MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G Video Card Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G Video Card Review - MSI’s GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G video card ushers in a new line of GAMING video cards from MSI with customized PCB, Twin Froz VI cooling, and enthusiast overclocking potential. We’ll see how it performs out-of-box compared to a Founders Edition and then find out how well this video card overclocks.
 
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whats up with the huge performance increase in doom vs the gigabyte gtx 1080 xtreme ? it is getting almost 170 more max frames a sec. where as the other games the two are pretty close if not identical.

is it a newer patch ? or was their less demons and what not milling about at that time??
 
chaos4u said:
whats up with the huge performance increase in doom vs the gigabyte gtx 1080 xtreme ? it is getting almost 170 more max frames a sec. where as the other games the two are pretty close if not identical.

is it a newer patch ? or was their less demons and what not milling about at that time??
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Went back and analyzed this particular bit of data, and quite frankly the Max Frames using this collection tool is of no use. The delta you see between the two mentioned is a single frame captured while transitioning during the runthrough. From Brent:

"That one frame of high fps is coming from a scene where I press a button that unlocks the next area, the camera goes in tight quickly on the button press of the display, not any real way to avoid it wouldn't be able to advance."
 
71C at 51% fan speed...that Twin Frozr VI seems to do a pretty damn good job. Thanks for the review!
 
Was a great card until it blew up in my system and damaged the motherboard on the way out. My friend also picked up one up and now has to return it because it's artifacting like crazy :p

MSI needs to up their QA game anecdotally.
 
Say there, for us stupids....on Witcher, if we dis-able that 8xaa hairworks, which is one of those "Just don't touch it" kind of settings for I think most mortals (ratio of visual improvement versus cost).....does the game sustain above 60fps?
 
chaos4u said:
ah i see, so if i want transition quickly in doom get the msi :D
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Have to keep in mind PresentMon samples much more data every second than what we are use to. In essence PresentMon is just much more granular in its results.
 
HeadRusch said:
Say there, for us stupids....on Witcher, if we dis-able that 8xaa hairworks, which is one of those "Just don't touch it" kind of settings for I think most mortals (ratio of visual improvement versus cost).....does the game sustain above 60fps?
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Disabling AA on HairWorks enabled Hair in Witcher 3 looks very bad, you would at least want to have 2X AA on HairWorks hair enabled, else it will be very aliased.

If you really don't want to have HairWorks AA turned on, then you are better off just turning HairWorks off completely at that point.

In that case, with HairWorks off, yes it can perform above 60 FPS.
 
The performance gain from overclocking is pretty depressing on the 1070/1080 cards. You're only getting about 12% boost from FE to max custom overclocked cards.

Last-gen Nvidia cards could expect a good 20% boost in performance from overclocking.
 
Gotta love the lines on this card and that cooler performance.

Thanks for the review.
 
Darkswordz said:
The performance gain from overclocking is pretty depressing on the 1070/1080 cards. You're only getting about 12% boost from FE to max custom overclocked cards.

Last-gen Nvidia cards could expect a good 20% boost in performance from overclocking.
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True, but also these new OC cards cost the same or less than the FE editions, so there is that.

Also, DOOM runs pretty good on a potato... it's not a super demanding game. We need a new "Crysis"... not actually another Crysis game, but a new game that punishes your rig so badly it becomes a punchline.
 
I just built a new rig a couple of weeks ago based off your reviews here using MSI Z170A motherboard, Seasonic Prime PSU and this bad boy. Thanks a ton for the reviews! The MB and PSU rock.

Definitely the quietest desktop I've ever had between the Seasonic PSU and this card. I'm blown away. I cannot hear it ever. I remember the good ol' days having to buy an aftermarket NV Silencer for my 6800?GT - those graphics cards and/or PSU's that sounded like airplanes taking off totally sucked.

I'm super happy with this card and my new pc. Bring on BF1!!!

