Price / Where to Buy
US – $699 – NVIDIA SRP
PH: Approx. Php42,000 (Depends on AIB)
Ever since the rumors of NVIDIA possibly releasing the GTX 1080 Ti soon after the TITAN X Pascal‘s launch, we’ve mentioned that NVIDIA was in no way pressured nor challenged to release a GPU in a market where it pretty much dominates with its GTX 1080. Fast-forward to February and AMD has made significant noise in the DIY PC and enthusiast scene with the AMD Ryzen announcement so it started to tease its own announcement. At GDC 2017, NVIDIA finally unveiled the NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti, little to anyone’s surprise as they were teasing it with a countdown.
Today marks the official launch of the NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti, the new flagship of the GeForce GPU family promising up to 30% performance advantage over the TITAN X Pascal which was announced last year. Read on to find out more about NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, its pre-emptive strike against whatever AMD’s Vega may be packing to the GPU wars.
About the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made the announcement in his GDC keynote where he went in detail about the GTX 1080 Ti. To start things off, the NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti will be based off the same GP102 die as the TITAN X Pascal. The GPU will have 3584 CUDA cores and will have a base clock frequency of 1480Mhz and will be able to boost up to 1582Mhz. Similar to the GTX 1080 and TITAN X Pascal, the GTX 1080 Ti will also be equipped with next-gen GDDR5X running at 11Gbps. This next-gen GDDR5X is different from the previous GDDR5X NVIDIA utilized as it is engineered to deliver cleaner signals which in turn benefits the card with much faster memory IO capabilities. This is wired to a 352-bit wide memory interface which yields a maximum memory bandwidth of 484GB/s.
Tiled Caching
Other technological advances that the GTX 1080 Ti bring to the table is Tiled Caching. Thanks to the bandwidth improvements in the GTX 1080 Ti, they are able to adopt a technique that makes rendering more efficient by utilizing a technique to maximize the bandwidth of the card without affecting overall performance.
With this release, NVIDIA is also releasing a few changes to its software ecosystem with the announcement of new additions to Gameworks, DX12 support for VRWorks, FCAT VR performance analysis tools, and the reintroduction of ShadowPlay.
Further Announcements
NVIDIA will be allowing board partners to create customs cards based on the GTX1080 Ti and they are expected to arrive by April. Overclocked GTX 1080 and GTX 1060 cards with newer GDDR5X and GDDR5 memories will also be released soonafter with the product stack for the Pascal family as seen below:
- GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
- GeForce GTX 1080 11 Gbps
- GeForce GTX 1080
- GeForce GTX 1070
- GeForce GTX 1060 9 Gbps
- GeForce GTX 1060
- GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
- GeForce GTX 1050
Closer Look
The new GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition retains the same vapor chamber cooler utilized by the previous generations as well as the Pascal reference cards. It features a metal, blower type cooler. Unlike the GTX 1080, the GTX 1080 Ti requires a single 6-pin and single 8-pin power connector. It retains two SLI fingers which support SLI HB bridges.
Performance Testing
Test Setup
Processor: Intel Core i7 7700K
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus IX APEX
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z DDR4-3200 16GB
Storage: Intel SSD 750 NVME U.2 SSD
PSU: Seasonic Platinum 1000
Cooling: Thermaltake Water 3.0 Riings 360mm
Monitor: ASUS PG27AQ UHD Monitor
VGA: NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition
For a full-hardware workout, visit http://www.futuremark.com for our benchmarks of choice.
For benchmarking methodology please see our game benchmark method guide.
Frame rates and frame times of a 60-second game play were recorded using FRAPS v3.5.99. The test results are the average of 3 benchmark runs. Since this is a GPU review, we benchmarked the area of the games that put heavy load on the GPU.
All our test runs are repeatable, click the links below for area and details. Read our benchmarking methodology.
- Crysis 3 – Post Human
- Grand Theft Auto V – Palomino Highlands
- The Witcher 3 – Woesong Bridge
- Rise of the Tomb Raider – Valley Farmstead
- DOTA2 – Shanghai Major Finals, Game 2, Team Secret vs Team Liquid (23:45 – 24:45)
See our Youtube playlist for benchmark sequences.
The games and corresponding image quality settings used are shown in their respective tabs.
Note: Some proprietary technologies of NVIDIA like PCSS, HBAO+, and HairWorks work on AMD GPU’s BUT to maintain uniformity amongst GPUs, these have been turned OFF.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
The reboot of the gaming phenomenon Tomb Raider puts players in Lara Croft’s hiking boots as we pick-up from the last game. Featuring upgraded graphics, DX12 support and new image quality improvements, this game challenges new hardware with its graphical offering.
DirectX11
Anti-aliasing: FXAA
Very High settings
Ambient Occlusion: On
Pure Hair: On
Vignette Blur: Off
Motion Blur: Off
Bloom: On
Tessellation: On
Screen Space Reflections: On
Lens Flares: On
Film Grain: Off
The Witcher 3
CD Projekt Red’s latest installment in the Witcher saga features one of the most graphically intense offering the company has to date. As Geralt of Rivia, slay monsters, beasts and men as you unravel the mysteries of your past. Vast worlds and lush sceneries make this game a visual feast and promises to make any system crawl at its highest settings.
Frame Rate: Unlimited
Nvidia HairWorks: Off
Ultra Settings
Motion Blur: Off
Blur: Off
Anti-aliasing: On
Bloom: On
Sharpening: High
Ambient Occlusion: SSAO
Depth of Field: On
Chromatic Aberration: Off
Vignetting: On
Light Shafts: On
DOTA2
The most popular game on Steam and the biggest competition in eSports; DOTA 2 is powered by the Source 2 engine. The game is fairly light on low to medium settings but maxed out with heavy action on screen especially during clashes can really stress most systems especially with Reborn update. This is a game where frame times matter as responsiveness is very important in high-stakes competition.
