NVIDIA's next generation virtual reality GPU will soon be here, and it's all new. But how much more power is under the hood of the GTX 1080, the first graphics card based on the company's new Pascal architecture? We pit the shiny new GPU against its older brother, the GTX 980 Ti to see how much more headroom the new card has for virtual reality experiences. Table of Contents Introduction GTX 1080 'Pascal' Introduction / Specs Testing Methodology Benchmarks Standard Gaming Performance Grand Theft Auto V (DX11) Rise of the Tomb Raider (DX11 and DX 12) VR Gaming Performance Henry Project Cars Chronos Conclusion At Nvidia's recent special event in Austin, Texas the company proudly unveiled its latest entrant to the GPU race, the GTX 1080. Nvidia's CEO promised that the new Pascal architecture not only delivered many new features targeted toward improving the virtual reality experience but also brought a new level of rendering performance too. One of the more startling claims was that the new GTX 1080, which is due to launch May 27th, beats down Nvidia's own current flagship card, the Maxwell-based Titan-X in terms of raw performance and, in certain VR applications can double it. Bold claims indeed, so we were understandably keen to find out for ourselves whether they held water and, being a publication focused entirely on VR, specifically if those gains translated into tangible performance for VR applications. Nvidia supplied us with a review GTX 1080 sample, a reference card in the 'Founder's Edition' form factor. Enter 'Pascal' Nvidia's new flagship card is the first in their latest 16nm process 'Pascal' line of silicon, and the GTX 1080 sports the latest GP104 GPU, fabricated using so-called '3 dimensional' FinFet transistors (check this excellent explanation of the differences between standard MosFet and FinFet here). All this at a 16nm fabrication scale means the GTX 1080 now boasts over 7 billion transistors. The GTX 1080's base clock of 1607MHz boosts at stock to 1733MHz under load and the card comes loaded with 8GB of GDDR5X VRAM. Check out the rest of the specs in the image to the right. Nvidia supplied Road to VR with a 'Founders Edition' of the GTX 1080 for review purposes, essentially a sleek looking reference design featuring a brand new cooler assembly design. The Founders Edition featured here will go on sale from 27th May for $649 with 3rd party cards arriving later for around $599. [button color="black" size="large" type="3d" target="" link="https://www.roadtovr.com/nvidia-gtx-1080-benchmark-review-performance-head-to-head-against-the-980ti/2/#standard-benchmarks"]Take me to the Benchmarks[/button] Testing Methodology Firstly, a caveat. Virtual reality benchmarking hasn't even reached infancy yet. Solutions from both Futuremark and Basemark are in development and imminent, but neither were available in time to meet the lifting of Nvidia's GTX 1080 embargo. [caption id="attachment_47420" align="alignright" width="325"] See Also: NVIDIA Explains Pascal’s ‘Lens Matched Shading’ for More Efficient VR Rendering[/caption] Secondly, the '2x Titan-X' performance claim is primarily based on gains seen by applications implementing Nvidia's latest hardware and software initiatives, exposed through their suite of VR rendering API's, VRWorks; specifically new features called Simultaneous Multi-projection and Lens Matched Shading, which claims to vastly improve the kinds of stereoscopic, multi-viewport rendering that VR relies on for immersion. However, there are no games or applications available which use VRWorks yet, or more specifically SMP and LMS. The new Pascal architecture also plays catch up to AMD and implements hardware asynchronous compute, the ability to utilise free GPU resource to process instructions in parallel. This really left us having to focus solely on raw performance, trying to measure its impact on the VR experience whilst also providing insight into those looking to upgrade their existing VR capable PCs. Benchmarking With no recognised synthetic or real world VR benchmarks available, we decided to gather numbers from a mix of 2D and VR titles. For standard gaming, the visually stunning and technically demanding workload of a maxed-out, high resolution Grand Theft Auto V. Alongside GTAV we needed a game to test Pascal's DirectX 12 capabilities, for this we chose Rise of the Tomb Raider. Both titles handily come with integrated benchmarks. The GTX 1080 represents the effective replacement for the existing GTX 980, but in terms of initial pricing and performance we felt that the GTX 980ti was a closer and more helpful gauge of relative performance. Recognising the grunt available in both the 980ti