The new 1080 ti - star citizen at 4k

Since that is basically the fastest GPU we know about that may have a release date soon, it is going to be your best bet.
Assuming AMD doesn't wow us with a Vega alternative that is cheaper/performs better.

Lofty goal 4K on Star Citizen, it is a pretty punishing engine, and it isn't finished yet. Last time I fired it up I was still baffled by all the texture and collision errors that occur. Other than that, turning an FPS engine into a integrated space sim is the best concept for a game I have seen.

Really looking forward to an in-game economy. Just playing around with the ships can only keep one entertained so much.

all you can do right now is look at 1080 and titan numbers and know it will be in the middle somewhere. card is not even officially announced so of course we have no clue what it may be able to do.

all that can be said for sure is it will be between a 1080 and titan. considering the 980ti was VERY close to the maxwell titan, it may even be acceptable to assume it will perform a good 90% or more of the titan card. but that's about all it would be is guessing.

Agreed Jack, sticking with 2560x1440@144hz for the forseeable future. Might, just might convince myself to take up a 3440x1440, but I don't think I can justify it.

I'm looking forward to PC class OLED monitors that I won't have to sell my first born for.

I expect the 1080 Ti will top the Titan in the games that gamers are most interested in, just as the 980 Ti did (right outta the box).



Also remember that the Titan existed only as a reference design with crappy overclocking where as the Ti was an outrageous OC'er.



That's a 31.4% OC whereas the Titan X only managed 11% with its power and thermal limits adjusted to max settings. Without adjusting the thermal limits, the OC on the Titan X was only 4%

overclocking is always worth noting but since no pascal card has been a good overclocker, i don't expect the 1080ti to be one either. overclocking pascal has been very disappointing and not a single one of the "super" cards has been able to top what the cheaper ones can do. i have no expectations that a 1080ti will all of a sudden be an overclocking beast. just going by all the other pascal gpu's so far.


either way, this conversation is premature since it is asking about a game that is not finished yet and a card that does not exist yet. as soon as my crystal ball gets back from the cleaners i'll look into it and try to see that future

I agree on the premature ... was essentially opening line in my original post

I also agree that nVidia's Boost 3 has put the kabash on overclocking in the 10xx series, making it difficult for AIB partners to distinguish themselves from one other. Reviewers have been consistent, and the temps support this, that the 10xx series cards have been intentionally "handcuffed" and can do much more. And for the 1st time, nVidia has tightly limited access to the BIOS and no "crack" has yet appeared which would allow them to be manually edited.

This happened last gen when the 970's performance was intentionally nerfed by lowering the throttling point of the 970. So what's the deal with 10xx ? ... why has nVidia intentionally gimped their cards with Boost 3 ? Given their recent history, their modus operandi has been to keep something "on the shelf" so they can react to what AMD does .... When the performance of the AMD cards became known, it was put forth based upon changed specs that the "planned" 770 became the 780 and the 780 was "shelved" because a) the lesser card was cheaper to make, it outperformed the other team's flagship and c) by putting it on the shelf, they had a "ringer" ready to go and sitting "on the bench". AMDs entire ad campaign for the new card line was hurt badly .... as as soon as the announcement was made, days later Vidia stole the spotlight with the 780 Ti and all the "new stuff from AMD" chatter died.

But now ... since nVidia has two cards above the 1060 / 480 out and AMD doesn't... what can they "spring on the market" quickly when the AMD cards do come out with the advantage of a longer development and production cycle ?

For 3 generations now, AMD has been very aggressively clocking their cards in the box. Where nVidia has "stayed the course" offering 18% to 32% OC capability .... thru 10xx that is. Meanwhile AMD for the most part, remains stuck in single digits. Of course there is a risk of aggressively overclocking cards in the box ... more cards that just won't hit that number which means, for those that notice ... more RMAs (like my son's EVGA FTW). So by gimping the current cards with Boost 3 to keep them just above the competition, means less RMAs ... having a "switch" that they could flip if and when new cards from AMD arrive, might mean an increase in RMA rate comparable to AMD, but it would help them maintain performance rankings. Kinda like a car race where in a close race driver ups the rpms to maintain the lead ... but of they far back in the rear view mirror, no need to risk that.

One of the simplest things they could do if they find themselves behind is to "take the handcuffs off" and let the AIB cards shine. More on this later....

overclocking pascal has been very disappointing and not a single one of the "super" cards has been able to top what the cheaper ones can do

Click to expand...

I have to disagree here ...

1. The supercards final death throes came with the 9xx series....but the cards diagnosis was terminal with 7xx. The 7xx served to portend what we know today; the Classy, Lightning, Matrix 7xx series were not delivering significant performance increases which could justify the increased cost ... yes you could get higher clocks stable (custom BIOSs helped here), but they weren't delivering higher fps even with the higher core speeds. The 1-2% was just too paltry to justify the $100 price increase.

