GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition Overclocking Preview @ [H]

Wow.....That blower is that loud? Jesus this is almost as bad as AMD's 290/290x Reference cooler (almost). Damn.....

Kyle and Brent, thank you. You actually did what other review sites don't do. You get the card up to temp to see what is stabilizes at...This is the information people need to see.

But man only 200mhz more on the core over stock?.....Kind of meh, it is almost like Nvidia is purposely holding back the card (not shocked)......GOD I hope we don't get another MSI Fiasco...I am sure you two remember that bullshit.
 
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JDanser said:
Called it, save for the temps. I was not expecting it to do so well on a blower type cooler. This clenches it too; I'm waiting on a model with a 5lb heatsink, 10 heatpipes and 40phase VRM bolted on because with as much voltage dumped into them as possible and kept cool, those are gonna be absolutely ridiculous overclockers.
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For a blower cooler that is pretty good compared to most reference coolers.
rumartinez89 said:
Didn't Maxwell have issues were adding voltage actually caused the clocks to drop due to bios constraints on TDP? I would assume NVIDIA would have done the same for Pascal. If so i hope the Lightning or Kingpin edition remove the constraint.
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Its more of a reliablity reason. Having people override voltage to point to fry the card is bad PR. Plus with some the AIB partners that cover overclocking damage it helps them in preventing RMA's.

schizo said:
Definitely-- 100% speed on that blower is unacceptably loud.
Also would like to see micromanaging voltages, could be some gains there.
And finally, the impact of overclocking the GPU versus VRAM independently on actual gaming performance.
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50db i wouldn't say is unacceptably loud considering how good the cooler work, even with that could lower fan profile so gpui gets closer to 80c could lower that noise level.
 
Arbit3r said:
For a blower cooler that is pretty good compared to most reference coolers.

Its more of a reliablity reason. Having people override voltage to point to fry the card is bad PR. Plus with some the AIB partners that cover overclocking damage it helps them in preventing RMA's.


50db i wouldn't say is unacceptably loud considering how good the cooler work, even with that could lower fan profile so gpui gets closer to 80c could lower that noise level.
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I would have to disagree. They recorded 55DB, and the 290x Reference was 58DB. So I mean to me it is almost as bad as a reference 290/290x which sucked ass.
 
Excellent article. I'm looking forward to the full review.

One thing you might want to clarify is whether your tests were done on a card supplied by Nvidia or purchased from a standard purchase. I'm guessing the former in this case. :) The point being that they might have sent you a golden sample.

Brackle said:
I would have to disagree. They recorded 55DB, and the 290x Reference was 58DB. So I mean to me it is almost as bad as a reference 290/290x which sucked ass.
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IIRC 55dB is half the noise level of 58dB.
 
Brackle said:
I would have to disagree. They recorded 55DB, and the 290x Reference was 58DB. So I mean to me it is almost as bad as a reference 290/290x which sucked ass.
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Sound is not measured on a linear scale, it's a logarithmic scale. 58 DB is much louder than 55DB.

Also the 290X cooler wasn't bad, noise wise, at 55%. It was bad because it couldn't keep the card under 95C.
 
Damn I'm really looking forward to seeing some AIBs release some awesome cards. I'd upgrade to a 1080 with a Twin Frozr/DirectCU/Windforce in a heartbeat..
 
What is an 8 pin + PCI-E rated for? I wonder how close to that limit the card is getting with the 120% Power Target. It'll be a bummer if there is no room for an increase even with a modded bios since it's looking like EK and the like will only have waterblocks for the reference cards for the first couple months.
 
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Quartz-1 said:
Excellent article. I'm looking forward to the full review.

One thing you might want to clarify is whether your tests were done on a card supplied by Nvidia or purchased from a standard purchase. I'm guessing the former in this case. :) The point being that they might have sent you a golden sample.



IIRC 55dB is half the noise level of 58dB.
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I think we made it quite clear we have a Founders Edition card

GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition Review
 
I had the stock blower fan on a 290x, this is likely just as bad loud as the 290x cards were. I ripped that heat sink off and water cooled it and was so much more happy with the noise levels. Blower style fans above 60% will annoy you if your computer is on your desk, if it's below your desk it may not annoy you too much however any higher on the fan speed and you will hate it no matter where it is in your house. Id wait to see what others like EVGA come out with before committing to what is a reference card.
 
There's folks who modded the 1080 with custom coolers like accelero extreme 4 and even water cooling to keep it 45C.

They found the same thing, it can't even maintain 2.1ghz for long, drops to similar numbers as seen in this [H] article.

Severely power limited.
 
Fixall said:
What is an 8 pin + PCI-E rated for? I wonder how close to that limit the card is getting with the 120% Power Target. It'll be a bummer if there is no room for an increase even with a modded bios since it's looking like EK and the like will only have waterblocks for the reference cards for the first couple months.
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16x PCI-E supplies 75W
6 pin is 75W
8 pin is 150W

To answer your question 225W.
 