EDIT: The one thing that didn't work great is the customizable LED in the Gaming app. It's buggy. I can rarely get something to change and when it does I don't think it worked (I don't recall seeing any colors change). But I don't have an open side on my case so I don't care.
 
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Burticus said:
We need a new "Crysis"... not actually another Crysis game, but a new game that punishes your rig so badly it becomes a punchline.
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I think Crysis days are over.

Nowadays, if it runs like Crysis, it'll probably be labeled as "unoptimised PoS", if it looks worse than Crysis, it'll have "PoS graphics".

Sure, some are probably justified to be labeled that, but that's the general consensus I have been getting.
 
chenw said:
I think Crysis days are over.

Nowadays, if it runs like Crysis, it'll probably be labeled as "unoptimised PoS", if it looks worse than Crysis, it'll have "PoS graphics".

Sure, some are probably justified to be labeled that, but that's the general consensus I have been getting.
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QFT.

Though I wouldn't mind if it looks so real at 4K+ that you have to remind yourself that it's just a game. If such a game came out and literally required a Pitan X to run at 30fps 4K, then that would be awesome. Unoptimized POS, my butt - fidelity requires power.
 
Darkswordz said:
The performance gain from overclocking is pretty depressing on the 1070/1080 cards. You're only getting about 12% boost from FE to max custom overclocked cards.

Last-gen Nvidia cards could expect a good 20% boost in performance from overclocking.
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Actually, when the stock cooler is removed and the cards are allowed to boost higher, most FE cards beat out custom cards, even locked behind a much lower power target. My 1080 I got was kind of crappy, its power target seemed to be lower than other FE, but I strapped an EVGA hybrid cooler on it and did the power limit resistor mod and I get a perfectly flat 2088MHz, almost 50ish more than I was getting before as my peak, and average was something like 1950MHz.

But with Pascal, getting above ~2050MHz no matter the cooler is a crapshoot without needing much more voltage, which provides VERY little return. At 2000MHz, I can get by with something like 1.03v, at 2062MHz it needs 1.06v, and 2088-2100MHz (depending on if I hit the first thermal boost bin drop at 53C) needs 1.09v.
 
jedimasterben said:
Actually, when the stock cooler is removed and the cards are allowed to boost higher, most FE cards beat out custom cards, even locked behind a much lower power target. My 1080 I got was kind of crappy, its power target seemed to be lower than other FE, but I strapped an EVGA hybrid cooler on it and did the power limit resistor mod and I get a perfectly flat 2088MHz, almost 50ish more than I was getting before as my peak, and average was something like 1950MHz.

But with Pascal, getting above ~2050MHz no matter the cooler is a crapshoot without needing much more voltage, which provides VERY little return. At 2000MHz, I can get by with something like 1.03v, at 2062MHz it needs 1.06v, and 2088-2100MHz (depending on if I hit the first thermal boost bin drop at 53C) needs 1.09v.
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Yea I was gonna say.... I bought my FE because it was readily available and had readily available full cover blocks. I felt it was worth the extra price at the time, and several months later I still don't have cause to argue. I slapped an EK full cover block on my card and with power target set to 120% it will happily boost to 2088 all day long with no mods under all loads. I haven't seen any evidence that custom PCB's and extra phases do much of anything. Any gains to average speeds appear to come solely from the cooler keeping the boost clocks higher, longer. I guess people can say its "depressing" but the fact of the matter is Nvidia appears to have a very well optimized chip. Seems like most people hit 2-2.1ghz and can't get much more, so there aren't a ton of different bins, there aren't very many crap chips and there aren't very many golden samples. I'm ok with that... I knew what I was getting and I got it.
 
Should be pointed out that with a base price of $720, this is the only air-cooled 1080 excepting the EVGA Classified that costs more than the FE at $700. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Disabling AA on HairWorks enabled Hair in Witcher 3 looks very bad, you would at least want to have 2X AA on HairWorks hair enabled, else it will be very aliased.

If you really don't want to have HairWorks AA turned on, then you are better off just turning HairWorks off completely at that point.

