A little while back I built a very silly dual X99 Xeon server that I’d hoped to run with dual 1080Ti’s, because I thought that would be funny. Sadly that motherboard just doesn’t seem to be compatible with dual GPUs, and neither, it turns out, is my current setup. But while we’re here we might as well give one of the old girls a poke and see if she’s still alive.
Welcome to Esk Computers, I’m Scott and today on the desk of Esk, let’s see how the legendary but let’s be honest, old, 1080Ti is holding up now its driver support is finished.
I used a 1080Ti happily for many years and up until quite recently it would still be giving playable results at high settings in nigh on every game you could throw at it, at least at 1080p. It’s days of driving 4K displays are over, if indeed they ever really started for the more demanding games at the time of its release in 2017.
As a quick sidebar, even though we all know testing SLI is pointless as it’s not been a thing for years, I’m determined to at some point scratch that itch on the channel. I ran two 970s in SLI for about a week before one of them died, like, a decade ago, and I’ve wanted to revisit that for years now. But sadly today is not that day.
Instead, like the P2200 video a few weeks ago, we’ll run through three of the most graphically demanding games released each year since the card launched, and if in my mostly subjective opinion it’s struggling too much with the majority of them, either in framerate or coping with the artistic direction, we’ll declare it cooked.
We’re all busy people and there’s twenty six games to get through, so I won’t drag this out. This is all from my main system with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and 64GB of 6400MHz DDR5 RAM. For the sake of consistency, we’ll run everything at 1080p, and at least at whatever equivalent of Very High settings the games have. You don’t buy an 80-class card to live the low settings lifestyle.
I actually think 1440p would be more appropriate to test at, but my capture device can’t handle it, so that’s off the table. Let’s imagine you were looking for both high frame rates and maximum eye candy from a newfangled high refresh rate display. Let’s see how long your seven hundred dollar purchase would have kept you happy.
Spoiler warning, it’s not going to have any issues dealing with games from its 2017 release. Again, all of these results are at 1080p. Assassin’s Creed Origins at Very High settings gets a comfortable 97 average fps, with 1% lows of 84 and 0.1% lows of 77 fps.
Mental illness simulator Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice at Very High settings gives us 121 average fps, with 1% lows of 61 and 0.1% lows of 27 fps. I forget if this game’s ray tracing option was available at launch or if it came in a later update, at any rate it knocks the average frame rate down by about a hundred fps to twenty odd, which is why we’ll be ignoring that as long as we can.
No problems dealing with Resident Evil 7, where at Very High settings it knocks out 245 average fps, with 1% lows of 202 and 0.1% lows of 189 fps.
2018 brings us Shadow of Tomb Raider, here at the Highest settings where in gameplay it’s getting 131 average fps, with 1% lows of 111 and 0.1% lows of 101 fps. Easy.
Here’s Red Dead Redemption 2 with everything cranked to Highest settings, giving us 64 average fps, with 1% lows of 57 and 0.1% lows of 55fps. Nothing to argue with here.
Final Fantasy XV at its Highest settings returns 106 average fps, with 1% lows of 90 and 0.1% lows of 21 fps. Onwards to 2019.
Control at Ultra settings now, although again no ray tracing, gives us 66 average fps, with 1% lows of 50 and 0.1% lows of 21 fps. Still a very nice experience.
Metro Exodus is a bit crashy, for reasons I couldn’t immediately uncover, but it stayed up long enough to give us 138 average fps at Ultra settings, with 1% lows at 104 and 0.1% lows of 94 fps. That’ll do nicely.
Star Wars: Fallen Order next, here at Epic settings, where it’s getting 142 average fps, effectively hitting the 144 fps engine cap most of the time. It has 1% lows of 116 and 0.1% lows of 55 fps. Easy stuff lads, next victim please.
Ah, hubris, thy name is Quake II RTX. Unsurprisingly this game shaped tech demo reliant on ray tracing doesn’t run well on a card without dedicated hardware ray tracing acceleration, giving us 12 average fps, with 1% and 0.1% lows of 4 fps. I’m just showing this as a terrible portent of a possible dark future. I’m not even sure why this bothers launching on a 10-series card, apart from as a marketing tool for ray-tracing capable cards. Pass me the tinfoil hat, and let’s move on to 2020.
At least Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t insist on raytracing, or itself, so it’s boring old raster mode at Ultra settings gives us 83 average fps in gameplay, with 1% lows of 58 and 0.1% lows of 41 fps. A very playable experience in this monster of a game.
The often aggressively Cockney Watch Dogs: Legion at Ultra settings gives us 73 average fps, with 1% lows of 56 and 0.1% lows of 53 fps. Gor blimey guvnor, apples and pears and all that.
Horizon Zero Dawn at Ultimate quality settings gives us 91 average fps, with 1% lows of 79 and 0.1% lows of 47 fps. Space year 2020 was easy, boys. Next calendar year, please.
Not a surprise that Forza Horizon 5 is dealt with easily, even at Ultra settings, getting 109 average fps, with 1% lows of 85 and 0.1% lows of 78 fps. Great stuff.
Resident Evil Village continues the series tradition of well performing games engines, with its Max settings giving 156 average fps, with 1% lows of 108 and 0.1% lows of 94 fps.
