Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Graphics Card Roundup

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Alright. Thanks for the reviews. Got a pile of money saved and I do want to go Zotac because my GTX 780 has been a solid card for going 4 years without any problems. I've considered the AMP! Extreme but was merely curious about the AMP! which is why I requested or suggested it. It's $100 cheaper and I Just want to see the thermal capability. If it can be pushed a little more by manually overclocking. I don't like the fact that the VRM's are already hot with the factory overclock on the Extreme. I also wonder if the Card sags with the added weight. Stressing the PCI-E slot.

Might just wait till the 1080 ti comes out, if ever or put the money towards retirement
 
Excellent article, well written and meticulous documented. I consider it a must read for anyone interested in buying a Gtx 1080 card. And yes, I subscribe to other users who would like to read the same detailed information about Asus graphic cards.
As for me, I bite the bullet and bought the Zotac AMP! Extreme. My copy does not exhibit the erratic revving fans behaviour, the ventilators start running consistently after 60 Celsius degrees, and stop again when this threshold is reached. So far so good.
 
The Asus 1070 StriX seems on the way but I have currently no chance to get an Asus 1080. Asus' sampling is very "selective" in Germany and we get atm NO samples from the headquarter. It is at the end Asus' own decision to send boards or not, not my.
 


Thanks for the great review and all the hard work. Right now my money is directed at the Gigabyte 1080 Xtreme but am going to do a bit more research before I take drop the cash. I definitely want something that's going to run my games in 4k and am not going to buy a Titan X. I don't want to wait for 1080ti either, I want something to play everything on high settings and am upgrading right before Resident Evil 7 gets released since I've been playing on an old Radeon 7850.
 


As somebody who owns 2 gigabyte xtremes I can tell you some real world usage specs. When I am able to game, it's usually 4-10 hour sessions in a room around 68-74f. The mobo I use allows nearly 1 PCIe space between the 2 cards(keep reading).

The good news: With that spacing and ALL-air cooling I average 50-60c temps after an hour and 1.8-2.0ghz GPU speeds. 4k w/ most settings to Ultra will yield 60+fps even at Cinema(4160*2160). I'm happy and its awesome.

The bad news. Don't buy these for aesthetics. Not pretty at all and its totally normal that some of the fins on one corner are slightly bent(extremely easy to bend back) from packaging. Those fps are only achievable for SLI optimized games and I do regular research for SLI bits when they don't. A single card could easily drop in the 40-60 range for the same settings or less. I've done some OC and cooling experiments and can tell you that a reliable water cooled GPU will benefit these Pascals. You just gotta make sure they also have the appropriate PSU to pair with too. They are also thick. Should be considered as 3 slot cards(lucky my mobo wanted the 1/4 spacing). If you do the same setup you'll need the different Nvidia HB bridge to reach.

I'm totally happy with mine but there are things to consider.
 
Well I ordered up a Gigabyte 1080 Xtreme for $603.65 shipped and I did come across people having fan issues and bent fins, we'll see what I get. I can always return it if I'm not happy but from my research I've seen that these are definitely one of the top 1080s to own.
 


I think you'll be happy.

As far as the fins go, its easy to tell it happens when they put the card in the foam inside the box. There's one or two corners on the same end with 2-3 fins that are slightly bent and totally easy to bend back. Both my cards came like that.
 
My card was also a little bit "damaged", but this can be fixed within a few seconds 😉
I saw this issue on nearly each card in the roundup. But I corrected it before I made the pics,
 
I am extremely disappointed with EVGAs FTW and any of their other cards using the ACX 3.0 system- and how they handled it. Very poor QC from a company that was once at the top of it's game. Sure their customer service and warranty is still good if not great, but they have produced a problem, seemed to play it down as not a big deal (in the EVGA forums I often saw how they dismissed the Toms Hardware results as unrealistic or even totally fabricated). Then suddenly they offer to send out a thermal pad mod, and then a few weeks later a VRAM pad mod. Wow. This was not a good card EVGA (some even caught on fire). And low and behold, a new version has just been released, the iCX FTW2. But EVGA insist it has nothing to do with the aforementioned fiasco of the FTW(1), it was already in development they say. Just a coincidence. Uh...yeah...ok...whatever you say. Sure I trust you. Here, take another $700 please.
 


For your information:
I informed EVGA in August (!) about the issue and gave all my data (also the detailed log files) to the EVGA R&D. I also suggested EVGA in early September to implement two pads (the later pad mod). Again no reaction. But after this one-way communication I saw no longer a reason to hold this review back. Only after all this public noise in different forums EVGA finally visited me in my lab and they proofed the thermal pad mod here together with me on my equipment to understand the measuring methods and see / compare the new results...

The main problem: EVGA is totally fabless. That means they must believe, what the OEM said and measures (if). For each component another OEM? The malfunction of the cooling solution is the simple follow of a bad communication between all this different OEM. You have only a few companies on the market for a good PCB-design. But the cooler OEM has to follow the layout and design guidelines to create a working product. If you get only dimensions and the position of the holes, it MUST be going wrong. They were focussed only to optimal GPU cooling, not the component cooling. No thermal simulations of the heat "wandering" from different hotspots over the PCB, no heat analysis, simply nothing.

The pad mod was my idea and I helped him to improve the card. But all what I got was a verbal kick in my arse in their forums. 🙁
 


I'm pretty happy with the card so far. However, I haven't really tested it all that watch, all I can say is that Watch Dogs with everything on Ultra does look pretty good and runs well for me, playing on a 55'' Samsung KS8000 that I picked up open box for $760 and I ended up getting the 1080 for $510 because I bought open box at $603 and discovered the mousepad, Gigabyte badge and wristband weren't in the package so I got Amazon to give me nearly $100 credit 😀
 


I think you'll enjoy it. A single card will give really good performance on 1440p(60-90fps) for most games and at 4k(30-60fps) and pretty much destroy any 1080p stuff. I'm considering saving some money for a TI and putting it in my old rebuilt system this summer after the dust settles with all the different releases.

Good score on the open box stuff. I was considering the Samsung but BB had a good deal on the HiSense I got.

 


Well next time you're in the market for a TV check out reviews on RTings.com, they're pretty much one of the best places for info as far as I know. A/V forums are good too.
 
It would be nice if you can update this to add the ASUS ROG Strix models and where they fit with the others in performance. I brought up this article hoping to see the "ASUS ROG GTX1080 Strix Gaming OC 08G" model (which I'm buying next week) and can't see hide nor hare of it and how it performs against the other GTX1080 models.
 
To be honest:
The difference between the ASIC quality from card to card is mostly higher than the difference between the models performce due factory settings. It is more important to take a closer look at the craftmanship, cooling solution and the overall perfomance (cooling, noise, stable voltage and so on). Boost is bitch and differs from card to card, depending at the chip quality.

I know the binning processes of a few companies - it is very hard to decide before proceeding the insertion line for the complete PCA, which GPU is top-notch and which not. That means, that they decide mostly AFTER the complete process, which PCA will be used for the top model and which for middle level. But this works only for cards with the same PCA. A few factories have also the opportunity (and unique solutions), to check the electrical quality before production - but this is time-expensive and costs a lot of money.

The both StriX cards here are already in the pipeline and will be tested after a few AMD cards and another 1080 this or next week. I'm not a robot, sorry. But Asus sent the cards very late. 😉
 
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