and the 1080, we needed to push them hard, so we're running all 2D benchmarks at 3440x1440. Beta drivers were supplied by Nvidia, with version 368.13 used throughout. Testing Rig AVADirect and Road to VR have teamed up to create Exemplar, our top-end system designed to push virtual reality experiences above and beyond what’s possible with systems built to lesser recommended VR specifications. Road to VR worked directly with AVADirect to create a system capable of handling the most demanding virtual reality experiences. Specification below. [button color="black" size="large" type="3d" target="_blank" link="http://www.avadirect.com/Exemplar-Road-to-VR-Custom-Gaming-PC"]Get Exemplar[/button] [gallery type="rectangular" ids="39456,39454,39451"] Dead Silence White Cube Case w/ “Road to VR” Etched Side Panel (Case Dimensions: 10.5” x 16.5” x 15”) SuperNOVA 850 G2 Modular Cables, 80 PLUS® Gold MAXIMUS VIII GENE LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 USB 3.0 mATX Intel Motherboard Core™ i7-6700K Quad core (4 Core) 4.0 – 4.20GHz TB, HD Graphics 530, LGA 1151, 8MB L3 Cache, DDR4-2133 ACX mITX CPU Cooler GeForce® GTX 980 Ti SuperClocked ACX 2.0 1102-1190MHz, 6GB GDDR5 7010MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, 3x DP + HDMI + DVI 16GB (2 x 8GB) HyperX Fury PC4-17000 DDR4 2133MHz CL14 500GB 850 EVO SSD, 3D V-NAND, 540/520 MB/s 1TB Barracuda®, SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB cache 2 x 120mm Quiet Case Fan, 1500 RPM, 81.5 CFM, 23 dBA, White LED Custom 20-Color LED Lighting w/ Remote Windows 10 Pro 64-bit Edition For this series of tests we used an Acer Predator X34 3440x1440 21:9 G-Sync monitor. G-Sync was disabled for all benchmarking. As the EVGA 980 Ti supplied in the Exemplar comes with a mild overclock, the card was reduced by 90GHz base clock to better represent a stock 980 Ti configuration, only fair as the GTX 1080 is also running at stock speeds. Continue to Benchmarks >> Table of Contents Introduction GTX 1080 'Pascal' Introduction / Specs Testing Methodology Benchmarks Standard Gaming Performance Grand Theft Auto V (DX11) Rise of the Tomb Raider (DX11 and DX 12) VR Gaming Performance Henry Project Cars Chronos Conclusion Standard Gaming Performance Even the most ardent of VR fanatics occasionally takes time out to enjoy the odd standard game or two, so rendering performance in standard monitor bound titles has to be a big factor in whether the new GTX 1080 represents a worthwhile purchase. Also, our chosen titles represent a real workout for even these top-end GPUs, especially at the 3440x1440 native resolution of Asus' X34 Predator monitor. How well the GTX 1080 does here will indicate how much raw power the GPU brings to the VR table too. Grand Theft Auto V In the spirit of pushing these highly capable cards, and in recognition of their price tags, we decided to max out settings for all games in this series, with some caveats. For GTA V, every setting under the standard 'Graphics' and 'Advanced Graphics' section was set to the highest available, with the exception of 'Reflection MSAA' which was turned off. Scores are based on the included benchmark and are supplied as average FPS scores. Resolution and Anti-aliasing levels are noted per test graph. Rockstar pulled out all the visual stops for the PC iteration of GTA V and the higher the resolution, the more you appreciate the game's impressive looks. Even with no AA, GTA V is a visual treat and both cards deliver very playable frame rates, but the GTX 1080 manages to deliver a comfortable increase in performance next to the 980 Ti, delivering a convincing, although not explosive 19% lead over the older card. For the next test, we pushed both cards to the limit with a punishing benchmark utilising Nvidia's DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution) technique to render the game at twice our test monitor's native resolution, before down sampling and displaying the resulting image. The point? Super sampling the image in this way can deliver stunning image quality and sharpness with removal of jaggies and an all-round richer image. This is, effectively, extreme AA in effect. The 980 Ti puts up a decent fight here delivering 21 FPS on average, but the GTX 1080 manages a (very nearly) playable 27FPS, close to the generally accepted minimum threshold for games of 30FPS. With overclocking (which we'll deal with in a later article) the GTX 1080 crosses this playability threshold giving gamers a pretty astounding resolution option. Rise of the Tomb Raider DirectX 12 is the future as far as Windows gaming is concerned (no emails please Open GL fans!) and games with DX12 support are now filtering through