OK I decided to bench Tomb Raider. First I benched it on high but I just got silly FPS. Like 140+. So I decided to use his 1440p benchmark. He's using DX11 (because nothing Nvidia make is very good in TR DX12) and I used ultra settings.
My GPU is overclocked to 1364mhz but for some reason in this game the clocks show lower. I am not thermal throttling though as you can see from the temps.
My score.
So just over 80 FPS. This is his score.
OK so he scored 90 with his 1080 overclocked. If we just took the two scores at face value we would be looking what? 10-11% yes? only there are differences. He is running a 5930k @ 4.5ghz. Whilst my CPU is pretty much the same (5820k) I can only get 4.4ghz game stable out of mine. He is also running 3000mhz ram, I am running 2133.
However the biggest issue is throttling. The guy in the review is highly likely to have used a open bench to test the 1080. Well here is what happens in a Fractal Define S....
So even when the card is holding its full overclock it only scores 10-11% faster than a Titan X @ 1364mhz. If I upped the clocks obviously that gap would close but I CBA. However, most good 980ti (the Zotac card for example) can do 1500mhz. This then brings that gap in even closer.
My clocks and temps for reference.
You'll also find that Tomb Raider is one of the better games for the 1080. However, if I'm able to close that gap to 10% with a two minute overclock then I'm sure I would be able to close it even more if I pushed on. I don't need to though, because I pretty much knew what Pascal was going to be before it even came out. It's just a die shrunk Maxwell on speed.
I do spend most of my free time reading up on these things and studying them. I like to see everyone's opinion (because there are no reviewers just salesmen) and from that I can garner the facts. The people who bought them on OCUK for example are pretty gutted with them, as once again they have been made out to look about as good as they can be by Nvidia but in the cold light of day they've just sold a card for £350 and bought one for £650 and gained hardly anything. And this was the case when people were panicked into selling their 780ti and buying a 980 that ended up being about 8% faster when both were overclocked. No reason at all to spend £650.
The next card to have is the 1080ti. However, Nvidia have now set a new precedent and I can guarantee it will be 800 notes or more. It would be, it's a larger die that costs much more to produce and uses more wafer than a 1080.
Couple of other things I should mention. My card is only running at X8
Which could lose me 3% of full X16 performance. I know why. It's because the board I have has a very odd way of distributing the lanes. I could get X16 if I moved it down a slot but for the extra performance I would get out of it (and disrupting the entire airflow of the rig) I decided to leave it.
I have also not overclocked the memory on my Titan X either. I should be able to get it to overclock but it's something I don't really want to entertain as it could lead to damage, even without extra voltage shoved through it.
So yeah, that's about it really. Open up EVGA precision X, move a slider and you will be within 10% of the 1080, even overclocked, all of the time.