I'm curious if it's worth it to go with the watercooled sea hawk X or if it would be better to just get an air cooled card.
Hardware.Info throttling test is quite simple, 30 minute loop of F1 2015. We are looking at clock stability and temperatures here. NVIDIA’s own reference design suffers from severe throttling just after few minutes. It probably wouldn’t be that bad if not the frequency spikes. While average clock is somewhere around officially stated boost clock, those spikes cause micro-stuttering, which negatively affects gaming experience.
Meanwhile, MSI GTX 1080 GAMING X generates almost a straight line for GPU frequency (~1910 MHz), with no spikes and rather constant sub-70 C temperature. This should mean that the gaming experience will be much better, and card should theoretically generate better results in most tests. Also according to H.I. this is also the best custom design they so far tested.
Idle temperatures are excellent even with the fans turning off in idle. During gaming, the card also runs much cooler than the reference design, which avoids clock throttling above 82°C.
Hardware.Info throttling test is quite simple, 30 minute loop of F1 2015. We are looking at clock stability and temperatures here. NVIDIA’s own reference design suffers from severe throttling just after few minutes. It probably wouldn’t be that bad if not the frequency spikes. While average clock is somewhere around officially stated boost clock, those spikes cause micro-stuttering, which negatively affects gaming experience.
Meanwhile, MSI GTX 1080 GAMING X generates almost a straight line for GPU frequency (~1910 MHz), with no spikes and rather constant sub-70 C temperature. This should mean that the gaming experience will be much better, and card should theoretically generate better results in most tests. Also according to H.I. this is also the best custom design they so far tested.
Idle temperatures are excellent even with the fans turning off in idle. During gaming, the card also runs much cooler than the reference design, which avoids clock throttling above 82°C.