In that case, with HairWorks off, yes it can perform above 60 FPS.
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Thanks for taking the time to clarify that.
 
Armenius said:
Should be pointed out that with a base price of $720, this is the only air-cooled 1080 excepting the EVGA Classified that costs more than the FE at $700. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
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Fortunately, MSI has an awful lot of other GTX 1080 variants including air-cooled ones.
 
From the conclusion page

The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G at $669 (using a rebate) is a solid value compared to the GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming. The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G can provide the same level of gameplay experience out-of-the-box compared to the GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming's out-of-the-box performance. The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G when overclocked also matches the same gameplay experience of the GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming when overclocked. Any time you can get the same performance out-of-the-box and overclocked for a lesser price, and near the same overclock potential as the competition means a solid value. It makes sense then why we have to give this video card an award, it has earned it.
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That card got a gold and this only got a silver. Is being 12 MHz slower the difference?
 
I notice that in this review and in the Gigabyte 1080 review no 4K tests were done. Is this due to the new 'maximum settings' gameplay review format?
 
rinaldo00 said:
I notice that in this review and in the Gigabyte 1080 review no 4K tests were done. Is this due to the new 'maximum settings' gameplay review format?
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While you can surely play games at 4K on the card, we find the sacrifices you have to make in terms of Image Quality to be too significant to get an acceptable frame rate. 1440p is the sweet spot for this card.
 
rinaldo00 said:
Well then considering this is the fastest game card around (within a few percent) there is nothing that can handle 4K well. Unless you start to include a Titan X in your reviews are 4K display tests gone?
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Cards that are more suited for 4K tests will be tested at 4K, when we do our Pascal TITAN X review, yes, 4K will be included. If a "1080 Ti" is releases, 4K will be tested. We use it when relevant to the hardware being tested.

We also do 4K tests when doing specific gameplay performance reviews on new games. It is interesting to see how new games perform across the board of resolution, and if 4K is playable in a new game or not. I would expect 4K testing in our full Deus Ex game review when DX12 is released, I would expect it in our Battlefield 1 game review, etc....
 
Brent_Justice said:
Cards that are more suited for 4K tests will be tested at 4K, when we do our Pascal TITAN X review, yes, 4K will be included. If a "1080 Ti" is releases, 4K will be tested. We use it when relevant to the hardware being tested.

We also do 4K tests when doing specific gameplay performance reviews on new games. It is interesting to see how new games perform across the board of resolution, and if 4K is playable in a new game or not. I would expect 4K testing in our full Deus Ex game review when DX12 is released, I would expect it in our Battlefield 1 game review, etc....
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Ah! So a Pascal Titan X review IS coming! I will post this in my thread.
 
Well tbf, I think everyone who was interested realized it was coming sooner or later when the Pitan X showed up on the VR Leaderboard. :)
 
I bought this 1080, mainly because that it's the second cheapest 1080 available, joint with Gaming G1 from Gigabyte, but $65 chepaer than either Xtreme gaming or Strix OC.

MSI got bonus points for having the closest RMA office to my home (10 mins drive).
 
I bought two of these based on the spec sheets and my experience with my last 2 gpus(2 g1 OC 970's). I purchased them in the beginning of September.

As hoped, I'm loving them. Both of mine came with the bent corner fins. They were minor and easily fixed, otherwise no problems with anything.

My clocks/temps are pretty much the same. 2Ghz/~62c out of the box. This on a 4930k/2011/32gb 2133mhz/SLI'd with a HB bridge and all air cooled, oh and a 1200w gold+ psu. Games are on 2 850pro's in raid 0. Have many of the same games in your review. Using a Asus G-Sync 144hz 1440p and LG Cinema 4k(4096x2160) 60hz.

1440p: 90-120fps w/ everything maxed same settings you used and 144+ with a few minor compromises.

4k: 50-70fps w/ everything maxed again and 60-80 with a few minor compromises.

It's a shame there aren't more SLI reviews on these but I'm here to tell you they totally rock it and then some!
 
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