NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition Review @ [H]

My real takeaway from that german review is that the reference cooler actually isn't a huge problem. You can sustain 2.1Ghz on the reference card with the fan at 55%. But that's your cap-- you can't get past 2.1Ghz because the reference card is power-constrained. The real point of AIB cards this generation might be that they come with another power connector.

Oh just takes a little bit of solder on the power resistor and that problem goes away... or I am sure BIOs mods will come out.
 
In each of the pictures I see a DL-DVI port on the back of the card, and yet in both your earlier discussion of the card, and now in this review, you state that the display outputs consist of 3x display port, and one hdmi - can you confirm the DL-DVI port?
 
Oh just takes a little bit of solder on the power resistor and that problem goes away... or I am sure BIOs mods will come out.
The evga OCX power target slider brings it very close to the actual power provided from the pci-e slot plus the 8-pin power connector. The juice has got to come from somewhere!
 
They are absolutely allowed to yes, I suspect we will see some dual 8pin designs.

Yes, that would be most interesting to compare.

It can actually perform as a passive heatsink, I noticed heat was spread across it quite evenly, and very hot to the touch.

Oftentimes when the backplate is not in contact with anything it also just traps heat close to the card and raises the card temperature prematurely. I would be curious testing it with the backplate off.
 
My real takeaway from that german review is that the reference cooler actually isn't a huge problem. You can sustain 2.1Ghz on the reference card with the fan at 55%. But that's your cap-- you can't get past 2.1Ghz because the reference card is power-constrained. The real point of AIB cards this generation might be that they come with another power connector.

I mean that's fine. I only buy reference cards for the past 4 years. They overclocked alright and I turned up the fan speeds to max on the curve. Noisy but they fit and exhausted heat out the back.

I expect to hit 2 ghz when the fan is turned up and will be buying the new card. Except now I get to feel like a chump that's been fleeced by Nvidia, more so than usual.

Now I pay $100 for this same privilege, with nothing to show for it and it immediately depreciates to the actual $600 MSRP that a normal card is, which is probably even faster.
 
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Reading the [H] review I was pretty much on board for returning my 980 ti FTW that i got for $518 and taking a ~$50 hit on it and getting the 1080.
but then i looked over at gamespots review. They use a factory OCd 980 ti in their review, and the numbers seem to be pretty much the same some times, or just a little faster for the 1080.

Now im starting to think that paying $599/699 (well def not 699) and returning my card is not worth it, seems like such a low performance improvement. Sure, the 1080 can be clocked even further, but most are seeing 10-15% increases at most.


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Well, looks like I am sticking with my reference 980ti. I wonder what the performance difference is between my 980TI SC reference and this card since mine is overclocked. My current card runs 1440p just fine and is quiet while doing it.

The only tempting thing would be lower power draw+ lower temps but since this card appears to get just as hot and I have a great PSU it doesn't seem to be a good purchase for me. Maybe I will get the 1080TI and a 4k monitor when it comes out.
 
Now I pay $100 for this same privilege, with nothing to show for it and it immediately depreciates to the actual $600 MSRP that a normal card is, which is probably even faster.
Well yeah, that's why it sucks for everybody.

Another consequence of the reference card being power-constrained is that many people historically purchased them to use with aftermarket cooling like waterblocks. But since the 1080 is power-constrained to 2.1Ghz, and can sustain 2.1Ghz with the weak reference blower at only 55%, extra cooling actually won't help. At all.

DF-1: Comparing the worst-case stock 1080 versus the best-case overclocked 980ti is not particularly meaningful. You'll overclock the 1080 too, even the reference one overclocks like a beast. If you can return your 980ti and take a mere $50 loss, do it. DO IT NOW.
 
Great.... my son let me know the reviews were out on it before I found out. I'm slacking!

Looks like an amazing card. :D
 
My real takeaway from that german review is that the reference cooler actually isn't a huge problem. You can sustain 2.1Ghz on the reference card with the fan at 55%. But that's your cap-- you can't get past 2.1Ghz because the reference card is power-constrained. The real point of AIB cards this generation might be that they come with another power connector.

Wait, so you get a massive overclock with the fan only running near half speed? Why are people complaining about great performance without some sort of penalty, such as noise?
 
Wait, so you get a massive overclock with the fan only running near half speed? Why are people complaining about great performance without some sort of penalty, such as noise?
Well, there are a couple points to be made here.

