The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 & GTX 1070 Founders Editions Review: Kicking Off the FinFET Generation
by Ryan Smith on July 20, 2016 8:45 AM ESTThe Witcher 3
The third game in CD Projekt RED’s expansive RPG series, The Witcher 3 is our RPG benchmark of choice. Utilizing the company’s in-house engine, REDengine 3, The Witcher makes use of an array of DirectX 11 features, all of which combine to make the game both stunning and surprisingly GPU-intensive. Our benchmark is based on an action-heavy in-engine cutscene early in the game, and Hairworks is disabled.
The GTX 1080 never doesn’t lead in our benchmarks, but The Witcher 3 is another strong showing for the card. At 44fps for 4K, it’s three-quarters of the way to 60fps, with gives us a reasonably playable framerate even at these high quality settings. However to get 60fps you’ll still have to back off on the quality settings or resolution. Meanwhile the GTX 1070, although capable of better than 30fps at 4K, is more at home at 1440p, where the card just cracks 60fps.
Looking at the generational comparisons, the Pascal cards are about average under The Witcher 3. GTX 1080 leads GTX 980 by an average of 66%, and GTX 1070 leads GTX 970 by 58%. Similarly, the gap between the two Pascal cards is pretty typical at 24% in favor of the GTX 1080.
Finally, checking in on poor Kepler, we find GTX 680 at 31.3fps at 1080p, as compared to GTX 1080’s 100.3fps. This gives NVIDIA’s latest flagship a 3.2x advantage over its 4 year old predecessor.
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Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
To follow: GTX 1060 Review (hopefully Friday), RX 480 Architecture Writeup/Review, and at some point RX 470 and RX 460 are still due.Chillin1248 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Nice, don't worry about the rushers. There are plenty of day one reviewers, but few go into depth the way that makes it interesting.retrospooty - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Agreed, this is a good review, as the video card reviews here usually are... Agreed about rushing as well. A lot of sites have less thorough stuff out in 1-2 days... I am guessing that Ryan and the others at Anandtech have regular day jobs and doing these reviews and articles is done on their own time. If that is the case, 2 months seems right. If I am incorrect in that assumption and this is a full time job, then they should be coming out with articles alot faster.JoshHo - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Currently for mobile the only full time editor is Matt Humrick.AndrewJacksonZA - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Thank you Ryan. I look forward to more and reliable information about the 470 and especially the 460.prophet001 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Hi All, I was just wondering if it's worth it to get the FE 1080 or just go with the regular one. Does the stock fan setup offer better thermals than the blower setup?Teknobug - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
FE is a ripoffImSpartacus - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
It's literally just the reference card. It's not a bad reference design, but it's generally considered a poor value for enthusiasts.HomeworldFound - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
A reference design is very useful if you're watercooling though.trab - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Depends if your custom board has any actual changes, it may just be the reference board with a custom cooler, so it would make no difference. Of course it would also be cheaper to boot.