Overclocking, Power Consumption and Sound
As is usually the case with these launch articles, I don't get nearly the time that I would like to really go in-depth with overclocking. Still, even with limited time to do so, the results are kind of awesome. Kind of really awesome.
For my testing, I am looking only at the GeForce GTX 980 4GB reference cards NVIDIA sent over. We'll spend more time with the retail cards in the next week or two. I used EVGA's new PrecisionX software to handle all the knobs and dials of overclocking with GPU Boost.
Right away you can see that the power target is able to go up to 125%! Considering we were limited to 109% in most cases with the GTX 780 Ti, this is a big change, and it is the result of NVIDIA's efficient power design.
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My GPU was 100% stable at a clock speed offset of 225 MHz, bringing our base clock speed to 1352 MHz and the Boost clock to 1441 MHz. Holy hell, let me wipe this sweat off my forehead. (Note: this also includes upping the voltage to the +0.87 mV maximum provided here.)
So what does that get us in performance? A quick run down in Metro: Last Light shows us.
The black line represents our highest overclockable settings while remaining stable. The orange line, labeled with a 125 PT (power target) here, is here to show any gains from just increase the power target without changing a clock offset of any kind.
Our average frame rate in Metro at 2560×1440 jumps from about 57 FPS to 66 FPS, an increase of 17% or so from our overclocking.
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I know we are going to have questions about clock speed variance so I went ahead and addressed it with these few graphs. Here you are seeing the clock variance during our Metro: LL runs. The green line (all stock) shows there is some clock speed changes taking place, in line with what we expect GPU Boost to do, and how it has acted in the past. Nothing I have seen in my testing shows significant drops in clocks over time like we had with the initial wave of R9 290X/290 parts.
The blue line (with power target set to 125%) shows that we are hitting a TDP limit on the GPU and by simply increasing the available power to the card (through that slider) we get a very flat, static clock rate. Of course that means there is room to go up…
And that is what the yellow line shows us. Even overclocked to a 225 MHz offset, the GTX 980 is able to maintain a very consistent clock pattern.
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Power Consumption Testing
Let's take a look at power consumption, one of the key tenets of the Maxwell architecture. Right away you can tell that something odd is going on – I just showed you a dozen or more pages of the GTX 980 beating the GTX 780 Ti as well as the R9 290X by slim to moderate margins. Yet here I am showing you power consumption that is not just a little lower, but significantly lower than the competition. The GTX 980 draws 131 watts less than the R9 290X and 86 watts less than the GTX 780 Ti.
That is not a small number – with the 165W TDP on the GTX 980, the R9 290X uses nearly an entire extra GTX 980 worth of power.
The GTX 970 shows similar results. It uses 80 watts less power than the Radeon R9 290 and 54 watts less power than the GTX 780. Heck, it even uses 34 watts less power than the Radeon R9 280X that doesn't even come close to it in performance.
And, as expected, these results look even better for NVIDIA when we go into multiple cards. In fact, the GTX 980 SLI configuration uses about 30 watts LESS power than a single R9 290X going full bore.
Sound Level Testing
When I first tested the GTX 780 Ti, I knew it was a louder card that NVIDIA would like to make. Here you can see that the new GTX 980 with a reference cooler is able stay at a much lower noise level than the GTX 780 Ti. The Radeon R9 290X number we are showing here is NOT from an original reference card but instead an ASUS DirectCU II after market design, thus it shines incredibly well in our noise testing comparison.
The same is true for the GTX 970 – though we will dive more into with our retail card reviews soon!
From the benchmarks it seems
From the benchmarks it seems obvious to me that the game is CPU bottlenecked. The highest FPS is outside of combat. During combat the FPS all drops to 100fps no matter 1440p or 4k. This is my experience as well, from looking at CPU/GPU usage while playing Skyrim. Since it’s limited to 2 cores, basically a highly overclocked 4 core is the way to go. However, with something like ENB, I wonder if that’ll shift enough of the burden towards the GPU to the point where a better GPU solution actually does something.
I am talking about Skyrim,
I am talking about Skyrim, BTW, in my above comment.
Ryan are you planning on
Ryan are you planning on testing multimonitor in the near future?
Below is my question.
For example: I have my 7950 sapphire flex in crossfire. I play eyefinity games at 5920×1440. My 3 screens are 1680x1050x2 (16×10) for the outiside screens. And my u2711 at 2560×1440 (16×9) in the middle. All are dp monitors.
I do this because for the games that do not support multi monitor. I like the bigger 2560×1440 screen.
It would be great to know if Nvidia has updated surround capabilities to match AMD’s!
I’m happy to see nVidia
I’m happy to see nVidia endorse downsampling in the form of a supported feature. I’m curious about the downsampling filter they use though – a 13-tap Gaussian filter should produce a decently sharp image without ringing, but is there any word on whether or not it is gamma-aware? That last detail is important when downsampling and particularly for high-contrast details.
