Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Review

Can this $600 graphics card really outperform two GTX 980s in SLI? We put the new hardware to the test across 1080P, 1440P, 4K, and VR benchmarks.

The GeForce GTX 1080 was one of the worst kept secrets in graphics hardware. While many leaked images hinted at the new card's arrival, it still came as a surprise when manufacturer Nvidia announced that the GTX 1080 would not only be faster than the $1,000 Titan X, but apparently faster than two GTX 980s in SLI.

It's difficult to recall the last time a new flagship GPU from Nvidia was as fast as two of its predecessors in SLI. And you supposedly get all of this for a starting price of $599? Surely there's a catch?

While the GTX 1080 doesn’t eclipse two 980s in every scenario, it's demonstrably stronger at 4K. That makes this, right now, the fastest single-GPU card about to hit the market.

Design


I'm reviewing the “Founders Edition” of the card, which cost $699 ($100 more than the 1080’s starting price). While previous iterations from Nvidia were known as “reference designs,” it appears the corporation wants to show it designs more than baseline graphics cards. So it has revamped its own design by using higher-quality materials that will no doubt resonate with the most devoted enthusiasts . Having said that, the Founders Edition graphics card does not use a higher-quality binned GPU. The extra $100 is merely for the superior materials and craftsmanship. For what it's worth, personally I find the card’s jagged edges look pretty sharp.

What makes the Founders Edition stand out? For starters, the 4.3x10.5-inch chassis uses a die-cast aluminum body. The two-slot card’s radial blower fan is also aided by Nvidia’s vapor chamber cooler. Under load, I saw the fan rev up to 1,342rpm, which was still near whisper quiet.

Another feature that makes the Founders Edition different is its removable low-profile backplate, which is useful for snug SLI configurations.

Specs

GeForce GTX 1080 also uses a new video RAM built by Micron called GDDR5X, which is currently the fastest GDDR memory on the market

Founders Edition details aside, all GeForce GTX 1080s use Nvidia’s new Pascal architecture, which leverages bandwidth reduction, preemption, and memory compression techniques to become the company’s most efficient architecture to date. On top of this is a new 16nm FinFET production process, which ultimately allows the card’s clocks to run really high (I witnessed a base clock of 1.61GHz and a boost clock of 1.73GHz.) Nvidia says it’s also been able to overclock the card to over 2GHz. For reference, the company has not before been able to surpass 2GHz on any of its cards, whether using air cooling or more efficient water coolers.

The GeForce GTX 1080 also uses a new video RAM built by Micron called GDDR5X. G5X, as it’s also known, is currently the fastest GDDR memory on the market, and allows the card's VRAM to reach an exceptional 10GHz. For reference, the GTX 980 before it topped off at 7GHz.

The GTX 1080 uses a generous 8GB of that frame buffer, which positions it in 4K territory, and is double the VRAM of its 2014 predecessor, the GTX 980.

Spec Chart

	GTX 1080	GTX Titan X	GTX 980 Ti	GTX 980
CUDA Cores	2560	3072	2816	2048
Texture Units	160	192	176	128
ROPs	64	96	96	64
Core Clock	1607MHz	1000MHz	1000MHz	1126MHz
Boost Clock	1733MHz	1075MHz	1075MHz	1216MHz
Memory Clock	10GHz GDDR5X	7GHz GDDR5	7GHz GDDR5	7GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width	256-bit	384-bit	384-bit	256-bit
VRAM	8GB	12GB	6GB	4GB
TDP	180W	250W	250W	165W
GPU	GP104	GM200	GM200	GM204
Architecture	Pascal	Maxwell	Maxwell	Maxwell
Transistor Count	7.2 billion	8 billion	8 billion	5.2 billion
Manufacturing Process	16nm FinFET	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm
Launch Date	05/27/16	03/17/2015	06/01/2015	09/18/2014
Launch Price	$599/$699	$999	$649	$549

But what does all this new tech mean for power consumption? With the more power-efficient design, the GTX 1080 carries a modest 180-watt TDP (thermal design power), and only requires one eight-pin power connector. This is really lightweight when you compare it to the reference 980 Ti’s 250-watt TDP, which is a card that requires both an eight and six-pin connector.
Features

Every time a new GPU architecture from Nvidia rolls around, the company likes to incorporate new graphical features, the situation is no different with Pascal.

Ansel


Arguably the most interesting addition is Ansel. Named after famed photographer Ansel Adams, the new feature is a free-roaming camera that allows you to pause a game’s action and take a high-resolution screenshot (with the UI stripped out). While that description may sing to the budding videogame photographer in you, it actually sells Ansel a little short, since there are also a ton of post-processing effects that you can add to your image that include film grain, bloom, lens floor, vignettes, and more.