finally, so we chose Rise of the Tomb Raider as a particularly gorgeous (and demanding) example. Every setting is again set to its highest available, once again AA and resolution are noted per graph. Right out of the gate the new GTX 1080 demonstrates its prowess in DX12 with an impressive 50% gain over its older brother with no AA applied. Seeing the game run at this resolution and aspect ratio with every setting maxed is a real treat to behold with the 1080 delivering an eminently playable 67 FPS. The disparity in performance continues when engaging SMAA too. This anti-aliasing method is more compute intensive than the relatively lightweight FXAA, but the difference in quality is often pretty substantial. The GTX 1080 once again rules the roost with a gratifying 45% lead over the GTX 980 Ti. Moving to Rise of the Tomb Raider's DirectX 11 renderer puts the 980 Ti on more a more comfortable footing it seems and sees it closing the gap on the GTX 1080, but the Pascal-based card still manages to command a solid 25% lead. Finally, engaging 2 x SMAA in DX11 highlights the 1080's headroom nicely as it pushed an average 44 FPS, 33% more than the GTX 980 Ti. Continue to VR Gaming Benchmarks >> Table of Contents Introduction GTX 1080 'Pascal' Introduction / Specs Testing Methodology Benchmarks Standard Gaming Performance Grand Theft Auto V (DX11) Rise of the Tomb Raider (DX11 and DX 12) VR Gaming Performance Henry Project Cars Chronos Conclusion VR Gaming So this is where it gets a little more tricky. Measuring performance on 2D applications is relatively straightforward, count the frames rendered in a fixed period of time using a fixed benchmarking scene, rinse and repeat. Here's why that isn't an option for VR. [caption id="attachment_45487" align="aligncenter" width="640"] See Also: Oculus Rift Review: Prologue to a New Reality[/caption] 1) There are no VR specific synthetic (or otherwise) benchmarking applications (with one exception) dedicated to testing your system's performance. [caption id="attachment_47359" align="alignright" width="325"] See Also: First Look: VRMark Benchmarking Suite Analyzes VR Headsets & Hardware[/caption] 2) If you try to apply 2D gaming benchmarking methodologies directly to VR you'll come unstuck. Desktop consumer VR systems clever rendering tricks to present a consistent display update. In the case of the Oculus Rift, the headset we chose to benchmark with here, the most problematic is Asynchronous Timewarp. This is a technology which aims to smooth out any lumps in rendering performance and resulting nausea for users by drawing any given frame using the most up to date position of the user's head, interpolating the final image to match. So, even if your GPU is falling behind on consecutive frame updates, the user may not notice as they're always presented with a view that their brain is expecting relative to their head's movement. What this means is that any drops in frames as seen by benchmarking metrics gathering software may not result in an experiential issue for the user once inside VR. Asynchronous timewarp (ATW) is a technique that generates intermediate frames in situations when the game can’t maintain frame rate, helping to reduce judder. However, ATW is not a silver bullet and has limitations that developers should be aware of. Additionally, good VR applications are (very wisely) built from the ground up to prioritise frame rate over visual fidelity, to make sure that those on the lowest recommended hardware will still receive a smooth, nausea-free experience. That focus on stability of frame rate has meant that developers have been reticent to include the pages of graphics options and settings PC users are accustomed too - the last thing you need as a developer is another set of variables to test when the results may end up in people being sick. The upshot of all of this is that both the GTX 980 Ti and GTX 1080 are supremely overqualified in terms of raw grunt to handle the majority of VR experiences out there. But, if you're spending almost 600 dollars on a new GPU, you'll want to know how much headroom the card will deliver and whether you can improve your VR experience in any way to take advantage of that extra power. So, we chose to pick a handful of VR games and experiences which allow a level of visual tweaking, to levels that will make these cards sweat and deliver a visual experience that's a cut above the norm. Each title was run with the headset sat in a fixed location in view of the Oculus sensor, angled to catch the lions share of the action. We then gathered metrics on GPU load and the resulting frame rate to see how well each card coped. For each settings level on each