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Based on the latest Pascal architecture, Nvidia claim the GTX 1080 is the most advanced graphics card ever made. The GTX 1080 is built on a new 16nm FinFET manufacturing process allowing the chip to incorporate more transistors – subsequently allowing for higher clock speeds and improved power efficiency.
The GTX 1080 also adopts GDDR5X memory which enhances bandwidth significantly over previous GDDR5 designs. Is Nvidia's GTX 1080 the new GPU king?
The GTX 1080 ‘Founders Edition' is crafted by Nvidia engineers and is built around a die cast aluminium body with low profile backplate. This is all machine finished and heat treated for strength.
Interestingly I have read some negative comments from KitGuru readers in the last week saying they prefer the appearance of the older Nvidia reference cooler, but I must say, I quite like the angular shapes and patterns in the design.
| GPU | GeForce GTX960 |
Geforce GTX970 |
GeForce GTX980 |
Geforce GTX 980 Ti |
Geforce GTX Titan X |
Geforce GTX 1080 |
| Streaming Multiprocessors | 8 | 13 | 16 | 22 | 24 | 20 |
| CUDA Cores | 1024 | 1664 | 2048 | 2816 | 3072 | 2560 |
| Base Clock | 1126 mhz | 1050 mhz | 1126 mhz | 1000 mhz | 1000 mhz | 1607 mhz |
| GPU Boost Clock | 1178 mhz | 1178 mhz | 1216 mhz | 1075 mhz | 1076 mhz | 1733 mhz |
| Total Video memory | 2GB | 4GB | 4GB | 6GB | 12GB | 8GB |
| Texture Units | 64 | 104 | 128 | 176 | 192 | 160 |
| Texture fill-rate | 72.1 Gigatexels/Sec | 109.2 Gigatexels/Sec | 144.1 Gigatexels/Sec | 176 Gigatexels/Sec | 192 Gigatexels/Sec | 257.1 Gigatexels/Sec |
| Memory Clock | 7010 mhz | 7000 mhz | 7000 mhz | 7000 mhz | 7000 mhz | 5005mhz |
| Memory Bandwidth | 112.16 GB/sec | 224 GB/s | 224 GB/sec | 336.5 GB/sec | 336.5 GB/sec | 320 GB/s |
| Bus Width | 128bit | 256bit | 256bit | 384bit | 384bit | 256bit |
| ROPs | 32 | 56 | 64 | 96 | 96 | 64 |
| Manufacturing Process | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 16nm |
| TDP | 120 watts | 145 watts | 165 watts | 250 watts | 250 watts | 180 watts |
The Nvidia GTX1080 ships with 2560 CUDA cores and 20 SM units. The 8GB of GDDR5X memory is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. This new G5X memory offers a huge step up in bandwidth, when compared against the older GDDR5 standard. It runs at a data rate of 10Gbps, giving 43% more bandwidth than the GTX980 GPU.
Architectural improvements in memory compression give an effective memory bandwidth increase of 1.7x when compared against the previous Nvidia flagship. There is a lot more to this performance than the figures above, so I recommend our readers spend a little time reading Page 2 of this review today where I try and break the technology advancements down as simply as possible.
For the last 10 days or so I have been retesting many graphics cards with the latest AMD and Nvidia drivers. We list all the partnering hardware on the testing methodology page of the review. First let's have a quick look at the new Nvidia technology.
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