Hi,
I have a request to
Hi,
I have a request to benchmark skyrim with enb. full quality.
real vision option a full quality is a good videocard destroyer!
my system is i7 4820k @ 4.5ghz and a 290X
skyrim at 4k without enb is 45-50fps
enb on full quality is 17-19FPS..
can you setup a skyrim enb benchmark for reference from now on?
im very interested in your benchmarks for skyrim enb with 290x, 780ti, 970gtx and 980gtx
I know its alot of work but please please please! hehehe
ohhh, if you do, please add
ohhh, if you do, please add unoffical hd textures, flora overhaul and that hurts performance even more! makes the game so beautiful to play…
Most of those supplements
Most of those supplements work by stopping the cause
of baldness. Excess consumption of zinc may cause bleeding stomach and severe abdominal pain. There are only 2 St Johns wort products that I know of,
that have had been properly researched and the Flordis Remotiv is one of those.
My site … ev44.pl (Priscilla)
I have been watching your
I have been watching your channel for a long time now. I would like to say that i enjoy the thorough way in which you benchmanrk every card. That being said, i would guess to say that 98% of pc gamers play in 1080p. Im wondering why you test such hi resolutions? Im sure you have 1080p benchmarks on another page. I just feel raked over the coals with GSync and 4K. Im tired of forking over thousands for small increases in performance. This bleeding edge is making my wallet bleed!
I agree with Shaun, the
I agree with Shaun, the realvision ENB would be a great benchmark tester as with the realvision ENB on skyrim. I had average of 15fps in open area outside of white run and the rest. Was average of 20-35fps on a gigabyte r9 290x OC 4gb and I’m not sure if that did but my card eventually broke Or overheating issues but wouldn’t load into windows just a black screen with fans spinning fullspeed after windows load screen after POST. So I RMA’d that card. And got credit refund and bought the MSI GTX 970 4Gb and waiting for it to arrived with also with a new motherboard.
So I think that it would be a great Benchmark as it really pushes the GPU not so much the CPU and Skyrim with mods normally uses upto 4gb of VRAM
Anyway Thanks
Awesome Review, SLI power
Awesome Review, SLI power consumption for dual 980’s is hard to come by and you sir have slayed my doubts about overdrawing a 850W power supply. THANKYOU!!! 😀
Im going to build this
Im going to build this system
I7 4790K
SLI gtx 970s
16gb ram 1600mhz
Is a 630 watt PSU sufficient to run in sli? If yes can i also overclock?
630W? are you using a brand
630W? are you using a brand name PSU?
Dont trust PSU’s that come preinstalled with a case..
I would think 630 would be buggy for SLI..
you want at least 25% to spare.. I’d say at least a 750W..
Tho my Coolermaster ran 2x R9 280’s fine.. but that was me slightly underclocking my cpu so allow that..
just make sure the psu is a quality one.
Where AMD will have problems,
Where AMD will have problems, not so much in pricing, but in the thermals that are required for the mini/micro sized systems for HTPC/Etc. that may not be able to take the AMD SKUs even if the prices are lower, getting as much GPU power into as small a form factor as possible is going to be a much more important market segment, as more of these products are being introduced.
Small portable form factor portable mini desktop systems, linked wirelessly to tablets, and relying on the mini desktop for most of the processing needs, are going to appear, systems that can be easily carried around in a laptop bag, along with a tablet, the tablet acting as the desktop host for direct(Via ad hoc WiFi) remote into the mini desktop PC. these type of systems will be more powerful than a laptop(the Mini PC part of the pair), but just as portable, and plugged in at the coffee houses/ETC. and wirelessly serving games, and compute to one, or more tablets. Fitting More powerful discrete GPUs into these systems that will not overburden the limited cooling available in the Mini/Micro form factor will be a big business, especially for gaming/game streaming on the go, and taking these devices along while traveling, and having a device that can be configured to be more like a laptop when on battery power, but ramp up the power beyond what a laptop is capable of while plugged in.
Can i run gtx970 on my intel
Can i run gtx970 on my intel DH61HO Motherboard??
It’s obvious Ryan you have
It’s obvious Ryan you have taken heaps of time doing this (well done mate), but as someone wanting to build a rig to use on a big TV, I’m holding back until I can get my head around the 4k TV vs PC gaming output thing.
HDMI and 4k is my worry. I’ll be buying a big (thinking 65″) TV, only 4k for the gaming. It’ll do service as a normal TV too, but in Australia it’ll be obsolete before we see 4k content on the air! So that leaves gaming.
Is a big 4k TV a good option for high resolution gaming? Or are there land mines hidden in HDMI 1.x/2.x specs that’ll catch out the unaware? Certainly look better than 3 monitors.
It looks like the 980 will push BF4 to 4k @ ~30fps, but is that enough, or is SLI to get 45-60fps needed to be a pleasure to play?
A pair of 290x SLI watercooled would have to be an option, quiet yet in the running on fps. OK, uses more power but the purchase price difference buys a lot of electricity, unless water cooling costs a bomb!
Why are the specific settings
Why are the specific settings not disclosed?
That’s pretty much benchmarking 101, and things like AA & AO can make a massive difference.
While this is the only place
While this is the only place I have seen that has benchmarked Skyrim in 4k with a 970, and Thank you very much for that! But what settings did you use? You post what settings you used at the top? But did the 970 really pull ~50 fps at 4k with 8x A and ultra? Find that hard to believe. I have a new 4k Samsung and really just want to play Skyrim in vanilla 4k, no need for AA and trying to decide if 970 is enough.