card, we also ran the same test wearing the headset to gauge the actual user experience to sanity check the (potentially problematic) raw numbers. Henry - Oculus Story Studios Whilst the first real-time VR film experience from Oculus Story Studios may not seem like a taxing choice for this line up, in its efforts to ape the fidelity on display in pre-rendered CG movies, high levels of character detail, lighting and complex animation result in a fairly taxing task for GPUs. But Oculus Story Studios recently released details of an undocumented feature of Henry which, with one small tweak, can up to double the pixel density the experience is rendered at, further pushing the host GPU and delivering an even more 'Pixar-esque' experience, free from jaggies and rich in detail. This despite the fact that the consumer Oculus Rift's viewable image could be regarded as decidedly low-rez compared with gaming desktop monitors (the Rift has a combined resolution of 2160x1200 or 1080x1200 per eye, not all of which is viewable). First up, we ran the experience at the standard 1.0 pixel density configuration, to check the baseline performance for both cards and gauge rendering head room for both. You can see that, although neither card struggles at all, the GTX 1080 is clearly finding the task less of a chore than the GTX 980 Ti. (Click graphs for larger versions) We then configured the experience to render at double the standard pixel density, resulting in a visibly sharper more vibrant image - rendering aliasing almost imperceptible. Whilst the GTX 1080 displayed a high level of GPU usage, frame rate relatively stable (if not perfect) throughout and this showed in the experiential test. The 980 Ti however ran into some trouble. See below that the card seemed to struggle to maintain a consistent experience, with frame rates taking a dive quite early on (as those detailed character models entered the scene). The results were a little confusing, so much so that I re-ran the test several times. Despite the card not obviously hitting any thermal or voltage limits, the performance took a dive every time. In terms of the actual user experience however, it was comfortable for both cards. There was no obvious stutter exhibited, although character animation looked to become less fluid - perhaps interpolated through async timewarp, with the overall feeling of fluidity clearly impacted throughout for the GTX 980Ti. The GTX 1080 has the greater headroom outside of these issues, going by GPU usage alone and felt completely fluid throughout. Project Cars - Slightly Mad Studios Project Cars represents a graphical workout in its vanilla gaming form and that translates to VR. The game is one of the few early VR titles which allows the user to customise at the same levels as a standard PC game. The VR defaults however are pretty ugly, with heavy aliasing evident and not much in the way of texture detail or indeed lighting fidelity. Again, in the interests of testing the VR rendering mettle of these cards, we maxed out almost all 'Performance' tab settings available, and only disabled or dialled back the distracting 'Visual FX' such as Lens Flare. We then tested 3 passes on each GPU with successively greater levels of anti-aliasing, from No AA to DS4X right up to DS9X - each clearly more taxing than the last. With the Oculus Rift headset positioned in a marked position on a desk in sight of the Oculus sensor, angled such that the view captured the majority of the road ahead. We then ran a fixed, one lap Solo race, with 19 competitors at Oulton Park 'Fosters', using the monitors mirror view to steer the car. First up, we ran with no anti-aliasing. Even with most graphical options at their highest, in VR the resulting aliasing was extremely distracting using these settings. Nevertheless, Project Cars represented a significant VR challenge with both the GTX 1080 and 980Ti pushing high GPU usage levels. Despite the large troughs in performance for both cards (mainly when all cars are bunched up in game), stuttering was not an issue, fluidity was affected until the 2nd half of the lap, with slight ghosting on opponent cars. All in all, the experience on both cars was far better than the below graph might lead you to believe. Next, the same run with DS4X AA engaged and a much improved image. With jaggies reduced (although still evident) it's easier to focus on the environment although the horizon was still ultimately a blocky mess. As for in-headset performance, the 1080 provided the more fluid experience although neither card was able to maintain a rock solid 90FPS. Surprisingly, considering the variation of frame rates, there was no stutter evident, but movement