Nvidia geforce gtx 1080: the first reviews appear

Today we bring you the review of the most powerful graphics card on the market: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 review. Finally we have the first reviews of the new GeForce GTX 1080 with Pascal architecture, the new graphics card that promises to become the absolute benchmark in terms of mono GPU performance and energy efficiency.

We would have liked to give our first impressions, but by not receiving any samples from Nvidia, we can only offer results from outsiders. Which confirms that we are not the perfect green-eyed blonde with curves for Nvidia. Although the most important part of this article: Will it live up to expectations and what the Nvidia CEO said a few weeks ago?

The guys at TechPowerUp have laid hands on a reference design Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 and subjected it to an extensive test bench to test its performance and the difference with previous generations. According to Nvidia, the new card is superior to a GTX 980 SLI.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Review

We start by taking a look at the GeForce GTX 1080 in its reference design. The card debuts with a reference heatsink that has been slightly redesigned to offer a more attractive aesthetic and superior performance. Nvidia showed a demo of this card overclocked at 2.1 GHz and its core temperature was kept at just 67ºC, so there are high expectations for the new vapor chamber heatsink that Nvidia has created.

At the back is a black Aluminum Backplate that covers the entire PCB and, in addition to improving the cooling, helps protect the components of the card and helps improve its rigidity.

Now we look at the bare card PCB and the first thing that catches our eye is a 6 + 2 phase VRM power that takes power from a single 8-pin connector, a great sample of the great energy efficiency of the Pascal architecture manufactured in 16nm FinFET by TSMC. We also highlight Micron's new GDDR5X memory chips that total 8 GB and reach an effective frequency of 10 GHz, a huge leap forward compared to the aging GDDR5 that already showed symptoms of exhaustion. This memory is capable of offering a bandwidth of 320 GB / s with its 256-bit interface. Finally we see the Pascal GP104 GPU made up of 2, 560 CUDA cores at a turbo frequency of 1, 711 MHz and which promises to make all previously manufactured GPUs obsolete

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Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 gaming performance

Once seen the main physical characteristics of the card we turn to see its performance in Full HD and 4K resolutions and a good number of games to be able to extract a reliable average of the card's performance. The system used by techpowerup is as follows:

System specs
Processor:	Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.5 GHz (Skylake, 8192 KB Cache)
Motherboard:	ASUS Maximus VIII Hero Intel Z170
Memory:	G.SKILL 16 GB Trident-Z DDR4 @ 3000 MHz 15-16-16-35
Storage:	WD Caviar Blue WD10EZEX 1 TB
PSU:	Antec HCP-1200 1200W
Heatsink:	Cryorig R1 Universal 2x 140 mm fan
Software:	Windows 10 64-bit
Drivers:	NVIDIA: 365.10 WHQL AMD: Crimson 16.4.2 Beta GTX 1080: 368.16 Beta
Display:	Acer CB240HYKbmjdpr 24 ″ 3840 × 2160

Anno 2205

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate

Battlefield 3

Battlefield 4

Batman: Arkham Knight

Call of Duty: Black Ops III

Crysis 3

Fallout 4

Far Cry Primal

Grand Theft Auto V

Hitman

Just Cause 3

Rainbow Six: Siege

Rise of the Tomb Raider

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Relative performance in all games

We now look at the average performance in all games and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 is the undisputed queen. The new graphics card is 10% higher than a GTX 970 SLI under Full HD resolution and if we go up to the demanding 4K resolution the advantage increases to 25%. Compared to the GeForce GTX 980Ti, the advantage of the GTX 1080 is 24% in Full HD and 27% in 4K, a very respectable figure although it may be less than what many expected.

Overclock and temperature

Overclocking has been one of the aspects that has stood out the most in recent days about the GTX 1080 and the Pascal architecture. Nvidia promises to reach frequencies of 2.1 GHz in the reference model and as we have mentioned before, in the demonstration the American firm managed to keep the card's temperature at only 67ºC.

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Techpowerup has gotten to work and have pushed the GeForce GTX 1080 to the limit of its frequencies, they have managed to reach 2, 114 MHz in the core, which is quite impressive and agrees with what Nvidia said. This overclock has been accompanied by a significant increase in the performance of the card:

The negative part of the overclock has been that the card has reached a temperature of 83ºC, a figure that is not dangerous but is far from the 67ºC that Nvidia showed in its presentation.

GeForce GTX 1080 Review Power Consumption

The GeForce GTX 1080 shows excellent performance in terms of power consumption. In the idle state it hardly consumes 8W and its maximum consumption amounts to 186W, being the average playing of 166W, very good figures for the most powerful mono GPU card in the world and which shows that the change to 16nm has meant a significant improvement in the efficiency.

GeForce GTX 1080 Review Conclusion

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 has been untouchable in all games and is the most efficient graphics card and the most powerful mono GPU currently available. Its advantage over the GTX 980Ti is approximately 25%, which is a very respectable figure but that perhaps makes it difficult to justify the change since the reference version, also known as the “Founder Edition”, goes on sale for an approximate price of 780-790 euros.

The operating temperature is correct but much higher than expected, in this sense it may be better to wait for custom versions of assemblers with much more powerful and efficient cooling systems.

What did you think of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080? Do you think your performance justifies a change? We will add it to our guide to the best graphics cards once it is available in the Spanish market.

Source: techpowerup