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    Hardware support: An analysis of generational performance gains for Nvidia's GPUs

    September 04, 2020

    Hardware support: An analysis of generational performance gains for Nvidia's GPUs

    An analysis of generational performance gains for Nvidia's GPUs

    Posted: 03 Sep 2020 09:05 PM PDT

    Purpose

    Since the unveiling of Ampere I've seen a lot of contradictory and incorrect statements regarding the generation-over-generation performance changes. The key statement I'm seeing is a variation of "Turing's performance gain was smaller than normal, and Ampere is a return to normal." This actually hasn't been the case, and I want to highlight that with actual data.

    So the purpose is to better educate users on the generation-over-generation performance gains from Nvidia's product stack.

    Methodology

    There is no perfect way to do this. But I am going to try to do this as fairly as possible, and to go as far back as possible. Here are the key points to my methodology.

    • Performance data will be used from TechPowerUp. Why? They've provided consistently good data for years, they compare numerous GPUs in each review, and they use geometric mean as their performance average, with that average taken from a buttload of games, not just the 3-5 in standard reviews.
    • Because multiple resolutions are tested, I will use the data from the highest resolution tested as a means to reduce the impact of CPU bottlenecks on the data. For those who saw my smaller charts as comments in the prior threads, I was previously using mid-resolutions, which were more subject to CPU bottlenecks. This is why the data looks slightly different.
    • Performance gains will be expressed over the prior marketed generation. IE, even though they are both Fermi, I will treat the 400 and 500 series as separate generations because that is how Nvidia marketed them.
    • I will use the x60, x70, and x80 products, as they have been a mainstay since Fermi. I will not use Ti, Super, or Titan products as they have been inconsistently placed throughout Nvidia's history.
    • If a product was offered in multiple memory configurations, I will try to use either the launch-day config (IE, GTX 1060 6GB), or the larger config if launched on the same day (IE, GTX 960 4GB).
    • Reference results will be used (and that means FE results once those became Nvidia's "reference," even though technically a few 20-series FEs were overclocked above official reference spec).

    Flaws in the Methodology

    • One could argue that Fermi (400/500 series) and Kepler (600/700 series) should each be treated as one generation, IE, the 480 and 580 could be treated like the 2080 and 2080 Super. This is a valid viewpoint, but I felt that treating them as the separate generations that Nvidia marketed them as would be the most fair way to do it.
    • By limiting myself to just Techpowerup, I am limiting myself to one source. And like any popular tech review source, it will have its fans and critics. There will be people who feel that my entire post is invalid for using them. All that I can say is that every tech reviewer has flaws, and TPU has been one of the most consistently good sources of this kind of data for a long time. Aggregating their data for this post made it easier and, actually, feasible.
    • The numbers reflect the launch state of a GPU over the existing state of a prior GPU. So, the GTX 1080 over 980 numbers reflect a fresh GTX 1080 on launch drivers against a mature GTX 980 that is probably further ahead of the 780 than it was at its launch. Due to this, you should not be using these numbers to calculate cumulative gains from Fermi through Turing as you will be missing the driver-based gains between launches.

    Generational Gains - x60, x70, and x80

    Note: The 400 series is reflecting performance gains over the 200 series. There was only a GTX 260 and 280, no GTX 270. (Yes, I'm aware of the 275/285 refreshes)

    Series x60 x70 x80
    400-Series +15.38% N/A +56.25%
    500-Series +19.05% +25.00% +16.28%
    600-Series +41.15% +36.99% +29.87%
    700-Series +25.00% +13.64% +26.58%
    900-Series +11.11% +41.18% +31.58%
    10-Series +104.08% +66.67% +69.49%
    20-Series +56.25% +33.33% +31.58%
    AVERAGE +38.86% +36.14% +37.38%

    Generational Gains - Anomalies in the above data.

    • TPU's GTX 660 review did not include a GTX 560 for comparison. As such, I had to use two reviews to extrapolate the data.
    • TPU only reviewed the 2GB variant of the GTX 960. However, especially at launch, there was no performance difference between the two cards based on most review sources.

    Generational Gains - Analysis

    Looking at this reminds me of the targeted pay raises you'd see in milpay charts. It's clear that rather than going for a uniform generational increase, Nvidia had targeted increases for specific reasons. For example, the GTX 970 was insanely popular. Why? It was very close to 980 performance, but $220 cheaper. It was FAR ahead of the 960 in performance, but only $100 more expensive than the 4GB variant. The 970 was the most logical choice for prospective 900-series owners. Nvidia corrected this by narrowing the 1060/1070 performance gap (the 960 --> 1060 upgrade path was a greatest generation-over-generation improvement I've seen since the Voodoo 2). The RTX 2060 saw further gains over its cohorts in the Turing-based 20-series.

    The key takeaways should be:

    • ~37.5% is the average generation-over-generation performance uplift.
    • Turing's performance uplift was about average. Marginally below average for the x70 and x80, but way above average for the x60. Turing's problem wasn't the performance uplift, it was the huge price hike, which invalidated the performance uplift for many.
    • Pascal (10-series) saw the greatest generation-over-generation performance uplift. Users saying that this was "normal" are beholden to recency bias.
    • As expected, the 500-series and 700-series (Fermi "2" and Kepler "2") were the worst performance gains. As I stated earlier, you're not wrong if you feel that I should have treated these like the 20-Super series. But Nvidia marketed them as whole new products so they were treated as such.

