
- #REFERENCE GTX 980 UNIGINE HEAVEN BENCHMARK DRIVER#
- #REFERENCE GTX 980 UNIGINE HEAVEN BENCHMARK SOFTWARE#
- #REFERENCE GTX 980 UNIGINE HEAVEN BENCHMARK SERIES#
The GTX 980 also makes some compromises with its memory. That’s a major bump from the 780 Ti’s base clock of 875MHz, and its boost clock of 928MHz.
#REFERENCE GTX 980 UNIGINE HEAVEN BENCHMARK SERIES#
This is an attractive flagship graphics card that should lure gamers with a GTX 600 series or Radeon 7000 series into upgrading.Ĭlock speeds are up though, as the GTX 980 features a base clock of 1,126MHz, and a boost clock of 1,216MHz. The GTX 780 has 2,304 cores in 12 execution units, and the GTX 780 Ti has 2,880 cores in 14 execution units. That’s a sizable downgrade relative to the preceding models. The GTX 980 boasts 16 execution units with a total of 2,048 CUDA cores. Now that we’ve touched on Maxwell, it’s time to take a better look at the GeForce GTX 980 itself. Maxwell-based video cards can match the performance of their predecessors while consuming far less power. Together, these major changes (and countless other subtle tweaks) significantly improve efficiency over the previous Kepler architecture. Nvidia has also increased the level two cache to 2MB, which reduces the frequency of requests to the GPU’s DRAM. This enables more control over how resources are used, and results in less frequent activation of cores that aren’t needed to complete a task. The first is a reorganization of cores which groups them into smaller execution units. A long list of changes has allowed this, but two in particular stand out. This chip is not built via a smaller production process than its predecessor, so the green team’s engineers have been forced to focus on architecture revisions that result in more processing power from a given die size. The real thrust of Maxwell’s focus, though, is power efficiency.
#REFERENCE GTX 980 UNIGINE HEAVEN BENCHMARK SOFTWARE#
Gamers can automate the application of this feature through the GeForce Experience software and, unlike the other features enabled by Maxwell, this one works with most existing games. It can also add detail to fine objects, like grass, and very distant characters. While it usually won’t make a night-and-day difference, it can sharpen blurry textures. This technology improves visually lackluster games by rendering them at an extremely high resolution (beyond what your monitor normally displays), and then down-scaling the result. However, you’ll only see these features show up if and when game developers embrace them.Īnother new and immediately useful feature in the GTX 980 is Dynamic Super Resolution. In theory, with these features, the GTX 980 can make games look better than other cards can. A new anti-aliasing method, dubbed Multi-Frame Sampled Anti-Aliasing, has been added as well. A new lighting technique is enabled through Voxel Global Illumination.

#REFERENCE GTX 980 UNIGINE HEAVEN BENCHMARK DRIVER#
The older Fermi and Kepler architectures are slated to have support for DirectX 12 added through future driver updates. Even so-called “AAA” games are no longer guaranteed to push the limits of graphics technology.ĭirectX 12 is supported, though that’s not exclusive. While some enthusiasts might bemoan this new practice, it makes sense given the wide variety of games that are available. Nvidia believes that it’s easier to start small and scale up, than it is to start big and scale down. With Maxwell, that philosophy was turned on its head. In the past, new architectures were built with the most powerful systems in mind, then scaled down as needed. This is a new approach for the company, and for GPUs as a whole. laptops), rather than a chip for desktops. Nvidia says the architecture’s life began as a design for mobile products (i.e. Maxwell was built to provide maximum performance while consuming minimum wattage, and it succeeds.