1) The reference card costs an extra $100.
2) The reference card will be the only way to get a 1080 for a couple weeks. That stings.
3) The reference card is power-constrained, unable to get past 2.1Ghz.
3) Even though it's power-constrained so it doesn't actually matter, the reference cooler is much less effective and noisier (at higher speeds, which you'll never hit because it's power-constrained...) than AIB coolers.
 
Wait, so you get a massive overclock with the fan only running near half speed? Why are people complaining about great performance without some sort of penalty, such as noise?
Whatever causes an overclocking limit will be complained about :p
 
Just because the backplate gets hot doesn't mean it's doing anything useful.

I mean I get it as a nice to have or whatever, but i wouldn't base any purchasing decisions on its presence.
 
Wait, so you get a massive overclock with the fan only running near half speed? Why are people complaining about great performance without some sort of penalty, such as noise?

Frankly... I think we've come to expect quiet performance from Nvidia since the OG Titan (which not coincidentally is when they first released their new cooler).
 
nice review guys. Excited to see the review of the 1070..

a 1070 would be a monster upgrade from a 760.
 
But whereas he seems to see the glass as half-empty, I see it as half-full.
Your thoughts are again noted.

Question: what is the lowest rpm the card will go? I'm talking about idle, of course, because after finally upgrading my psu to a EVGA G2 it seems the noisiest componente @ idle is, by far, the gpu, because it won't go lower than 1.4k rpm and I don't want to edit the bios and void the warranty.
I guess you are asking how slow the fan will go? Considering it is nearly silent at 55%, I don't think sound should be an issue for the FE card at all.
 
Why didn't you guys tear it apart and cool it down with LN2/water? I'm sure lots of people on the forums would have supplied you the goods. I came to this site after Linus failed to OC the card and let everyone know what [H] has provided with less noise.

Also, I wonder how long it will take for custom PCB makers or amateur engineers to get some extra power to the GPU. Dual 8 pin in the 1080tiP.


When the custom designs retail for $6-700 what do we do with all the 980ti's in the Buy/Sell thread? I feel like the 1080 is underwhelming considering the investment nVidia and its partners put forth to create it. Would it have been too much for TeamGreen to wait and add dual power connectors and release it later? Its not like AMD will have anything. I feel like the 1080/1070 will help fill the pockets of all the people hurting from the long term investment, and the real 1080ti will be what they developed from the start but did not release -- only scale back down because jumping too far ahead hurts their profit.

I need to sleep because my comments mean nothing.
 
Realize this is a 317 mm^2 card and everyone is comparing it to the 980ti, a 601mm^2 card..... If it's 25% faster that's pretty impressive. It should be compared to the 980. To me this is mid range, it's a mid range die size.


Yup, that is what I was asking. 55% is 2.200 rpm, I think? I even hear my 290X Tri-X @ 1.400 rpm so... I need something that goes even lower ;)

Can't really compare an nVidia blower to a tri-X. There is a good chance the AIBs will have the zero speed idle cards and such... only spin up when they need to.
 
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1080 looks great, but my wallet is far more interested in 1070.

I'll be patiently waiting :)
 
Great performance gains, disapointed with the DX12 performance, it seems that it still relying on software to work with the scheduling process when doing Async, so they are trying to use brute force to compensate their inefficient approach.
 
Why didn't you guys tear it apart and cool it down with LN2/water? I'm sure lots of people on the forums would have supplied you the goods. I came to this site after Linus failed to OC the card and let everyone know what [H] has provided with less noise.

Also, I wonder how long it will take for custom PCB makers or amateur engineers to get some extra power to the GPU. Dual 8 pin in the 1080tiP.


When the custom designs retail for $6-700 what do we do with all the 980ti's in the Buy/Sell thread? I feel like the 1080 is underwhelming considering the investment nVidia and its partners put forth to create it. Would it have been too much for TeamGreen to wait and add dual power connectors and release it later? Its not like AMD will have anything. I feel like the 1080/1070 will help fill the pockets of all the people hurting from the long term investment, and the real 1080ti will be what they developed from the start but did not release -- only scale back down because jumping too far ahead hurts their profit.

I need to sleep because my comments mean nothing.

I actually don't think they have a ti release ready at all. I think that is something they might release later only if AMD has something that competes with the 1080.
 
WOW I didn't see this until now going to wait for a ACX cooler version from EVGA.
 
