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Nvidia GTX 1080 Founders Edition Graphics Card Review

Rating: 9.0.

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?

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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.

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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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20 comments

  1. Fine work on the review, we are probably looking at £620 in the UK which is pretty steep

  2. Too expensive

  3. Can’t wait for the 1080 Ti to be released so I can upgrade my 980 Ti. Would love to have this 1080, but I think the price will be a bit too steep to validate a purchase at the moment. It does look like it will be a great upgrade for anyone else though, even with the 980 Ti it has quite a few games where it gets more than 10 fps extra on average.

  4. It costs a small fortune, but holy crap that thing performs amazingly well. And with such little power consumption. Now the waiting begins, because it’ll take a few years before this kind of power becomes available to the less affluent consumers like me.

  5. Gary 'Gazza' Keen

    is that £619 for the founders edition? Because like many others I’m just going to go straight out for an aftermarket anyway so that gives a rough estimate on how they are going to be priced too (in the case that aftermarkets are based on the “normal” edition). Though it does offer more temptation to just wait for the Ti but I’ve done enough waiting by now xD

  6. 15% better than factory oced 980Ti for 700 euros isn’t a great jump in FPS/$ me thinks. 1080Ti or Vega are the ones for enthusiasts.

  7. With these prices the to is looking £800+ probally more

  8. Gary 'Gazza' Keen

    Isn’t what usually happens is that by the time the Ti is released the 1080 will go down in price then Ti will cost the same amount as 1080’s release price?

  9. Robbie Zeigler

    What is the 980TI boosting too in this review? The G1 edition?

  10. GTX980 to GTX1080Ti/Vega 11…come on, who will bring this HBM2 so I will play Star Citizen at 4K Ultra 60+ FPS?

  11. Awesome card. Wish I could afford it. =x

  12. Wait for custom cooled factory overclocked partner cards. They will be cheaper, faster and cooler.

  13. Gary 'Gazza' Keen

    Just a little off topic but will Fast sync have to be specifically supported by developer studios or can it just be enabled via the control panel (allowing for all games to make immediate use of it)?

  14. Адольф Шумахер

    AMD Radeon Pro Duo vs GTX 1080 vs GTX 1070 – Ultra performance test https://youtu.be/urYLez2aBew

  15. So in overall, it is just a more efficient Maxwell with better granularity and less IPC per cluster, offset by higher clocks and a better software stack to make it up with the missing hardware scheduler, not impressed.

  16. Piiilabyte III

    Does anyone know when EVGA will release their hybrid cooled GTX 1080s?

  17. Think I’m going to wait to see what the Asus Strix 1080 OC (or whatever they’ll call it) can do. Happy with my 980 Strix until then 🙂

  18. mrluckypants96

    “This is the first time that Nvidia have introduced a vapour chamber cooling system on a reference card”

    Uhm, the original NVTTM cooler used by the Titan, 780, and 780Ti used a vapor chamber. NVidia switched to the far worse heatpipe cooler for the Maxwell cards, which was the cause of their overheating problems.

    I find the 1080 pretty underwhelming. It’s loud, it’s hot, it’s slower than a nearly two generation old 295X2 and barely faster than a 980Ti, it’s overpriced even compared to the faster AIB versions of itself, and since the entire NA market got a total of 36 cards for the launch, you can’t buy one anyways.

  19. Gabe de Gracindo

    I am Brazilian , I need a gtx 970, but do not want to sell my motorcycle to buy , accept donation [email protected] my email

  20. @4K+ the GTX 1080 is incredibly underwhelming, often only 8-9 FPS faster than a stock 980Ti.