NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 & 970 Maxwell GPU Reviews


Test System and Unigine Heaven v4.0

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards in this article on an EVGA X79 Dark motherboard powered by an Intel Core i7-4960X six-core processor and 16GB of Corsair DDR3-1866 RAM. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the system UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" default settings and disable any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's X.M.P. profile was enabled to ensure better-than-stock performance and the solid state drive was then formatted and Windows 8.1 Professional x64 was installed. When the installation was complete, we fully updated the OS and installed the latest DirectX redist along with all of the drivers, games, and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.

HotHardware's Test System
Intel Core i7 Powered

Hardware Used:
Intel Core i7-4960X
(3.3GHz, Six-Core)
EVGA X79 Dark
(Intel X79 Express)

Radeon R9 290X
Radeon R7 295X2
GeForce GTX 980 x 2
GeForce GTX 970 (MSI and EVGA)
GeForce GTX 780 Ti x 2
GeForce GTX Titan x 2

16GB Corsair DDR3-1866
OCZ Vertex 3
Integrated Audio
Integrated Network

Relevant Software:
Windows 8.1 Pro x64
DirectX April 2011 Redist
AMD Catalyst v14.30.1005 B2
NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v344.07

Benchmarks Used:
Unigine Heaven v4
3DMark "Fire Strike"
Bioshock Infinite
Hitman: Absolution
Metro Last Light
Sleeping Dogs
Crysis 3
FRAPS

Unigine Heaven v4.0 Benchmark
Pseudo-DirectX 11 Gaming

Unigine's Heaven Benchmark v4.0 is built around the Unigine game engine. Unigine is a cross-platform, real-time 3D engine, with support for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11 and OpenGL. The Heaven benchmark--when run in DX11 mode--also makes comprehensive use of tessellation technology and advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion). It also features volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm and a dynamic sky with light scattering.


Unigine Heaven



The GeForce GTX 980 ruled the roost here, besting all comers, in both single and dual-GPU configurations. The GeForce GTX 970 also performed well, hanging with AMD's much more expensive Radeon R9 290X.
 


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