I have a very quick question on the noise front: does the card still idle with three monitors attached? What about three 4K monitors? One of the things that really annoys me with earlier Nvidia cards is the card switching into high gear, with resultant fan noise.
 
Thank you for this review, i cant wait for the 1070 review next! <hype train> all aboard!
 
Wow, so 980tis are only fetching between 390-450 on ebay, used. I have an AIO on mine so I might get a bit more, maybe not. I don't think it's worth it for me to go back to reference cooling on a new card when I'm running a whisper quiet 980ti.

I think I'll toss money towards an ultrawide curved/gsync monitor at this point. Unless the 1080 sli benchmarks are really impressive. But I'd hate to go back to SLI.
 
Wow, so 980tis are only fetching between 390-450 on ebay, used. I have an AIO on mine so I might get a bit more, maybe not. I don't think it's worth it for me to go back to reference cooling on a new card when I'm running a whisper quiet 980ti.

I think I'll toss money towards an ultrawide curved/gsync monitor at this point. Unless the 1080 sli benchmarks are really impressive. But I'd hate to go back to SLI.

Add in HDR and I'm getting that monitor too. Sadly I think that we may have to wait until next year for all the bells and whistles.
 
Hope we get some more 4K results for the card when they do the OC review.

It looks like it will be worth waiting for the cards with high end coolers and two power connectors as the chip can handle higher clocks, just not for long with this power and cooling solution.
 
Well this and other reviews pretty much meet what my expectations were of this new card. It's about 20-35% faster than a stock 980 Ti (and much less vs factory OC 980 Ti) and a few % less for Titan X. The founder's edition proved to be a disappointment (no surprise there) and it's clear that this card will shine when custom cards w/2 x 8 pin + custom cooling (e.g. hybrid cooling) are released that let users push them to 2300-2400 MHz. At those speeds we're looking at 2 x 980 Ti performance which is pretty damn amazing for mid tier Pascal because after all, this card replaces the 980, not the 980 Ti or Titan X. I'm hoping we see another 20-30% from the next Titan and Ti cards in 5-6 months, maybe sooner if AMD releases Vega on time. On that note, I have to commend AMD for equipping Fury X with AIO cooling rather than hobbling it with an air cooler + new ugly design and calling it a "founders edition" and charging a $100 tax like NVIDIA has done--very very disappointing and quite frankly despicable.

The thing that gives me the biggest pause about Pascal is DX 12 because despite all this talk about pre-emption, the end results show it not gaining anything in async heavy titles like AotS and it certainly makes me want to see future DX 12 reviews vs AMD Vega before I decide on Pascal as a whole. DX 12 is coming and I'm beginning to think AMD has a chance to really shine here if they can deliver on time and in quantity. I've been very impressed with what AMD has done with Fury X drivers in catching up with 980 Ti and if they keep it up, RTG may surprise us all with Vega. Finally, the 4k performance shows it still struggles and that could be partially due to DDR5x/256 bit bus limitations which is another reason for us high end purchasers to wait on HBM 2 Vega and big Pascal.


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Overall, while impressive, I'll be holding on to my Titan X's until Vega is released.
 
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The main change re DX12 is that it's no longer a huge performance loss. But it still doesn't gain, unlike AMD. Remains to be seen if that actually matters, as we have a very small sample of DX12 games to examine today.
 
Hmm I wonder what the standard is. My sg13 was pretty tight with the MSI 980ti gaming 6g, like almost to the edge (extending into the front plastic panel past the metal frame). That had a stated length of 10.59"

IIRC, it was 11" max for a daughterboard. As PC adoption hit its second wave due to the 'net's popularity, you had a lot of requests for a SFF case. That plus overall component reduction led to much smaller cards and case manufacturer's started encroaching on the reserved space, usually with drive bays. It's kind of funny to see them grow again. At this rate we'll need the guides on the front of the mainboard again.
 
I have a very quick question on the noise front: does the card still idle with three monitors attached? What about three 4K monitors? One of the things that really annoys me with earlier Nvidia cards is the card switching into high gear, with resultant fan noise.

That's a drivers issue Nvidia has been working on. As of a couple driver releases ago I've been able to idle at 2d clocks with three monitors attatched IF all three monitors are running at the same hz and resolution. As soon as I switch a monitor to a different resolution or change the operating frequency my clocks go up. I doubt this has been fixed with the latest drivers.
 
