Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unbox today we're revisiting the geforce gtx 980ti cuz i'm really keen to see how it stacks up against the newly released RT x 2060 and gtx 1660 TI particularly in newer titles such as apex Legends Resident Evil 2 and Far Cry new dawn for example of course while the gtx 1660 TI features an MSRP of just $200 u.s. and the RT x 2060 $350 us the 980 TI was much more expensive at six hundred and fifty dollars still it's a four year old GPU now so it expect newer GPUs around half the price to deliver a similar level of performance whereas the 980 TI packs two thousand eight hundred and sixteen CUDA cores the RT X 2060 has 32 percent fewer cores and the sixteen sixty TI 45 percent fewer cores that said the chirring cores are wider allowing them to execute more instructions and they're also clocked higher the Nvidia spec for the 980 TI calls for a boost clock of 1075 megahertz and this gives the RT X 2060 a 56% clock speed advantage and then the gtx 660ti a 65 percent clock speed advantage the cheering GPUs are also paired with higher clocked GDD are six memory and this means while the RT x 26 t only has a 192 bit wide memory bus opposed to the much wider 384 bit wide bus of the 980 TI the faster memory means it has the same 336 gigabytes per second memory bandwidth then the 1660 Ti has been downgraded to 288 gigabytes per second with its 12 GB bits per second memory but as we've already seen this doesn't really hurt it earlier this year I put together an in-depth use graphics card buying guide and in it I found the average selling price for the gtx 980ti was 235 dollars u.s. and taking a quick look today at completed eBay listings that price still appears to be very accurate so that then makes this comparison all the more interesting should you get the 980 TI for around $235 us or buy a brand new GTX 1662 I for $280 us to find out I have grabbed our core I $9.99 ok test system installed the 980 TI and spent a few days getting through a 33 game benchmark all testing takes place at 1440p and while I am using a reference card it has been overclocked to 1100 and 90 megahertz and this allowed to hold a typical boost clock of 1.3 gigahertz so with that let's get into the results I'm going to start with Metro Exodus as this is the only game where I've included these stock 980ti result the reason I've done this is because rather than test just a dozen or so games I wanted to aim for at least a 30-something game benchmark this gives us a much better idea of how the Maxwell GPU stacks up today and not just in the latest and greatest games but also those released over the last year I mentioned this because for me to test such a massive range of games it's not really feasible to invest twice as much time to test it well all over again so I had to pick either the Nvidia spec or a really aggressive factory overclock so I went with the latter for the most part the overclocked configuration offers 10% more performance with gains as large as 15% seen under certain conditions for example he when testing with Metro Exodus we see at the overclock provided a nine percent performance boost which is decent basically the 980ti goes from being slightly sold the gtx 1070 to slightly faster so I just wanted to provide this data as a reference point make it clear that the 980ti has been overclocked but only as far as what you'd find on the more premium higher and aib models such as gigabytes gaming g1 for example the overclocked 980 TI performs extremely well and shut off the Tomb Raider beating the gtx 1070 by a few frames to come in just to FPS down on the 1660 TI and 1070 TI moving on we find that Forza horizon 4 is a good game to include in this comparison as it utilizes modern GPU architectures really well as such the overclocked 980 I was only able to match the Radeon rx 590 making it a little over 10% slower on the 1660 TI and RT x 2060 next up we have Just Cause 4 and here the gtx 980ti came in just behind the gtx 1070 and 1660 TI nothing that unusual about these results so let's just move on firing up resin evil 2 we see the overclocked 9 so he's able to roughly match the gtex 1662 I'm making at 16 percent slower than the r-tx 2060 now testing with hitman 2 we saw the 980 I was basically matching the GTX 1662 I while it was 14% slower than the r-tx 2060 and 16 percent slower than Vega 56 so a pretty solid result here for the old Maxwell flagship GPU Fortnight uses the Unreal 4 engine and this engine is fairly familiar with the Pascal architecture here the overclocked 980 I just edged out both the gtx 1070 and 1660 TI to come in just behind the gtx 1070 TI and it really wasn't that much slower than the RT x 2060 it also beat AMD's vega 56 by a 6% margin the 980 TI performs really well relative to the pascal competition in rainbow 6 siege being the 1070 by a few frames to come in just behind the 1070 TI that censuring seems to perform really well in this title and as such the 980 TI was 10% slower than the 16 60 TI and 22 percent slower than the RG x 20 60 when testing with battlefield 5 we set the overclocked 980 is on par with the gtx 1070 and we also find much the same when comparing it to the gtx 660ti just a few frames in it there we also see that the 980 TI was 14% slower than a typical AIB version of the RT X 2060 not a massive margin but given that the Maxwell GPU did come at an MSRP