Brackle said:
Wow.....That blower is that loud? Jesus this is almost as bad as AMD's 290/290x Reference cooler (almost). Damn.....

Kyle and Brent, thank you. You actually did what other review sites don't do. You get the card up to temp to see what is stabilizes at...This is the information people need to see.

But man only 200mhz more on the core over stock?.....Kind of meh, it is almost like Nvidia is purposely holding back the card (not shocked)......GOD I hope we don't get another MSI Fiasco...I am sure you two remember that bullshit.
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What MSI fiasco??
 
I wonder if they are purposefully limiting the card... so the later 1080TI and Titans can REALLY stretch their legs???

Honestly still curious about sli'ing the 1070s and also curious now about the Vender cards.
 
This is why I want a custom cooling solution on my 1080. You guys help yourself and please, buy all the founders editions you want.

I'll be the guy waiting on a 3rd party cooler.
 
Sedriss said:
What MSI fiasco??
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Nvidia came down on MSI with the Lightning series during the Kepler days for allowing users to push voltages past the pre-ordained limits, subsequent revisions didn't have the same sort of legs as a result.
 
Can't wait to see what happens when you slap a block on that and volt it to an inch of death.
 
Ultima99 said:
16x PCI-E supplies 75W
6 pin is 75W
8 pin is 150W

To answer your question 225W.
Click to expand...

So with the 120% Power Target, the card should be pulling roughly 216 watts. Am I understanding that correctly? If that's the case, there's basically zero room for an increased Power Target with a modded bios and all reference cards will top out at 2000/2100mhz regardless of if you slap a waterblock on it (I get that the FE/reference cards aren't made for overclocking but those are the only waterblocks that will be available for the first two or three months).
 
JDanser said:
Called it, save for the temps. I was not expecting it to do so well on a blower type cooler. This clenches it too; I'm waiting on a model with a 5lb heatsink, 10 heatpipes and 40phase VRM bolted on because with as much voltage dumped into them as possible and kept cool, those are gonna be absolutely ridiculous overclockers.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure why the blower style setups get such a bad rap in the first place.

With a well ventilated case (2x 120mm intake fans on the side, or with the side removed), the 7970 Ghz Edition blower setup even in Crossfire and overclocked to 1150/1600 does just fine as well as long as a custom fan profile is set up in MSI Afterburner. And those cards pull more a lot more power than the 1080.

Sure they are loud when the fan speed is turned up, but they handle the heat output just fine.

I know I never even saw 70c on the GPUs when running that setup.

The R9 290/290x setup just didn't have enough exhaust space to be able to cool properly because of how the outputs on the card are setup. About 1/3 the exhaust area when compared to the 7970 setup was never going to cut it.
 
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Nihilus1 said:
Interesting report. Adding a pci-e connector might be the way to go, although pricey. I wonder if disconnecting the fan cord and running it off a molex would save enough watts to help any.
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Probably would by the tiniest amount, when power limited or close you can often hear/see on logs 100% fan rpms drop suddenly, when slamming it from 0-100% utilisation under a heavy OC.
That said I wonder if much of this is down to those missing FETs. Better results than I'd expected but it's still dropping clocks to save itself.
 
Pyroja said:
58db isn't twice as loud as 55db, it just takes twice the power to get there (in terms of speakers). It is noticeably louder, but not twice as loud. What people would perceive as "twice as loud" is roughly a 10db increase.
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Yep. Most audio experts have trouble telling a difference between 2db, average bloggs is at 3db or more. So yes it is pretty similar to the 290x flounder edition blower, to the average joe. The frequency is the main issue, which is determined by RPM, design, resonances etc etc..
 
Brent_Justice said:
What I find interesting is that there is more headroom to lower the fan speed and still possibly achieve this clock. At 62-64c we can lower the fan till it warms up to around 80c and possibly operate at the same overclock but with a less annoying fan noise. This is a test I will make in the full review.
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Looking like a modded BIOS to get rid of the temperature throttling and power limits on a card with beefier power phases should have some pretty serious overclocking potential.
 
Excellent. Short and to the point real world tests actually gaming for 30 mins.

As other have mentioned, I can't wait to see one of these with more power and water cooling. OTOH it will probably cost $800.
 
N4CR said:
Yep. Most audio experts have trouble telling a difference between 2db, average bloggs is at 3db or more. So yes it is pretty similar to the 290x flounder edition blower, to the average joe. The frequency is the main issue, which is determined by RPM, design, resonances etc etc..
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Audio perception is down to 0.2db, but at those levels it may be perceived as something else rather than loudness, however and this is important sensitivity to an audio range loudness is based upon Fletcher Munson Curve as our hearing is more sensitive between a certain frequency range.
But we are not interested in a person's ability to accurately identify sound level differences, we are interested in tolerance and threshold levels affecting a person over a reasonable amount of time.
And some are really sensitive to transformer/capacitor/pump/etc type noise.
That said I am pretty sure most from a tolerance/threshold perspective will definitely notice a 2db difference if the louder one is very close to what they can tolerate in terms of being annoying/distracting to what they are doing.

