Game:

Far Cry 3 (2012)

Duration: 52:21

513 views

8

In the beginning of this video, I go on about how I "made a mistake" with the buffering settings, but after lots of testing, it doesn't look like the buffering setting played a role.

Basically, I've had very good performance with the 980Ti, to include downright fantastic performance at 1440p. But... I have had inconsistent performance.

There are times when the 1440p performance has been unexpectedly close to the 1080p performance, and that's caused some head scratching. (although... I did have a day where 1440p performance was anywhere from 20fps to 50fps lower than 1080p, but that was just for one day) (all other days, the gap has not been as large as what I would have expected)

There's a good chance that if I benchmark the games the "proper" way, the numbers will bear out there there is a bigger performance gap than it looks and feels like during normal play. (I do monitor a frame rate counter, but that's not the same as actually benchmarking) I will have to start properly benchmarking games to find that out.

I had two videos up, in a series that asked if the 980 Ti was overkill for 1080p gaming. Because I had the one day where 1440p was playing very badly, I assumed that there was a chance that 1440p might be too demanding for reliable use with the 980 Ti, especially for gamers who would expect the $700 card to at least deliver a consistent 60fps.

I should also note that my initial 1440p testing was done on a G-Sync monitor. When I had the day of very bad performance (many AAA games were getting less than 60fps), I had assumed that maybe the 980 Ti needed G-Sync to be able to play above 60fps. I even assumed that the poor performance was because G-Sync wasn't properly enabled.

I sought help from multiple sources, some professional, some amateur, who all indicated that I was taking the proper steps to enable G-Sync. But... For whatever reason, I could not get games to play properly that day, so I shut off the computer and left it alone until the next day. On that next day, I enabled and disabled G-Sync a few more times and reset the computer a few more times, and the performance finally came back.

All of this led me to assume that G-Sync was malfunctioning for that day, and that must be why the performance was so low.

Also... Aside from that... When I would switch G-Sync off on my Acer monitor, I would notice what felt like more stuttering and lower overall visual fidelity. (a lot of what I felt I was noticing is highly subjective and difficult to quantify) Still... I kept being led to feel that G-Sync working properly equaled "good" performance.

I took the matter seriously enough to order a non-GSync monitor from BenQ as a control of sorts. It turns out that the 980 Ti smashes games on the BenQ (XL2730Z), also a 1440p monitor, but one that does not have G-Sync. This way where would be no confusion as to whether or not G-Sync was affecting my image quality or frame rate.

I have only used the BenQ monitor for one day, so far. After what has happened so far, I am reluctant to definitively say how things are going. I will say that games stutter less on the BenQ, and the 980 Ti has done very well so far, but it is still too early for me to feel confident with a report. (This is another thing... with games stuttering on the Acer, I had the impression that the 980 Ti was having trouble giving smooth game play at 1440. The card does not stutter as much on the BenQ, so this has added a new wrinkle to my analysis)

I have since made the "980 Ti overkill for 1080p Gaming" videos private, since the BenQ has arrived. Again, I don't want to speak too soon, but SO FAR, the BenQ is showing me that the 980 Ti can deftly handle 1440p gaming, which would imply it IS overkill for 1080p.

But again, I may be speaking too soon.

I will continue to share my experience with the 980 Ti and 1440p gaming, G-Sync, and high refresh rate. But for now, such videos will likely be just that: Some guy's experience.
(and will possibly not indicate what your experience or even other YouTubers' experiences have been with these products)

One last note: I am using an EVGA GTX 980 Ti Classified, running on air, and I think there may be issues of throttling that have been hard to measure, as another wrinkle.

I've had cards throttle before, and they were very predictable. They would behave the same way in the same parts of games, pretty much reliably.

The 980 Ti has been a strange nut for me to crack, as far as understanding it inside and out. To be honest... As long as I don't have any more days where games are staying below 60fps, I don't necessarily "need" to have the nut fully cracked. If games can run Ultra presets above 60fps at 1440p, the card is easily qualified as a success. But I've become used to really understanding what to expect out of my graphics cards, and this one has been the least consistent I've had.

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