**Benchmarking an Old High-End GPU: The NVIDIA GeForce 980**

I've been running this old high-end GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce 980, through some benchmarks and it's interesting to see how it holds up today. Running with at least 60 frames per second at High settings at this very high resolution is nice, especially on a Ultra wide field of view.

**Visual Sacrifices for Performance**

However, when we come to the benchmarks, we have to make more of a visual sacrifice in terms of resolution. This can be achieved through either FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) or turning down the render resolution. We'll start off with Call Of Duty Black Ops 6, which has both FSR and DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling). We could only use FSR or xcss (a technology that allows for similar performance to DLSS) on this card, or we could turn down the render resolutions.

We're running at 50% res scale here for an average of 44 FPS. The game has a basic preset, and we've turned down the resolution from its native 5120 x 1440 to 2560 x 720 (or thereabouts). My maths is terrible, but it feels okay to play – not the best sub-60 FPS performance, certainly not ideal for an online competitive title. However, it didn't stop me wiping out a few enemies and enjoying the game. The 980 held up fairly well on this screen.

**Cyberpunk 2077: A Surprising Result**

Next up is Cyberpunk 2077, which we're running at its lowest settings with FSR 2.1 and set to Performance mode (not Ultra performance). We had a target of 30 FPS in mind for these more demanding games. I knew I'd have to use FSR, as there's a lot of upscaling involved, but the nice thing is that we can still maintain our super-wide aspect ratio. Although we're upscaling, we're doing it on a pretty wide monitor, and it feels fairly decent to play – although we're not quite hitting the maximum 60Hz output here.

It does seem quite enjoyable to play, despite having just made a mess of my vehicle every time I get in a car (the cops are chasing me, whoever else). The 980 performed well in this game as well. We're using at least 4 gigs of V-RAM on this modified card, and the extra 4 gigs from the modifications were coming in handy.

**Red Dead Redemption 2: A Good Performance**

Next up is Red Dead Redemption 2, a game I always try to stick with ultra textures if possible. However, we did have to set everything else to low FSR 2 isn't always the most helpful in this game for whatever reason, but here with Balanced preset it meant the difference between a sub-30 FPS and a plus-30 FPS average. We could definitely lock it at 30 FPS and it would feel a lot better than having that unlocked frame rate all over the place.

The 980 performed very well in this game as well. The GPU held up fairly well on our Ultra-wide screen display, and we were able to achieve decent graphical settings without any major issues. This is especially impressive considering Red Dead Redemption 2's demanding requirements.

**Starfield: Our Worst Result**

Finally, we have Starfield at low with FSR 3 and 50% resolution scaling, resulting in an average of 22 FPS overall. We could enable Frame Generation, but it felt absolutely horrendous – like a stuttery, blurry mess that felt more like 10 frames per second than 22. The game was trying to generate frames in a way that the hardware couldn't quite handle, and it showed.

Although FSR 3 at 50% res scaling wasn't ideal, it was the best place to be for this card. It's not an old, budget-friendly GPU anymore; it's a high-end model from over a decade ago. Still, it managed to deliver good performance in these demanding games – particularly in more classic titles like GTA 5.

**Conclusion**

Overall, we were pleased with how the GeForce 980 held up during our benchmarking process. While it may not be able to hit ultra-high frame rates or maintain Ultra settings across all the latest games, it still delivered decent performance and handled its graphics well. It's a great option for those looking to play older titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops, Red Dead Redemption 2, or even more classic games like GTA V.

