Did my SLI GTX 970s just beat the GTX 1080 at a benchmark?

Slurpee12 · May 12, 2016

Here are some leaked benchmarks with the GTX 1080: http://videocardz.com/59871/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-3dmark-firestrike-and-3dmark11-performance
I know it's supposed to be under a NDA, so take it with a grain of salt.
However, according to this screenshot of the 1080's benchmark:

the same benchmark run by myself beats the 1080: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/8447906
But, if I'm reading this correctly, the SLI 970s beat the 1080 in the graphical department. Only reason I have a lower overall score is due to the CPU.
Thoughts?

(EVGA GTX SSC 970s for those that are wondering)

iamacow · May 12, 2016

No because the 1080 Benchmark was Firestrike Extreme (10,000~), this is just the regular Firestrike score.

parani · May 12, 2016

May be thats right .Gtx 970sli may be 5 to 10 times faster than a gtx 1080

Slurpee12 · May 12, 2016

iamacow :

No, the image I provided and the link to my benchmark are both from Firestrike 1.1

Quixit · May 12, 2016

The FireStrike Score they list on that page is 21828 vs your 23559 for the test you've run here. That's actually pretty amazing that the 1080 is nearly as powerful as 970 SLI.

Slurpee12 · May 13, 2016

Quixit :

The 970s in SLI are supposed to be equivalent to the 980ti. And the 1080 is supposed to be, what 25% better than the 980ti? So the 1080 should have been ~25% better than 970 SLI. Something seems off here. It was even supposed to be better than the Titan X, and I can't imagine that the SLI 970s are more powerful than the Titan X.

Gam3r01 · May 13, 2016

You do know the 980Ti and Titan-X both use the same GPUs right?
You can also see here: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_980_Ti_Lightning/23.html That reference 970 SLI is faster than a Titan-X by a fair margin.

Slurpee12 · May 13, 2016

Gam3r01 :

I thought the Titan X was the GM200 chip and the 980ti was the GM204 chip.
Regardless, the SLI 970s outperform the 1080. I for one am shocked. I was getting ready to upgrade. I even had a buyer lined up.

Gam3r01 · May 13, 2016

Dont believe those scores either by the way. Wait for real benchmarks.

iamacow · May 13, 2016

It might beat it in synthetic benchmarks, but real world is a whole different story. If you want to play at higher than 1080p, some games will max out 3.5gb of the 970 ram and give a horrible frame rate. The new hitman won't let you set it above 1080P unless you have 6GB of vram.

Also remember thats stock 1080 scores. imagine what a overclock would look like. better yet the 1080ti with 4096 cuda cores! Heck I gained 2k in 3dmarks just overclocking my 780 Ti.

Slurpee12 · May 13, 2016

Gam3r01 :

Yeah, I'm taking it with a grain of salt

Slurpee12 · May 13, 2016

iamacow :

Well, in SLI the game recognizes that the 970s have 8Gb of VRAM. For example, in Assassin's Creed Syndicate, I was able to set the graphical settings to use 7Gb of VRAM.
I do get what you're saying about real world testing, but benchmarks exist for a reason - it's the GPU's maximum possible performance. And I realize that it was a stock 1080 clock, but my SLI 970s also have a very large amount of headroom for overclocking. My max temp on the hottest card was 71 degrees C in an ambient room temp of 78 degrees F. 1080ti isn't to be released until 2017, and the returns on the 970 will be even worse then. Plus, who knows who expensive it is.

chedda87 · May 13, 2016

Hahaha sli 970's give 8gb of vram.... Best one I've seen today.....
You got anymore 1 liners

Quixit · May 13, 2016

It would be really amazing if the upper tier GP204 card beat the lower tier GM204 card in SLI, but that would be a pretty crazy performance jump. Waiting for real numbers is the best plan but I think you might have unrealistic expectations.

P.S. In SLI the memory on both cards is mirrored so it's functionally half you get use of. Even in DX12's multi-card mode some of the data is mirrored on both cards.

Slurpee12 · May 13, 2016

Quixit :

Yeah, I just might have gotten sucked into the "2x performance of a Titan." I wasn't expecting my cards to outperform the Titan X, according to the link that Gam3r01 provided.
If I can get a good enough return, I might just get SLI 1080s.

Slurpee12 · May 13, 2016

UPDATE

Here are benchmarks for the 1080 overclocked:

NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1080-Overclocking-3DMark-Performance.png

Now, it outperforms the 970 SLI at stock speed, according to my results.

Quixit · May 13, 2016

I wonder how easy it is to get a > 2Ghz overclock. The idea of a 2Ghz+ GPU is pretty appealing to me.

Slurpee12 · May 13, 2016

Quixit :

I've seen 970s in the 1.7Ghz range of an overclock. I have upwards of 10 degrees of headroom, so I could probably achieve that. I haven't overclocked yet, so I'm not going to bother since I'm planning on selling the cards. However, if the mass produced cards have the same performance as the exclusive cards that were given out, I'm assuming it'll be fairly easy. With a boost clock of 1860Mhz, a 140Mhz overclock is very feasible.

Slurpee12 · May 17, 2016

Update:

According to http:// 's Firestrike benchmark, SLI 970s do in fact beat official Firestrike Benchmarks in the graphics deparment.

Did my SLI GTX 970s just beat the GTX 1080 at a benchmark?

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