Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition 11GB Review

We first measure GPU temperature while the card is sat idling at the Windows 10 desktop for 5 minutes. Gaming GPU temperature is recorded by running Unigine Heaven DX11 benchmark for 5 minutes. As a maximum stress test, Furmark is run for 5 minutes and the cards' GPU temperature levels are recorded.

Ambient room temperature was held at around 19-20°C.

Thermal performance from the GTX 1080 Ti's Founder's Edition cooler is somewhat of a known entity thanks to its application on the Titan XP. The unit does its job at dissipating 250W of thermal energy but it does so while allowing the GPU to hit its 83°C thermal throttling point that causes a reduction in the core frequency.

With the fan speed sitting around the 50% level under heavy load and the clock dropping by around 50-100MHz due to temperatures, we struggle to understand why Nvidia opts for such a conservative fan speed curve on a high-performance, enthusiast graphics card. We applied our own, more aggressive, fan curve and saw performance improvements in the order of 1-2% in Unigine Heaven and Metro: Last Light. Every little helps, right?

You can also change the temperature target to a higher value so that the card will not thermally throttle until up to 90°C. However, you shouldn't expect to see a significant performance improvement by changing this setting as the board power limit is likely to induce throttling even if sufficient temperature headroom is allocated. It's not worth the potential of reduced component lifespan compared to a higher fan speed curve.

Seeing as Nvidia is pushing its GeForce Experience software so hard, it would be nice if there was consideration given to performance enthusiasts inside the tool. A simple, one-click ‘Enthusiast‘ mode which increases the allowable board power and sets a more aggressive fan speed curve would be welcomed. In the mean time, savvy enthusiasts can simply download MSI Afterburner (or similar) and apply their own fan speed curve, which I would highly recommend doing.

The Founder's Edition cooler for GTX 1080 Ti is fine. It does its job. It certainly isn't outstanding, though, and proprietary coolers from board partners are likely to offer significantly improved thermal performance.

The card's backplate does a good job at spreading heat across its surface area. Fan or power cables in contact with the backplate are unlikely to melt as its operating temperature was in the 60-degree range after around 15 minutes of heavy Unigine Heaven load.

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