TechPowerUp use a calibrated tool to measure fan noise, and this is a useful chart as it shows reference designs and their noise levels.

fannoise_load.png

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8 GB Review

The 1080 is good from a reference comparison and especially to the blower/vapor chamber types, just average to custom AIB ones, at least this helps to put the noise into perspective with historical cards.
Cheers
 
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I like the FuryX cooler design the best, no need to buy water block, would be great if it was matched up to a real OC friendly card though. I do not think the 1080 cooler is that good if you are going to OC. Now what surprised me is that the 980Ti is louder than the 290x :ROFLMAO:, I never knew that yet no one seemed to really put up a big stink about that.
 
noko said:
I like the FuryX cooler design the best, no need to buy water block, would be great if it was matched up to a real OC friendly card though. I do not think the 1080 cooler is that good if you are going to OC. Now what surprised me is that the 980Ti is louder than the 290x :ROFLMAO:, I never knew that yet no one seemed to really put up a big stink about that.
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Barely anyone bought reference 980 Tis - that's why, there were custom cooler options like the EVGA ACX available day one.

The big issue with the 290/290X was that the reference blower was the only option for like 3 months. Took them awhile to get custom coolers out.
 
noko said:
I like the FuryX cooler design the best, no need to buy water block, would be great if it was matched up to a real OC friendly card though. I do not think the 1080 cooler is that good if you are going to OC. Now what surprised me is that the 980Ti is louder than the 290x :ROFLMAO:, I never knew that yet no one seemed to really put up a big stink about that.
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Problem is the coil whine affected too many consumers with the Fury X, and one reason I think sales dropped off after a while as it was seen as a common/persistent issue.
AMD had a great solution that was messed up due to something that could had been resolved at design stage, all that effort makes me sigh as it could had been amazing from a noise perspective.
Cheers
 
x3sphere said:
Barely anyone bought reference 980 Tis - that's why, there were custom cooler options like the EVGA ACX available day one.

The big issue with the 290/290X was that the reference blower was the only option for like 3 months. Took them awhile to get custom coolers out.
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Yeah I think most critical of NVIDIA do not realise their strength is in their sales channel and partners with their custom AIB rather than reference design (that has a place as discussed but not usually for most consumers), this is one reason I feel NVIDIA make their products so versatile to give greater flexibility-OC overhead to those partners.
Cheers
 
Was this overclock done inside a closed case or on a free air test bench? The original review and this article do not stipulate.
 
Any chance you guys could start posting the ASIC quality of your review boards along with overclocking articles?

This can give us an idea of just how cherry picked the test samples they send you might be, compared to what the rest of us might pick up at retail.
 
Also,

There is some suggestion that the OEM board layout on the 1080 is pretty damned close to the 980's. Existing blocks/HG10's/EVGA Hybrid might just be able to be adapted on to these with little or no modding.

Maybe we won't be able to get much or at all beyond the initial 2.1hz overclock, but if we can prevent heat soaking, we might just be able to make it stay there, and not drop down, and do so without sounding like a hair dryer.

With my 980Ti's right now that produce more heat than the 1080 in this test, the fans attached to my h90's barely ever turn on at stock speeds, and overclocked they stay nice and quiet, and the 1080 produces less heat (presumably in large part due to the smaller process node)
 
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Just a thought, how much did overclocking the ram help performance? If not much would Under-clocking the ram allow you to get more out of the GPU?... and more fps overall
 
Nobody tested overclocking memory and cores separately yet. I'd find that very interesting too.
 
Axehandler said:
Honestly still curious about sli'ing the 1070s and also curious now about the Vender cards.
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SLI scaling is bad and there seems to be a shift away from SLI support. Maybe before when you needed 2x the VRAM it made a difference but I don't see why you'd spend more than the cost of the 'big brother' model for similar performance, more thermals, less compatibility, and more power draw.

Sure, there is the 'cool factor' of having two of something (dualies, boobies, legs, arms, etc), but perhaps video cards should be left off that list

EDIT: I can't leave out the fact we have no benchmarks of the 1070, so who knows :)
 
Napoleon said:
SLI scaling is bad and there seems to be a shift away from SLI support. Maybe before when you needed 2x the VRAM it made a difference but I don't see why you'd spend more than the cost of the 'big brother' model for similar performance, more thermals, less compatibility, and more power draw.

Sure, there is the 'cool factor' of having two of something (dualies, boobies, legs, arms, etc), but perhaps video cards should be left off that list

EDIT: I can't leave out the fact we have no benchmarks of the 1070, so who knows :)
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What does the mean? SLI does not give you twice as much vram if that is what you are saying.
 
misterbobby said:
What does the mean? SLI does not give you twice as much vram if that is what you are saying.
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What I meant is if the resources on one card were insufficient it might help to have two. example 2x 1GB or 2GB cards on newer games. With 8GB of vram on either card and games not pushing above that very often I would doubt SLI would benefit in that respect.

I will fully admit I am an SLI noob and do not know exactly how it scales performance/resource wise, although I have seen that it varies considerably depending on the game/application in question
 
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