.6 GHz, it literally isn't possible to have a better CPU at this point in time

I had no idea the 3770K was better than the 4790K. Thanks for that info! I used to run it at 4.8ghz, but a few cores failed after 7 hours of stress-testing and I didn't want to surpass 1.216vcore. So I brought it back to 4.6ghz and had multiple perfect 12 hour runs.

[chaddd]

As for going with 980 or 970 just consider your plans resolution wise. If you have zero plans to bust over 1080p no reason to go with the 980. If you plan to go 1440p or even eventually 4k the 980 starts to become more attractive although I wouldn't plan single card solution to destroy 4k right now. Run yes, destroy.. no.

I was thinking about getting rid of my 770 and going with a 980, or 2x970s, to do a 4K SLI setup for WoW. What sort of in game performance do you think I could get with a 27" 4K monitor and either the single 980 or SLI 970? Are there any reviews out there yet that are worth while?

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Found a review of these new cards with WoW FPS / screen res. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...RIX_OC/22.html