While we were testing the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, a new OS X 10.10.4 web driver was released by NVIDIA. We were so impressed with the improvements in performance over the older driver, we decided to feature results from both old and new driver while comparing it to the GTX 980 an GTX 680 Mac Edition.
GRAPH LEGEND
GTX980 Ti 346.02 = NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti (see SPECS) Web Driver 346.02.02f03
GTX980 Ti 346.01 = NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti Web Driver 346.01.03f01
GTX980 346.02 = NVIDIA GTX 980 (see SPECS) Web Driver 346.02.02f03
GTX980 346.01 = NVIDIA GTX 980 Web Driver 346.01.03f01
GTX680 346.02 = NVIDIA GTX 680 Mac Edition (see SPECS) Web Driver 346.02.02f03
GTX680 346.01 = NVIDIA GTX 680 Mac Edition Web Driver 346.01.03f01
DIRT 3
RED bar in graph indicates the FASTEST result.
TOMB RAIDER
RED bar in graph indicates the FASTEST result.
TESSMARK (x16 Tessellation)
RED bar in graph indicates the FASTEST result.
OCEAN WAVE (OpenCL)
RED bar in graph indicates the FASTEST result.
FCPX EXPORT of BRUCEX project
RED bar in graph indicates the FASTEST result.
WHAT WE LEARNED
1. In the case of Dirt 3 and Tomb Raider, the 980 Ti and 980 did not dominate the 680. In fact, the 680 won the Dirt 3 'race.'
2. OpenCL_OceanWave_Bandwidth benchmark revealed a big jump in OpenCL performance for the two Maxwell GPUs (980 and 980 Ti), thanks to the newest web driver.
3. The BruceX graph illustrates what happens when a pro app function consumes gobs of VRAM. The 980 Ti's 6GB of GDDR5 was fully utilized. Consequently, in this case, it smoked the 980 (4G) and 680 (2G).
4. NVIDIA has been busy making improvements to the custom Yosemite web drivers. We featured the apps that benefited the most from the new web driver. In addition, for the first time, we were able to run Tomb Raider and Batman: Arkham City at 5120x2880 without crashing. (NOTE: The web driver is not required for the GTX 680. The Maxwell GPUs (GTX 970, 980, 980 Ti, TITAN X, Quadro K5000) do require the web driver. The other benefit of the web driver is support for the Dell 5K display.)