of $650 us the fact that we're now getting more performance for just $350 us seems like pretty good news though I suppose you would at the very least expect this given the RT X 2060 is 4 years newer although it's gone through several major upgrades World of Tanks at its core is still a very old game now that being the case it is well optimised for older GPU architectures and as a very popular title Nvidia has made sure that ageing GPU still perform where they should in the case of the 980ti that means delivering GTX 1070 Ti light performance making it 16% fast in the 1660 Ti in just 6 percent slower than the ITX 2060 apex Legends is one of the newest games we're testing with here and as you can see the overclocked 980 I falls just short of the gtx 1070 and is quite a way behind the GTX 1662 I am massively behind the r-tx 2060 in short the gap to Pascal isn't that large but the more complex during architecture provides a significant performance uplift here especially if we were to compare GPUs with a similar core count the last game we're going to look at closely is far cry new dawn and here the overclocked 980 to I match the stock gtx 1070 and 1660 TI with an average of 74 fps that said it was 15% slower than the RT x 2060 though I'm not suggesting that makes the budget RT X option a worthwhile upgrade for a current 980ti owner as a dozen okay so as we've found time and time again in the past the gtx 980ti and gtx 1070 deliver basically the same performance at the stock Nvidia spec the 1070 is generally a little bit faster and with both overclocked to the max they're also much the same though I think it's fair to say the 980 to I generally does a little better overall thanks to its huge degree of overclocking Headroom for the most part we found that the stock Vega 56 graphics card beat the non HDI and overall the old GeForce GPU was 7% slower on average there were just five games with a 980 I won by a 5% margin or greater but given what you can typically get these things for in the second-hand market they are often a much better choice for budget conscious buyers okay so time for the gtx 1660 TI comparison and here we see overall the 980 i was a whisker faster edging out the budget cheering GPU by a 2% margin of course while we used a stock MSI GTX 1662 a gaming X card the 980 TI was overclocked that said you can only squeeze about 5 maybe 10% more out of the 1662 I anyway so it's probably still going to lose that comparison but it's still great to see that we're finally getting 980ti levels of performance for under $300 then finally of the RT x 2060 and even with the overclock the 980 I just couldn't hang with the stock 2060 on average the flagship maxwell part was 12% slower but we see examples of it up to 20 25 percent slower when looking at Assassin's Creed Odyssey Rainbow six siege Wolfenstein 2 and apex legends so the once-mighty geforce gtx 980ti has now been matched by a sub $300 GPU I only took about four years I guess if you did drop $650 us on a 980 - oh all those years ago and you still have it today gaming at 1440p then it's fair to say you did get your money's worth of course for such a person the GTX 1662 and r-tx 2060 simply won't warrant an upgrade as that really would be more of a side grade that said if you're a six hundred and fifty dollar GPU kind of shopper then it was unlikely these lower tier mid-range offerings were ever going to entice you for that you're probably after a 90 X 20 80 and in titles such as Metro Exodus you'd be looking at just over a 60% performance boost so that's obviously very significant now if you're tossing up between buying a new gtx 1660 TI or a use 2 gtx 980ti that's a tough one actually it's probably not really well you could potentially save around $50 by buying a 980 TI as i said the typical selling price is $235 u.s. there's always the possibility that you might have to pay more than that for a good model alternatively if you're willing to buy add your time you might manage to get one even cheaper there's a bit of an actor buying secondhand but no matter how good you are there are still some unavoidable pitfalls obviously the 980ti is an old product now it was discontinued about three years ago so it's extremely unlikely any model you buy will still come with a warranty so for me the risk for around a $50 savings not seem worth it I'd be wanting to save much closer to $100 u.s. to take the plunge on a three to four year old graphics card there's also the issue of driver support without question the gtx 1660 TI is going to age better moving forward again the Maxwell architecture is quite old now so you can expect to see less time spent on driver optimizations in the future overall I have to say the gtx 980ti has aged very well and today it's still capable of delivering an enjoyable 1440p gaming experience but to justify buying one today you'd have to be getting it for under $200 u.s. in my opinion anything more than that I feel like the risk of buying secondhand just isn't worth it I feel like you're probably just better off playing it safe and getting a shiny new gtx 1660 TI and that is going to do it for this one if you did enjoy the video be sure to the like button subscribe for more content and if you appreciate the work radio tower box then consider supporting us on patreon thank you very much for watching I'm your host Steve and I'll see you again next time you