appeared far less fluid on the 980Ti with a distracting subtle ghosting effect around moving objects. By the time we reach maximum AA settings at DS9X, the 980Ti is struggling to maintain half of the required 90FPS frame rate. The GTX 1080 is also showing signs of strain but the resulting gameplay inside the VR headset is now refreshingly free of aliasing and in fact could be startlingly immersive. Again, Oculus are sprinkling their magic pixie dust, with the low frame rates on both cards still resulting in a playable, if less than ideally fluid experience whilst in the Rift. For those with strong VR legs however, this high fidelity rendering option does provide a striking, presence inducing image on occasion. Chronos - Gunfire Games Chronos, with it's static camera based viewpoint is another title you wouldn't necessarily associate with pushing performance boundaries, but it's a beautiful game and its opening cinematic is reasonably taxing - especially when you push the in game settings to 'Epic' across the board, that includes an increase of overall pixel density. With all that said, Chronos is clearly a very well optimised game. Even in this maxed-out configuration, neither card faltered rendering the opening sequence. As with previous benchmarks, each run was performed with the Rift positioned on a desk in view of the Oculus sensor, angled to capture as much important detail in the scene as possible. Both the GTX 1080 and 980 Ti provided a stutter free user experience overall and that's born out by the rock solid 90+ FPS figures seen below. However, looking at the GPU usage gives you an insight into just how much more headroom the GTX 1080 has compared to its older brother. It's not an insignificant difference, with the 1080 barely passing 60% and the 980 Ti clearly sailing north of 80% during the more demanding moments of the sequence, most notably when dynamic lights were at maximum. Conclusion The GTX 1080 is here and it's the most powerful single card Nvidia have produced yet. Raw rendering performance gains over the established Maxwell-based GTX 980Ti, whilst not epoch making, are significant - especially in our DirectX 12 benchmarks. In 2D applications the card can push high resolution, super-wide gaming admirably and when it comes to VR gaming, gives you some high quality options that are perhaps just out of reach of the 980Ti's capabilities. All of this is at stock frequencies too. As this new Pascal 16nm GPU is extremely efficient (on load temperatures of around 55-65 degrees centigrade or less) mean this card will likely provide a tasty target for overclockers. A test version of EVGA's Precision X tuning tool turned up too late to include in this article, but the card was easily able to sustain a 200MHz base overclock with some voltage tweaks and I suspect it's capable of much more. [gallery type="rectangular" ids="47401,47402,47403"] As for those claimed fantastical VR performance gains, they have to be treated as largely theoretical for now. Pascal does introduce a radical, hardware assisted technology in the form of Simultaneous Multi-Projection, a parent technology which powers many VR relevant functions such as Multi-Res shading and Lens Matched Shading and all form part of the recently re-branded VRWorks suite of APIs. We'll dive into more detail on some of these technologies imminently. But the point we need to make in the mean time is that, whilst all of the above could bring huge performance wins for virtual reality applications, they all require software to be coded to support them and, by definition are Pascal and Nvidia specific. And whilst Nvidia are working on wooing VR developers to adopt VRWorks right now, those performance benefits may take a little while to surface in the real world. Owners of GTX 980's will see a substantial uplift in performance should they choose to upgrade and those 980Ti owners with deep pockets who are willing to dabble in overclocking will also see very worthwhile benefits too. If your focus is purely VR however, the upgrade argument is perhaps less compelling at this stage. With application developers judiciously targeting performance well below the capabilities of the GTX 1080 for very good reasons, it's hard to see the need for 1080 levels of raw grunt for a little while. However, if you do upgrade, you will find yourself with the performance headroom to maximise visual fidelity in VR for some titles right now and potentially more down the line. Disclosure: Nvidia paid for travel and accommodation for one Road to VR correspondent to attend an event where information for this article was gathered. Nvidia also provided Road to VR with a GTX 1080 GPU for review.