Nvidia GeForce GTX 980Ti in 2022. Can It Still Game at Ultra Settings?

In my experience, the GTX 980Ti is one of the best video cards ever produced. It was launched in the middle of 2015 at a now reasonable $649, and was nearly as fast as the Titan X of the time. It packed 6GB of VRAM which gave it lasting performance far longer than the 4GB GTX 980. It packed enough performance that it gave the next-generation 70 and 80 series Nvidia cards a run for their money. Quite frankly, there wasn’t a reason a to upgrade it unless you went for the GTX 1080Ti.
However, at 7 years since its launch, the GTX 980Ti is very old. Driver support is waning at best. Developers aren’t optimizing for the Maxwell architecture anymore. This leads to the question: Can the GTX 980Ti still game, or is it just too old now? Let’s find out.
Testing Methodology
Let me start by saying that this GPU was originally...

Continue reading...


Above is our look at the GTX 980Ti in 2022.

 

[confusis]

Fantastic writeup @Revenant !
Sad to see an old king fall, but that's the way of technology. I do wonder why the 980Ti is holding value close to the 1080/ 1080Ti on the used market though...

 

[Arboreal]

I'm somewhat late to the party on this one.
I' had been running a GTX 970 blower in my M1 for a while and picked up a reference GTX 980TI a year ago for 175 GBP, without its shroud & fan.

I was lucky enough to be given a GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition cooler by a friend who had WC his card and had the air cooler spare.

Apart from one screw position not matching it fitted fine and has been running well in the Sliger S610 that I have moved to.

I have no idea what to buy when I next change card, it will be used, I don't buy new cards. That will coincide with a change from a 1080P monitor to 1440.

 

[DiglidiDudeNG]

I'm still rocking my MSI GTX 980 Ti playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare II, and as long as I don't do any Warzone II or DMZ, the framerates stay in very acceptable ranges at 1080p with a mix of medium and high settings, with textures quality at high; Those use the full 6gb of VRAM from the card, however you can go to Normal quality at 1080p with no drop in quality at range.

I'm only scared for when we're done with the transition between PS4/XO to PS5/XSX is complete, as there are plenty of games still released for both old gen and current gen. Until then, I don't seem myself upgrading yet. Not to mention the prices still haven't gone down as low as I had hoped.

 

[Revenant]

I'm still rocking my MSI GTX 980 Ti playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare II, and as long as I don't do any Warzone II or DMZ, the framerates stay in very acceptable ranges at 1080p with a mix of medium and high settings, with textures quality at high; Those use the full 6gb of VRAM from the card, however you can go to Normal quality at 1080p with no drop in quality at range.

I'm only scared for when we're done with the transition between PS4/XO to PS5/XSX is complete, as there are plenty of games still released for both old gen and current gen. Until then, I don't seem myself upgrading yet. Not to mention the prices still haven't gone down as low as I had hoped.

It seems you definitely got your money's worth out of your 980ti!

 

[MrTorgue]

I'm so happy to see this thread! I still rock a 980Ti along with an ancient 4790k and it still holds up well for most things at 1440p medium or high. I'm hoping to get a 7900XTX and AM5 board early next year with a new monitor as well... as you can see I upgrade about once every 10 years

Thanks for showing the 980Ti some love... it's served me so well I'll be sad to see it go! Tempted to put the whole thing up for sale eventually (4790k, 16GB DDR3, Asus ROG Maximum VII Impact, 480GB Samsung XP941, EVGA 980Ti SC+, all in an original v1 NCASE M1), and do something brand new in a new SFF case... but also have too much love for the M1 so...

 

[Revenant]

I'm so happy to see this thread! I still rock a 980Ti along with an ancient 4790k and it still holds up well for most things at 1440p medium or high. I'm hoping to get a 7900XTX and AM5 board early next year with a new monitor as well... as you can see I upgrade about once every 10 years

Thanks for showing the 980Ti some love... it's served me so well I'll be sad to see it go! Tempted to put the whole thing up for sale eventually (4790k, 16GB DDR3, Asus ROG Maximum VII Impact, 480GB Samsung XP941, EVGA 980Ti SC+, all in an original v1 NCASE M1), and do something brand new in a new SFF case... but also have too much love for the M1 so...

The M1 is hard to give up. Trust me, I know this first hand.

I appreciate the kind words. The 980Ti is one of my favorite GPUs of all time, and I ran mine in an Ncase M1 with a 6700K when I built it.