Round-Up: GeForce GTX 980 and 970 Cards From MSI, EVGA, and Zotac Reviewed

Name: GeForce GTX 980 and 970 Cards From MSI, EVGA, and Zotac Reviewed
Brand: GeForce

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, January 30, 2015, 01:19 PM EDT

BioShock Infinite is clear game-of-the-year material. The floating city of Columbia is one of the most evocative, intense, and gorgeous environments we've ever seen in a PC game -- but how much you like it may depend on what sort of visual wizardry you prefer. BioShock Infinite is built on Unreal Engine 3, and while it pushes that framework's capabilities into the stratosphere, there's a clear difference between BioShock Infinite and, say, Crysis 3. BioShock Infinite emphasizes light, color and motion, and while the characters look more exaggerated and cartoon-like than some other games, they still look great. We tested the game at various resolutions with its DX11 code path with DOF effects enabled.

Bioshock Infinite

DirectX Gaming Performance

Bioshock Infinite

Things are probably getting a little repetitive at this point, but the numbers are what they are. The MSI and Zotac GeForce GTX 980 cards were the clear leaders once again. Though, EVGA's offering continues to perform very well. Here, EVGA's FTW card outpaced the Titan, left the reference 970 in its wake, and finished right about on par with a GeForce GTX 780 Ti.

Tags: Nvidia, MSI, GeForce, Gaming, graphics, Zotac, GPU, evga, GTX

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com