The value originally with these cards was what **you** could do with them, not how they came out of the box ... nVidias legal and design limitations are still growing increasingly tighter but drastic leaps already arrived with 7xx and 9xx. Boost 3's approach is different in that it gimps everything and all the well designed AIB PCBs are looooong ways away from throttling. What if "all of a sudden", those BIOS entries were changed to allow more voltage and higher temps ? With 10-15C, they have lotat room to work with.

2. But the super cards are not what I was referring to ... we're talking "overclocking" as opposed to "buying factory overclocked cards". When I say overclocking percentage, I am not talking about the fact that the MSI 1070 gaming is 4% faster than the reference card. I am saying that the MSI Gaming when overclocked manually is 17.7% faster than the reference card when is when the reference card is taken outta the box. The problem with overclocking is you have to guarantee the results

Yes, all of the factory overclocked cards are close to one another but I don't see how 18% more fps is not a "good overclocker" ...especially when looking at AMD's results for which anything in double digits is a great rarity. But also remember that the 980 Ti was 30% when the 970 was in the high teens - low 20s. It's the flagship card and as ssuch, they loosened the OC reigns quite a bit. Yes you hadda pay for that big OC headroom and the more ya paid, the more ya got... 970 just under 20%, the 980 was 25% and the 980 Ti was 31+%.


I can't help but suspect, that ..

a) the 1080 Ti, originally rumored for Q4, 2016 won't drop until AMD releases their answer to the the 1070 / 1080.

b) When it does happen... and if AMD is able to make inroads against the 1060 / 1070 / 1080, I think we will see "the handcuffs come off Boost 3" and we'll no longer see 10-15C of headroom between GPU temps and the throttling point on the AIB cards.

by not being a "good overclocker" i mean that even an FE card can oc to the same speeds and boost 3.0 will take all the cards to almost the max speed anyway. since the cheapest 1080 will boost to the same speeds and net the same small fps increase as the most expensive models (some more than $100 more), i don't see any oc room. now true some of the better ones will be a bit cooler and quieter but that's not what we are talking about here. i don't remember a cheap 970 being able to match the high end models or any of the other maxwell cards either. you could get a noticeable difference spending the extra cash. that is not the case with pascal.

boost 3.0 takes the cards to around 2 ghz for every card out of the box. does not matter what the clock speed is out of the box, that goes away as soon as it boosts. so talking about out of the box speeds is really smoke and mirrors and avoids the reality of what boost does now.

i am also not sure nvidia has nerfed the gpu's. look at the speeds they get from pascal. well above what we saw before. those speeds are insane. so capping it to make sure the chip foes not melt makes sense overall. i do recall the hall of fame card we say very early on with a custom bios that they got to 2.8 ghz but that was on ln2. i don't think there is much to be gained at all by upping the voltage and such. even if more speed could be had would it make a real world difference overall. in the world of diminishing returns, you'd get a 350w card that gives an extra 2-3 fps over a much less power hungry one. the ftw and classified cards hit 275w at torture load, can't imagine what i would hit with more power. yet even with that you get no more fps than a much cheaper SC card based n a reference card and using less than 200w.

I cannot wait for the 1080 Ti. How much do you think it'll cost? $800?

yah right. there are 1080 cards at $800 or very close. $1200 for titan. so right in the middle at $1000 is my guess. unless amd puts something out that can compete for cheaper. but that's not likely, they are looking at 1080ish performance for vega.

Non scientific, but hopefully useful to many:

i7 5820K stock configuration
NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1080 Ti Founder's Edition, stock configuration
32GB DDR4 RAM

With VSYNC = 0

3840x2160:

* In Arena Commander, Free Flight: 50 fps
* In Arena Commander, Broken Moon: 40-45 fps
* In Star Marine, Multiplayer, Last Stand: 38-48 fps

2560x1440:

* In Arena Commander, Free Flight: 87-97 fps
* In Arena Commander, Broken Moon: 71-98 fps
* In Star Marine, Multiplayer, Last Stand: 65-95 fps

I kept note of the minimum and maximum fps displayed by NVIDIA's GeForce Experience fps counter. This not scientific; it's meant to give you an idea of the frame rates to be expected.

Without VSYNC, there's lot of tearing; it doesn't look good to my eyes.
With VSYNC ON, at 4K resolution the card syncs with the monitor at 30fps. I don't like it. At 2.5K resolution, that's a flawless, pleasant 60fps.

UPDATE:

I've now tested the effect of forcing FAST Sync on Star Citizen, using NVIDIA's Control Panel. In Arena Commander, Free Flight, I got about the same fps as with VSYNC OFF, but without the annoying tearing. There was a bit of jittering though, the timing of the frames didn't feel right. NVIDIA has shown Fast Sync to have significantly lower latency than VSYNC, hence, I guess this is the best choice for FPS and fast paced games.

I also tried DSR with x1.2 and x2.0 factors. These are available only as Global Settings. It didn't appear to make any difference in Star Citizen, hence, either I don't know how to set it up properly or it doesn't work with Star Citizen.