Mildly obscure survive-em-up Icarus next, where at Epic settings with FSR disabled, as we’ll do for all these tests, we get 58 average fps, with 1% lows of 45 and 0.1% lows of 27 fps. Playable, without any of that peasant upscaling nonsense.
That brings us to 2022, let’s see if it’s still knocking it out of the park five years on. This is A Plague Tale: Requiem at Ultra settings, giving us 62 average fps with 1% lows of 46 and 0.1% lows of 37 fps. That’s okay by me.
Next up is Elden Ring, and yes, I have still not got good at it. Max settings here, where it averages 60 fps, which is the unmodded game’s framerate cap with 1% lows at 56 and 0.1% lows at 46 fps. Solid.
During this early combat section of Spider-Man Remastered at Very High settings we’re getting 121 average fps with 1% lows of 84 and 0.1% lows of 49. I thought it might be worse swinging around outside, but it gets 147 average fps with 1% lows of 65, and 0.1% lows of 57 fps, so some headroom even if this isn’t the most demanding to render part of Noo Yawk city.
Onwards to 2023. Unpopular opinion, but despite its flaws I quite enjoyed Starfield. One of those flaws is not running all that well, but these days at High settings with dynamic resolution and upscaling off its getting 49 average fps, with 1% lows of 33 and 0.1% lows of 4, making this feel quite uneven to play. Tweaking settings down and upscaling will make this playable – I know, I played through it all on a 1080Ti just fine – but it’s the first game we’ve met today where we’re not getting an 80 class experience.
Immortals of Aveum seems to have been more or less forgotten, but I must say I quite enjoyed my first few hours with this pew pew magic simulator. I’m playing at High settings, a step down from its highest Ultra settings, with FSR disabled. It does warn us it’s not going to run well, and it gives 56 average fps, with 1% lows of 32 and 0.1% lows of 14. Which, yes, is a bit lower than you’d want, although again a bit of tweaking will bring this back to playability. But as seen with Starfield, the 1080Ti’s days of maxing every setting and not worrying about it seems to be at an end.
This year also saw Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s launch. I spent a bit of time getting these overgrown Smurfs out of the boring facility they start in, and in the lush open world at High settings, again with no upscaling/framegen, we’re getting 48 average fps, with 1% lows of 31 and 0.1% lows of 26 fps. I’d play through it with those numbers but wouldn’t argue with you if you said you wanted more.
Let’s not be too easy on the 1080Ti. Alan Wake 2 is another banana skin for the older card, in a world with ever-increasing amounts of bananas. Bananas here meaning more demanding games engines. This analogy isn’t great, and neither is the 1080Ti’s performance, getting 35 average fps with 1% lows of 25 and 0.1% lows of 18 bananas per second. Sorry, I mean frames per banana.
So, while 2023’s crop is still giving perfectly playable experiences, it’s now a consistently sub-60 average fps with the higher end settings. Alan Wake 2 aside, we’d get over that line by dropping a few settings or adding a smidgen of upscaling, which of course is why the 1080Ti has had such a legendary reputation. I think we could argue that this is the end of the line for it in terms of delivering the premium experience for which you spend the big bucks on the 80 class cards, but out of curiosity let’s see how 2024 shakes out.
I wouldn’t say S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 runs well at High setting and native resolution with it getting 42 average fps, with 1% lows of 27 and 0.1% lows of 20 fps, but it’s better than I’d been led to believe it would run given its reputation as a system killer. Maybe this opening stretch is more forgiving, but at any rate it is running a bit choppier that you’d want a first person shooter to be.
Due to a lack of disk space and money, I’m still just using the free benchmark for Black Myth: Wukong where at High settings, without any RT or upscaling, its giving 38 average fps. I can only imagine that’s going to drop in combat, so difficult to give this one a pass.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is another beast of an game engine, and at High settings and native resolution, so no upscaling, it looks fabulous in stills but in motion the 30 average fps, with 1% lows of 23 and 0.1% lows of 18 fps make precise swordplay and counter timing troublesome.
Well, at least it’s delivering a locked 100 fps in Peggle. I’m a bit less sensitive to framerate drops than it seems the average PC gamer is, and I’d be happy playing through the 2024 crop on a 1080Ti, maybe with some settings reduced, but I don’t think we can argue that it’s still delivering the experience you’re looking for in the 80-class of GPU.
Still, depending on how you look at it, the 1080Ti delivered high end gaming performance for five to six years, which is pretty impressive, particularly for old geezers like me that remember how graphics cards could be obsolete within five to six months. The nineties were a dark time.
You’d have to be a absolute contrarian to call the 1080Ti’s staying power anything other than incredible, and even as a grade A awkward git I can’t disagree. Greatest of all time? Well, it’s certainly the greatest of the 2010’s, and we may never see its like again.
I think I’ll take another look at some of the more troublesome games we’ve covered today, to see if it can still give un-caveated playable experiences at lower settings, and some even more recent games now that the 1080Ti’s drivers are no longer being updated and so more open to bugs that affect performance. That will let us know if its legacy is now concluded and it should be retired to a hall of fame or if it’s still got some life left in it. However, that’s going to need to wait for another video.
Until then, If you have any questions or want further details please leave a comment down below, and if you enjoyed this videotronic missive then consider subscribing. Until next time, take care of yourself, and each other.