One thing missing int he review (unless I mistakenly overlooked it) is the sound of the card. One of the things I always try to find in a video card is how loud the card gets under load and things, generally trying to find one that's quiet since I tend to use my pc for lots of streaming netflix and things, having a noisy pc is something I try to avoid at all cost and it's just a little pet peeve of mine when playing dialogue heavy games having a loud roaring fan drives me nuts.

How loud does this card get under load and things?
 
I think that those who are tossing out their GTX 980 Ti / GTX TITAN X cards and selling them for cheap on eBay are going to feel really bad when the GTX 1080 Ti and GTX Titan (?) will be released later on, possibly Q4 2016 or in 2017. Especially if you have a GTX 980 Ti SLI / GTX TITAN X SLI setup, then I would wait until next year to upgrade. It is more than likely that 4K displays @ 120Hz will be available by then, possibly with HDR support.

By the time those new displays will be available, the GTX 1080 will be obsoleted / surpassed by video cards built with the big Pascal GPUs. The GTX 1080 Ti will most likely ship with 16GB HBM2 and the GTX TITAN (something) will most likely ship with 32GB HMB2. This is pure speculation of course, as NVIDIA usually likes high profit margins, so I would say that a more plausible scenario will be to use GDDR5X in the new 1080 Ti and TITAN (?) cards. If they will go with a 384 bit bus for the upcoming high end cards, then I think we'll get a GTX 1080 Ti with 12GB GDDR5X and a TITAN (?) with 24GB GDDR5X. Again, all of this is pure speculation on my part.

The review was really well written and up to 30% speed improvement over the GTX 980 Ti is nothing to sneeze at. I will however not trow out my SLI setup with two EVGA GTX 980 Ti Classified cards just yet.
 
One thing missing int he review (unless I mistakenly overlooked it) is the sound of the card. One of the things I always try to find in a video card is how loud the card gets under load and things, generally trying to find one that's quiet since I tend to use my pc for lots of streaming netflix and things, having a noisy pc is something I try to avoid at all cost and it's just a little pet peeve of mine when playing dialogue heavy games having a loud roaring fan drives me nuts.

How loud does this card get under load and things?
all they said, it was already asked several times, is that is very quite. but they only let it run stock and the fan maxed at 55%. when the article on OCing comes out it will probably have more info and be in there.
 
I think that those who are tossing out their GTX 980 Ti / GTX TITAN X cards and selling them for cheap on eBay for cheap are going to feel really bad when the GTX 1080 Ti and GTX Titan (?) will be released later on, possibly Q4 2016 or in 2017. Especially if you have a GTX 980 Ti SLI / GTX TITAN X SLI setup, then I would wait until next year to upgrade. It is more than likely that 4K display @ 120Hz will be available by then, possibly with HDR support.

By the time those new displays will be available, the GTX 1080 will be obsoleted / surpassed by video cards with the big Pascal GPUs: the GTX 1080 Ti most likely 16GB HBM2 and GTX TITAN (something) most likely with 32GB HMB2. This is pure speculation of course, as NVIDIA usually likes high profit margins, so I would say that a more plausible scenario will be to use GDDR5X in the 1080 Ti and new TITAN (?) cards. If they will go with a 384 bit bus for the upcoming high end cards, then I think we'll get a GTX 1080 Ti with 12GB GDDR5X and a TITAN (?) with 24GB GDDR5. Again, all of this is pure speculation on my part.

The review was really well written and up to 30% speed improvement over the GTX 980 Ti is nothing to sneeze at. I will however not trow out my EVGA GTX 980 Ti Classified SLI cards just yet.

Meh... I think the majority of people with a single Titan X appreciate having the fastest single gpu available and will likely pick up a 1080 and then sell/retire it to get the 1080 ti (not including the people who bought their first halo card and plan on running it into the dirt). As far as the Titan/980 Ti SLI people go... Unless they dislike the headache that can come with SLI, they'd be silly to upgrade to a 1080.



Alright... I'm going to bed. I pulled an all-nighter to check out this release but now I'm starting to shit post.
 
So then what does this mean for a possible dual Gpu card from NV in the future? I assume they won't bother making one or if they do they won't support SLI with a dual GPU card.
 
UGH... This has me seriously hurting to see the reviews/benchies for the 1070 now. I'm putting the dollar bills under my pillow for now to see how the 1070 performs vs. my current 970 card. The 1080 is a little too rich for my tastes, the 1070 price is more in line for me.
 
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