The modification made to our card allowed us to use more VRAM, which helped improve the GPU's performance in demanding games. The results show that, with FSR, we can achieve frame rates that are comparable to modern GPUs, especially when it comes to titles with lower system requirements.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome to another video now you might think that you need a top tier graphics card to enjoy games on a high refresh rate high resolution monitor but it totally depends on what you're playing Counter Strike 2 for example runs really well on this 5120 by 1440 144 HZ display with my RTX 4060 orbe it with low settings but I think it looks and feels amazing but what if you have something older take for example this GTX 980 once a $549 Powerhouse this decade Old Maxwell card is best suited to 1080p in 2024 but today we'll be pushing it a little harder the first question was would it even support 5120 by 1440 the answer to that is yes albeit at a maximum of 60 hertz not too concerning because I can't imagine we'll be hitting 60 FPS or beyond all that much today but we'll give it a go I'll let you in on a not so secret secret this interesting eBay find was at some point modded by the previous owner and now has 8 GB of vram instead of four that may help us a bit but ultimately we could be limited by the fact that this is still a 10-year-old 980 but let's see so first of all then we have crisis this is the original 2007 release I thought I'd start off easy on the 980 here now this does support the 5120 by14 40p resolution and with this card it runs with at least 60 frames per second 64 on average I've only recorded the average today um I didn't bother benchmarking it exactly with all the 1 and 0.1% lows because I wasn't sure this was actually going to work um so I jumped in took an average of all the games I play today put the settings up on screen as well and for our first result well I am pretty impressed crisis still holds up really nicely almost drove the truck over the cliff there that happens sometimes High settings AC the board apart from postprocessing which was set to medium so that I could turn motion blur off and as you can see well I think it still looks absolutely fantastic still a great looking game I mean a decade and a half after it launched and it works well on the 980 and this monitor Counter Strike 2 next you saw this running on the RTX 4060 at the start of this video here we're running it on the low settings yet again this time hitting an average of 130 frames per second so it's not quite enough here to constantly maintain 144 fps to match the refresh rate of the monitor but it doesn't really matter when the card only outputs at 60 HZ anyway at this resolution we can't really feel these extra frames that said I do think it still looks great at low settings especially at this nice sharp and crisp resolution I have made a video on this before this did get sent to me for a review and I'll leave a link to that original review down below I thought I'd give this another test this time with an old card of course because I've been wondering how it would do for a long time and I absolutely love using this thing CS2 on the 980 this old modified card as you can see it's uh it is assigning more than 4 gigs of vram here the vram usage however is slightly less than 3 GB but it's running fairly consistently with a solid enough average with FS of horizon 5 I started with the medium preset but that was a bit too intense on the card so I dropped down to low and it still didn't really make much a difference to the frame rate we probably saw 5 FPS more that was a bad idea I'm going to land sideways yep absolutely destroyed the car there now in some instances we will see at least 60 frames per second on the open road that is we're going to see a far higher frame rate in more busy areas like you saw at the start of the Horizon Festival area this will drop to the low 40s we do have FSR here to use I'm not sure why I didn't utilize it to be fair I think it's because after playing a while the the frame rate was pretty close to 60 FPS but it turns out it was actually more closer to 50 52 overall still at the low settings I think this looks pretty decent and runs fairly well also F of horizon 5 is my second favorite probably to for Horizon 4 maybe I'm a bit biased because that was setting a good old British Countryside and uh being from England of course I have to side with that one but um fors Horizon 5 here runs wow that just suddenly stopped me that random Shack in the middle of the desert never mind can we switch camera angle yeah this looks pretty cool as well even at low settings it still looks decent and feels pretty nice to play on this beasty monitor next up then we have GTA 5 now this one is running at the high settings the detail sliders are turned up to four msaa is off FXAA is on and the advanced Graphics options are all turned off for an average of 64 frames per second this game I think still holds up pretty well visually in 2024 showing its age in some areas of course but the good thing about it is that it can be made to run on a wide range of Hardware even still you can fire this up on an old 9800 GT for example and get a decent frame rate and also you can turn the graphics right up on say a modern 4070 and get a good look game that's going to run really nicely with a super high refresh rate too also on the 980 here it's running with at least 60 frames per second at High settings at this very high resolution which is nice I'm loving this extra wide field of view today and now we come to the benchmarks where we have to make more of a visual sacrifice in terms of the resolution this is either through FSR or through turning the render resolution down a little bit we'll start off with Call Of Duty Black Ops 6 with the basic preset we're running at 50% res scale here for an average of 44 FPS now this game has FSR it has FSR 3 xcss dlss we could only use FSR or xcss with this card or we could turn the render reses down and that's what I ended up doing 50% of 5120 by 1440 so it's like 2560 by 720 something like that my maths is terrible so that's probably wildly incorrect but it feels okay to play not the best sub 60fps and certainly not ideal for an online competitive title but didn't stop me wiping out a few enemies and to be honest it does still