Grand Theft Auto 5 – Nvidia GTX 970 SLI vs Nvidia GTX 1080 1440p resolution

Hey all, a quick update.. Yes I did it – I took the plunge and bought a GTX 1080 .

Why

If you came across my post about GTA 5 and my SLI GTX 970, you will see that GTA 5 ran with an acceptable frame rate – an average of 60fps+. So there wasn’t really an issue with games that scaled well with SLI – the problem lies with games that don’t work with SLI or games that don’t work well when SLI is enabled by force (i.e. alternate frame rendering).

That meant in most cases I was left with a single GTX 970 to tackle 1440p gaming – and that itself was a struggle. Don’t get me wrong, the GTX 970 is an awesome card but primarily for 1080p gaming – it’s the sweet spot of performance vs cost.

Scopes on the GTX 1080

It was a bit of an impulse purchase since I was hoping to wait for news on the GTX 1080 TI or further release date info on the AMD Vega card. But as all things that lack credence on the internet i.e. rumours and speculation of when these new upcoming cards will get released, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade.

I did think about buying the Titan X (Pascal) but that’s just too much money for a gamer (£1,099 when I last checked!) – admittedly the GTX 1080 is relatively expensive still (£550-£700ish).

My last option was then finally a GTX 1070 (£380ish) which looks like it performs marginally better than my 970 GTX in SLI.

p.s. I sold one gtx 970 and a bunch of junk to fund my GTX 1080 – I would recommend you sell as much crap as possible to cushion the heart attack you experience after realising exactly how much money you’ve just spent on something that will be worthless in a year .

GTX 970 SLI vs GTX 1080

For those wondering – I left the game settings as they were when I had my GTX 970s installed. I’m not going to disclose exact settings I have – this is purely a like for like comparison.

The GTA 5 in-game benchmark was used.

GTX 970 SLI vs GTX 1080 detailed comparison

Below is a break down of the GTA 5 benchmark

Honest conclusion

Admittedly I was disappointed with the small fps gains the GTX 1080 brought to my gaming experience in GTA 5. However I did notice during game play the minimum FPS is definitely something that should be considered above average and maximum fps – I noticed that in areas where it was busy on-screen, it didn’t feel as “slow” compared to the GTX 970s in sli

I would still recommend the GTX 1080 despite this very isolated comparison since I know it will definitely perform better for games that don’t support SLI.

GTX 1080 Purchased from Amazon

PNY GeForce GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5 (GF1080GTXCD8GEPB)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/PNY-GeForce-1080-8GB-GDDR5-Custom-Design/dp/B01J84DMTO/