3DMark
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3DMark is the latest version of this hugely-popular synthetic benchmark. Making use of DX11 features such as tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading, it provides modern-day results and is available as a free download.
Right-o, finally, some numbers. Digestion of the opening pages reveals why the GeForce GTX 980 punches well above its specification weight. The 2,048 cores behave like 2,880 Kepler ones, the 224GB/s memory bus performs similarly to a 300GB/s-plus Kepler version, and more ROPs offer up easy processing of high-end effects. Adding those all together equips the GTX 980 with enough ammunition to go straight up to the top of the chart.
The top Maxwell GPU is over 25 per cent faster than the GTX 780 and almost 70 per cent quicker than the GTX 680. Wrapped inside a 165W TDP, this is an impressive start.
The older 3DMark Vantage is useful for looking at particular parts of the architecture. GTX 980's higher frequency isn't nearly enough to offset the reduced texturing ability - 128 units compared to GTX 780's 192 - so the orange-coloured bar's results make sense.
Vantage's colour fill test is rather handy insofar as it's reliant on memory bandwidth far more than the pixel fillrate. This is where the GTX 980's delta colour-compression engine comes up trumps, allowing the pixels to strut their stuff, less encumbered by bandwidth. GTX 980, in this regard, is 70 per cent better than GTX 780 Ti.