look fairly good on this screen the 980 is holding up fairly well cyberpunk 2077 was a pretty surprising result here we are with the lowest settings FSR 2.1 and set to Performance mode so not Ultra performance just performance mode here today for an average of 39 FPS I had a target of 30 FPS in mind in these more demanding games I knew I'd have to use FSR so there is a lot of upscaling involved but the nice thing is we can still maintain that super wide aspect ratio so although we are upscaling we're upscaling on a pretty wide Monitor and it still feels pretty decent to play although we aren't quite hitting the maximum 60 HZ output here it does still seem quite enjoyable to be honest and I have just absolutely made a mess of my vehicle every time I get in a car the cops whoever else start chasing me I must have done something to upset someone butth let's get out of here Red Dead Redemption 2 up next now I always try and stick with the ultra textures if I can can and I did that here but I did have to set everything else to low FSR 2 isn't always the most helpful in this game for whatever reason doesn't tend to make as much of an impact as it does in others but here with balanced it meant the difference between a sub30 FPS and a plus 30 FPS average so you could definitely lock it at 30 FPS and it would feel a lot better than having that unlocked frame rate that's all over the place especially when we're outputting at 60 hertz but yeah the 980 here doing pretty well as you can see we are using at least 4 gigs of V Ram so the uh extra 4 gigs on this modified card is is coming in handy put it that way and the frame rate is better than anything you're going to find on consoles at the moment I don't think there's a 60 FPS patch or anything or update like that so at 33 on average we're getting better than the PS5 and probably a sharper visual image though graphically settings wise not as good and we will finalize with our worst result of the day but also in a way the most surpris ring this is Starfield at low with FSR 3 and 50% resolution scaling at 22 FPS overall now we could enable frame generation and I did try that but it felt absolutely horrendous we were still getting 22 FPS of course but where the game was trying to sort of uh well where the hardware was trying to generate frames in that sense it just it felt like a stuttery blurry just a weird sort of artificially smooth mess that felt more like 16 frames per second that was a very specific number let's say 10 frames per second than it did 22 what I'm trying to say is that it felt a lot worse and uh wasn't ideal so 50% res and FSR 3 was the best place to be although not an ideal outcome but a decent effort for the 980 a decade old high-end GPU that's for sure there we go the 980 an old high-end card on a Ultra wides screen display I think it held up fairly well if you're looking to play those older or Esports titles it's going to do okay and Classics such as GTA 5 will also run relatively well with decent graphical settings too but that's all for this one let me know your thoughts down below this is not a sponsored video or anything like that I've actually reviewed this before but I was just revisiting it because I love to use this thing really handy for editing and the like um but I'll leave a link thank you as always I'll see you next timehello everyone and welcome to another video now you might think that you need a top tier graphics card to enjoy games on a high refresh rate high resolution monitor but it totally depends on what you're playing Counter Strike 2 for example runs really well on this 5120 by 1440 144 HZ display with my RTX 4060 orbe it with low settings but I think it looks and feels amazing but what if you have something older take for example this GTX 980 once a $549 Powerhouse this decade Old Maxwell card is best suited to 1080p in 2024 but today we'll be pushing it a little harder the first question was would it even support 5120 by 1440 the answer to that is yes albeit at a maximum of 60 hertz not too concerning because I can't imagine we'll be hitting 60 FPS or beyond all that much today but we'll give it a go I'll let you in on a not so secret secret this interesting eBay find was at some point modded by the previous owner and now has 8 GB of vram instead of four that may help us a bit but ultimately we could be limited by the fact that this is still a 10-year-old 980 but let's see so first of all then we have crisis this is the original 2007 release I thought I'd start off easy on the 980 here now this does support the 5120 by14 40p resolution and with this card it runs with at least 60 frames per second 64 on average I've only recorded the average today um I didn't bother benchmarking it exactly with all the 1 and 0.1% lows because I wasn't sure this was actually going to work um so I jumped in took an average of all the games I play today put the settings up on screen as well and for our first result well I am pretty impressed crisis still holds up really nicely almost drove the truck over the cliff there that happens sometimes High settings AC the board apart from postprocessing which was set to medium so that I could turn motion blur off and as you can see well I think it still looks absolutely fantastic still a great looking game I mean a decade and a half after it launched and it works well on the 980 and this monitor Counter Strike 2 next you saw this running on the RTX 4060 at the start of this video here we're running it on the low settings yet again this time hitting an average of 130 frames per second so it's not quite enough here to constantly maintain 144 fps to match the refresh rate of the monitor but it doesn't really matter when the card only outputs at 60 HZ anyway at this resolution we can't really feel these extra frames that said I do think it still looks great at low settings especially at this nice sharp and crisp resolution I have made a video on this before this did get sent to me for a review and I'll leave a link to that original review down below I thought I'd give this another test this time with an old card of course because I've been wondering how it would do for a long time and I absolutely love using this thing CS2 on the 980 this old modified card as you can see it's uh it is assigning more than 4 gigs of vram here the vram usage however is slightly less than 3 