DirectX9 (default)
Best-Looking slider setting (Ultra)
FPS_MAX 240
Vsync OFF
Grand Theft Auto V
The fifth and most successful installment to date in the highly controversial Grand Theft Auto series brings a graphical overhaul to the PC version of GTA V which many have lauded as a superior approach in porting a console game to PC. Featuring large areas and detailing, GTA V is a highly challenging application in terms of scene complexity.
FXAA Off
MSAA 4x
TXAA Off
Very High settings
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
Motion Blur disabled
Advanced Graphics enabled
Crysis 3
The most visually intense game to have ever been made during its time. Prophet is back to take on the Ceph and Cell after a long sleep and the world isn’t what it was when before he got frozen. CryEngine 3 is behind this beautiful beast that will put a lot of systems to their knees. The opening level shows off the exquisite particle and water rendering of the engine capable of still giving modern GPUs a workout to this day.
Texture Resolution: Very High
Anti-aliasing: SMAA 2Tx
System Spec: Very High
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
Motion Blur: Disabled
TEMPERATURE & POWER CONSUMPTION
To measure both power consumption and heat, we stress the video card and record the peak values for heat and wattage. We use default values on the cards and stress test them using 3DMark FireStrike Ultra in 20 loops to simulate gaming loads and this is where we also base our power draw. System power draw is measured from the socket.
The Founders Edition cooler isn’t really the best cooler in our books and we’re sure NVIDIA is pretty aware of this as we know the card can still boost further when in the best thermal conditions. That said, the FE cooler and many before it have done well but still hold back the cards in terms of performance. The thermal performance isn’t anything stellar and the card does get kinda toasty faster than a GTX 1080 FE, albeit it does deliver way more performance.
Moving over to power draw, we can see that the GTX 1080 Ti sips more power than the GTX 1080 and this is well-noted as the card itself does like to boost as much as it can to maximize performance per watt.
Under the thermal camera, we can see the GTX 1080 Ti FE under 3DMark stress load gets quite warm at 72*C in its hottest part. This is still way below anything alarming but the card does radiate the heat in the case so we advise a really decent airflow setup when running a 1080 Ti FE.
Conclusion
When we first took a look at the TITAN X Pascal, we decided to just forego a review because we felt that despite its power, its imminent rarity will deem any feedback pointless as the anyone looking for such performance has already decided to get it. The fact that no custom board was made also made that easier since only one variant was available. With the release of the GTX 1080 Ti, the power of the TITAN X Pascal becomes more accessible to the masses and with an extra boost. NVIDIA promised a 30% performance improvement over the TITAN XP and it did not disappoint. With performance numbers favoring the GTX 1080 Ti across the boards, its performance is simply unrivaled, even in 4K. The GTX 1080 Ti makes driving new Quad-HD 165hz and 240hz monitors a possibility for those looking for fluid gaming for eSports and competitive gaming where microseconds matter.
There is simply nothing negative to point out in terms of performance on the GTX 1080 Ti which moves us to the build quality. Everyone has had a love/hate relationship with NVIDIA’s TITAN cooler and while it looks really stunning, it is simply the only drawback that GTX 1080 Ti has right now. The cooler is simply not sufficient to fully unleash what the card is capable of. At an average temp of 77*C and peaking at 84*C, the GTX 1080 Ti plays around a few hundred Mhz above its Boost clock but when heat starts to set in, you’ll fall back to your rated Boost frequency. This is obviously an issue for first adopters only that won’t watercool as NVIDIA has mentioned AIB custom designs will arrive by April with brands already showing off their designs in their marketing promos.
Before launch, the GTX 1080 was sufficient enough for any gamers out there. It was a widely sought after card and commanded the market in terms of performance since its launch but with the launch of the GTX 1080 Ti, the bar has been set higher and it is obviously an attempt at gagging any attempt from AMD’s side to persuade gamers to wait for their upcoming GPUs. With the GTX 1080 dropping to a lower cost and the GTX 1080 Ti taking flagship status, NVIDIA holds the crown further as the undisputed GPU makers right now.
If you have held out this long to purchase a GTX 1080, now’s your chance. But given the performance advantage of the NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti, that lingering craving for the highest-end GPU is going to be hard to control. If you’re looking for the most powerful graphics card in the market right now that can drive your 4K gaming and/or high-frequency eSports display, then the GTX 1080 Ti is the card for you. It may not be cheap right now, but when custom cards come out, there should be plenty to choose from. Some more pricier, so that should make the Founders Edition more palatable.
Warranty varies by AIB. We give the NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti our B2G Editor’s Choice Award!
6 Comments
“…promising up to 30% performance advantage over the TITAN X Pascal which was announced last year.”
Hindi po ba against 1080 yung sinabing 30%-ish advantage?
may copy ako nyang slide na yan, 30% sa keynote sinabi ni JSH for TITAN XP, nasa slide though is 35% versus 1080. Based on benchmarks, against 1080, kaya naman pero against titan XP bihira ung 30% na sinasabi nila.
Do note nung nilabas GTX 1080, it was promised with 300% over GTX 980.. ang fine print was on VR nga lang
I see. Sa mga benchmarks kasi na nakita ko, around -/+ 1-2% diff lang si 1080 Ti and Titan XP
1-2% difference kahit 200FPS pa yan is just 2-3 frames, so yes totoo pretty close sila. What we’re looking at here talaga is yung price advantage and promising performance benefits.
Agree, sobrang hirap na ireason out yung why you should buy a Titan XP.
Nvidia likes to troll around with their market, basically a shaved version of the Titan XP without the premium price tag.
Buti na lang di ko afford mga card na to! lol.