Looking for a good 1440p or 4k Ultra gaming solution? We test a pair of 980Ti’s and 980’s in SLI. Nvidia has recently released its latest entry into the 900 series of graphics cards, the GTX 980 Ti. This release may have surprised some considering in terms of raw performance, it comes within 2-3% of its GM-200 bigger brother, the $1,000 Titan X. All the while the 980 Ti manages to do this at a fraction of the cost of the Titan X, coming in at a cool $650, which also brought along a price drop for the previous flagship Nvidia graphics card, the GTX 980.
I hope to show in this article today why the GTX 980 Ti is currently the best 4K and 1440p 144hz graphics card for the money. Over the past year, we have seen monitor technology changing at a more rapid pace than ever before. Not only that, but we have also seen it branch off into several different enthusiast level platforms. With 4K, 1440p 144hz and 21:9 monitors all being viable options moving forward in 2015, the real question was going to be what graphics card or cards would you need to push these resolutions while playing the latest games at ultra settings.
The GTX 980 Ti in SLI is going to be the answer for enthusiast gamers looking to push the boundaries of these technologies and find a graphics card solution able to keep up with the most demanding games out there like The Witcher 3 and Grand Theft Auto V.
Nothing like a 980 Ti surrounded by some cold hard cash.1440p 144hz Gaming Graphics Cards for the Money
The 980 Ti’s never failed to impress me no matter what game I threw at them on my Acer XB270HU 144hz 1440p monitor. Outside of benchmarking, The Witcher 3 was where I spent a great deal of my gaming time on these cards. One of the major reasons I actually chose to upgrade from my 980’s in SLI was for running Witcher 3 with Hairworks at 1440p. I had previously been running my 980’s on another 144hz display, but it was only 1080p. With that configuration, it was normal for me to be playing at 90-110 frames with Hairworks turned up to the max. However that performance was lost after upgrading to 1440p 144hz, that is until the 980 Ti came along.
Going from my 980’s at 1080p 144hz to 980 Ti’s at 1440p 144hz is like I’ve recaptured that high performance that I loved so much at 1080p. Being a 144hz gamer you come to expect games to not run at just 60 frames per second. If that were the case then you would settle yourself with a 60hz display. If you plan to game at 1440p 60hz then the 980’s are going to be an excellent option for you, but if you are looking to take advantage of a display like the Asus ROG Swift or the newly released Acer XB270HU which is sitting on my desk, than 980 Ti’s really are the best way to go right now.
4K Ultra HD
4K is one of the big reasons that so many enthusiasts jumped on the Titan X bandwagon as soon as that card dropped. Thinking its 12GB of video memory was the answer to their collective prayers for a single GPU solution that could deliver 60fps at Ultra, but is that 12GB framebuffer really necessary? After my testing, I would say it is a conclusive, no.
The 980 Ti goes blow for with the Titan X even at 4K. Out of the games I tested, the most demanding game in terms of video memory was Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor with the Ultra texture pack. While it certainly did push the 980 Ti’s, in the 4K benchmark it never went below 60 frames per second and video memory usage was around 5700MB being used. This was with all other game settings turned up as high as they could go, including anti-aliasing which many 4K gamers usually sacrifice for performance as it is not needed as much when gaming at that high of a resolution. With two 980 Ti’s in SLI, that is a sacrifice that seems is no longer required.
Getting ready for Batman: Arkham Knight? Be sure to take a look at my Batman Arkham Knight PC build.
Overclocking the 980 Ti
Initially going into overclocking my GTX 980 Ti’s, I thought that with a higher TDP than my older 980’s that thermal efficiency could be a problem and limit my overclocking potential to some degree. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was not the case as I easily took my core clock up to 1250MHz from its base clock of 1000MHz.
The 980 Ti is advertised as having a boost clock of 1075, but thanks to GPU Boost 2.0 and my reference cards still operating well under the thermal limit, I regularly see my cards sitting at a stable 1450MHz combined with my overclock for an effective 200MHz boost. On each of the cards tested individually, I began to see instability in the form of artifacts and driver crashes when going over that 1450 mark, which is why I settled at a nice overclock of +250 on the core.
While I did increase my memory by additional 200MHz, which remember gets doubled so effectively bringing my cards memory clock from 7GHz to 7.4GHz, I saw minimal gains in terms of performance, even with the boost kicking in and actually bringing that final number up to around 7.7GHz effectively on the memory.
Overall I saw with my overclock of +250/+200 on the core/memory, an average increase in performance of 15-20% across all the games and synthetic benchmarks tested. This was definitely significant when you consider that in certain demanding games at 4k, this could mean the difference of playing a game at below 60 frames per second or getting a solid 60FPS.
SLI 980TI vs 980 Ultra Benchmarks for 1440p and 4k
Conclusion
If you are a hardware or gaming enthusiast that is looking to make the leap to 1440p 144hz or 4K 60 gaming, the 980 Ti’s really are the sweet spot at this time for the money. While one 980 Ti could handle 1440p 60hz gaming or 4K with several settings turned down, SLI is really going to be the way to go for gamers that will accept nothing short of gaming at ultra settings.
| [easyazon_link asin="B00YDAYOK0" locale="US" new_window="default" nofollow="default" tag="jpttg-20" add_to_cart="default" cloaking="default" localization="default" popups="default"]EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti[/easyazon_link] | [easyazon_link asin="B00YEU8SXI" locale="US" new_window="default" nofollow="default" tag="jpttg-20" add_to_cart="default" cloaking="default" localization="default" popups="default"]Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti[/easyazon_link] | [easyazon_link asin="B00O4S9NY8" locale="US" new_window="default" nofollow="default" tag="jpttg-20" add_to_cart="default" cloaking="default" localization="default" popups="default"]ASUS STRIX GTX980[/easyazon_link] | [easyazon_link asin="B00OD38516" locale="US" new_window="default" nofollow="default" tag="jpttg-20" add_to_cart="default" cloaking="default" localization="default" popups="default"]MSI GTX 980 GAMING 4G[/easyazon_link] |
| [easyazon_image add_to_cart="default" align="left" asin="B00YDAYOK0" cloaking="default" height="160" localization="default" locale="US" nofollow="default" new_window="default" src="https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51DCTlLedxL._SL160_.jpg" tag="jpttg-20" width="160"]EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti[/easyazon_image] | [easyazon_image add_to_cart="default" align="left" asin="B00YEU8SXI" cloaking="default" height="125" localization="default" locale="US" nofollow="default" new_window="default" src="https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51cRqhbutcL._SL160_.jpg" tag="jpttg-20" width="160"]Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti[/easyazon_image] | [easyazon_image add_to_cart="default" align="left" asin="B00O4S9NY8" cloaking="default" height="160" localization="default" locale="US" nofollow="default" new_window="default" src="https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51KWoxNiOeL._SL160_.jpg" tag="jpttg-20" width="160"]ASUS STRIX GTX980[/easyazon_image] | [easyazon_image add_to_cart="default" align="left" asin="B00OD38516" cloaking="default" height="87" localization="default" locale="US" nofollow="default" new_window="default" src="https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Xd6SOOyhL._SL160_.jpg" tag="jpttg-20" width="160"]MSI GTX 980 GAMING 4G[/easyazon_image] |
Why is the 980 SLI setup almost as fast as the 980 Ti Setup in the first four games?
Dude I love that you don’t water down the benchmarks like so many other people. Keep Ultra Benchmarks Ultra.