GB but it's running fairly consistently with a solid enough average with FS of horizon 5 I started with the medium preset but that was a bit too intense on the card so I dropped down to low and it still didn't really make much a difference to the frame rate we probably saw 5 FPS more that was a bad idea I'm going to land sideways yep absolutely destroyed the car there now in some instances we will see at least 60 frames per second on the open road that is we're going to see a far higher frame rate in more busy areas like you saw at the start of the Horizon Festival area this will drop to the low 40s we do have FSR here to use I'm not sure why I didn't utilize it to be fair I think it's because after playing a while the the frame rate was pretty close to 60 FPS but it turns out it was actually more closer to 50 52 overall still at the low settings I think this looks pretty decent and runs fairly well also F of horizon 5 is my second favorite probably to for Horizon 4 maybe I'm a bit biased because that was setting a good old British Countryside and uh being from England of course I have to side with that one but um fors Horizon 5 here runs wow that just suddenly stopped me that random Shack in the middle of the desert never mind can we switch camera angle yeah this looks pretty cool as well even at low settings it still looks decent and feels pretty nice to play on this beasty monitor next up then we have GTA 5 now this one is running at the high settings the detail sliders are turned up to four msaa is off FXAA is on and the advanced Graphics options are all turned off for an average of 64 frames per second this game I think still holds up pretty well visually in 2024 showing its age in some areas of course but the good thing about it is that it can be made to run on a wide range of Hardware even still you can fire this up on an old 9800 GT for example and get a decent frame rate and also you can turn the graphics right up on say a modern 4070 and get a good look game that's going to run really nicely with a super high refresh rate too also on the 980 here it's running with at least 60 frames per second at High settings at this very high resolution which is nice I'm loving this extra wide field of view today and now we come to the benchmarks where we have to make more of a visual sacrifice in terms of the resolution this is either through FSR or through turning the render resolution down a little bit we'll start off with Call Of Duty Black Ops 6 with the basic preset we're running at 50% res scale here for an average of 44 FPS now this game has FSR it has FSR 3 xcss dlss we could only use FSR or xcss with this card or we could turn the render reses down and that's what I ended up doing 50% of 5120 by 1440 so it's like 2560 by 720 something like that my maths is terrible so that's probably wildly incorrect but it feels okay to play not the best sub 60fps and certainly not ideal for an online competitive title but didn't stop me wiping out a few enemies and to be honest it does still look fairly good on this screen the 980 is holding up fairly well cyberpunk 2077 was a pretty surprising result here we are with the lowest settings FSR 2.1 and set to Performance mode so not Ultra performance just performance mode here today for an average of 39 FPS I had a target of 30 FPS in mind in these more demanding games I knew I'd have to use FSR so there is a lot of upscaling involved but the nice thing is we can still maintain that super wide aspect ratio so although we are upscaling we're upscaling on a pretty wide Monitor and it still feels pretty decent to play although we aren't quite hitting the maximum 60 HZ output here it does still seem quite enjoyable to be honest and I have just absolutely made a mess of my vehicle every time I get in a car the cops whoever else start chasing me I must have done something to upset someone butth let's get out of here Red Dead Redemption 2 up next now I always try and stick with the ultra textures if I can can and I did that here but I did have to set everything else to low FSR 2 isn't always the most helpful in this game for whatever reason doesn't tend to make as much of an impact as it does in others but here with balanced it meant the difference between a sub30 FPS and a plus 30 FPS average so you could definitely lock it at 30 FPS and it would feel a lot better than having that unlocked frame rate that's all over the place especially when we're outputting at 60 hertz but yeah the 980 here doing pretty well as you can see we are using at least 4 gigs of V Ram so the uh extra 4 gigs on this modified card is is coming in handy put it that way and the frame rate is better than anything you're going to find on consoles at the moment I don't think there's a 60 FPS patch or anything or update like that so at 33 on average we're getting better than the PS5 and probably a sharper visual image though graphically settings wise not as good and we will finalize with our worst result of the day but also in a way the most surpris ring this is Starfield at low with FSR 3 and 50% resolution scaling at 22 FPS overall now we could enable frame generation and I did try that but it felt absolutely horrendous we were still getting 22 FPS of course but where the game was trying to sort of uh well where the hardware was trying to generate frames in that sense it just it felt like a stuttery blurry just a weird sort of artificially smooth mess that felt more like 16 frames per second that was a very specific number let's say 10 frames per second than it did 22 what I'm trying to say is that it felt a lot worse and uh wasn't ideal so 50% res and FSR 3 was the best place to be although not an ideal outcome but a decent effort for the 980 a decade old high-end GPU that's for sure there we go the 980 an old high-end card on a Ultra wides screen display I think it held up fairly well if you're looking to play those older or Esports titles it's going to do okay and Classics such as GTA 5 will also run relatively well with decent graphical settings too but that's all for this one let me know your thoughts down below this is not a sponsored video or anything like that I've actually reviewed this before but I was just revisiting it because I love to use this thing really handy for editing and the like um but I'll leave a link thank you as always I'll see you next time\n"