    How it stacked up - x60

    Here I'll examine how each x60 product stacked up against the prior generation lineup. I'll do the same for the x70 and x80 below. Why do this? Nvidia claimed that the 3070 has > 2080 Ti performance. I want to see how often this happens. In each segment, I'll attempt to project the Ampere variant's real-world performance uplift. This is solely for fun and should not be taken as gospel. Because this is time-consuming, I'm not going back to Fermi. Instead, I'm going to start with Maxwell. This allows me to compare to prior x80 Ti products since the 780 Ti was the return of this suffix.

    Also, math is funny. To be consistent, I wanted to use the card in the left column as the base. So while the GTX 960 is 29.08% slower than the GTX 780, using the 780 as the base, the 780 is 41% faster than the 960. If this is confusing, here's an easier to follow example. Let's say that the GTX A is half the speed of the GTX B. That means that GTX A is 50% slower, or, GTX B is 100% faster.

    GPU Prior x60 Prior x70 Prior x80
    GTX 960 +11.11% -10.71% -29.08%
    GTX 1060 +104.08% +17.65% +1.01%
    GTX 2060 +56.25% +17.65% -2.00%

    The GTX 960 was not a good card, as I mentioned earlier. It was telling that prior X60s were advertised as mainstream AAA gaming cards, but the GTX 960's marketing campaign revolved around esports titles. The GTX 960 was a marginal upgrade over the GTX 760. It really wasn't worth buying for an x60 owner unless you were still on Fermi.

    But the GTX 1060 changed that, roughly doubling the 960's performance. It beat out the prior generation GTX 970, while roughly matching the GTX 980. We saw more of the same from the RTX 2060. It was a worthy upgrade for GTX 1060 owners, beat out the GTX 1070, and roughly matched the GTX 1080. With DLSS, it actually comes out ahead in some modern titles.

    Where should the RTX 3060 line up? The optimistic side of me expects RTX 2080 performance out of it. But the pessimistic side of me thinks that Nidia might want to revert some of the massive gains the x60 has had in recent generations. I could see it roughly matching the RTX 2070, keeping the 6GB VRAM of prior cards, and being offered at $349. This would allow room for a Ti or Super to come in with 8GB of RAM and RTX 2080-like performance once AMD plays their hand, while still retaining a spot for the 3070. Like the 900-series, I suspect this is going to be a generation where Nvidia tries to coax traditional x60 buyers into an x70.

    How it stacked up - x70

    GPU Prior x70 Prior x80 Prior x80 Ti
    GTX 970 +41.18% +17.07 -4.95%
    GTX 1070 +66.67% +40.85% +13.64%
    GTX 2070 +33.33% +12.36% -6.54%

    The GTX 970 was a great card and the 1070 was even better. As we can see here, the x70 trading blows with the prior x80 Ti has occurred every generation since the re-introduction of the x80 Ti. Therefore, we should not be shocked that Nvidia is claiming that the RTX 3070 is faster than the RTX 2080 Ti.

    My projection isn't quite as rosy. From Nvidia's claims, it appears that their comparison includes a lot of RTX titles. Most games still don't support DLSS and/or ray-tracing. I think that the RTX improvements bring the average up, and rasterization brings it down. As such, I expect the 3070 to be slightly faster than the 2080 Ti in RTX-enabled titles, but slightly slower in non-RTX-enabled titles. Also, in that same chart Nvidia claimed that the 3080 was twice as fast as the 2080, but the preview that we saw from Digital Foundry showed more of a roughly ~80% improvement. So, be pessimistic until we get real reviews.

    How it stacked up - x80

    GPU Prior x80 Prior x80 Ti
    GTX 980 +31.58% +7.53%
    GTX 1080 +69.49% +36.99%
    GTX 2080 +31.58% +8.70%

    Seems a bit like a tick-tock cycle. Compared to the prior x80 Ti, we see slighter faster, much faster, slightly faster...so the next one would be "much faster." And that is what Nvidia has claimed, that the 3080 would be noticeably faster than the 2080 Ti, and double the performance of the 2080. As noted above, DF's preview showed the 3080 as being roughly 80% faster than the 2080 in games pre-selected by Nvidia. I think the worst case that we can expect is a card that improves over its predecessor much like the 1080 did. That's a pretty damn good worst case.

    Conclusion

    This was a data-driven post so the conclusion depends on the questions that you had and the perspective you have coming into this. We can conclude that Turing was not a subpar performance uplift, just an "average" uplift paired with a price hike. Pascal was not a typical uplift, but instead, the best uplift Nvidia has had in at least a decade. And we can see that Ampere seeks to match or even beat that amazing uplift.

    If you're an x80 buyer, the RTX 3080 looks to give the best generation-over-generation uplift we've seen in the segment, at least over the last decade. Worst case is that it "only" duplicates Pascal's uplift. This is going to be a great card.

    If you're an x70 buyer, you should expect more of what you're used to - performance within spitting distance of last generation's x80 Ti. Best case is that it's a littler faster, and worst case is that it's a little slower. There is no bad news here, unless you recently bought a 2080 Ti.

    But if you're an x60 buyer, there's some uncertainty. Nvidia has good reasons to release a 2080 competitor (if AMD has something competitive in the next few months), and good reasons to launch a cheaper dud with 6GB of VRAM (to leave plenty of space for a Ti/Super, and to encourage x60 owners to move to a 3070). There's a lot of latitude here and I'm curious to see which direction Nvidia ultimately goes with this card.

    Footnote: I will be manually posting this in r/Nvidia and r/Hardware. If you would like to see this discussion in your favorite subreddit, feel free to post it there. Just please PM me a link to the discussion, or ping me in a reply. "Username mentions in the OP don't provide a Reddit notification, and I would like to show up to answer any questions over my methodology.

    submitted by /u/jaykresge
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