EVGA GTX 1080 FTW review: The most powerful graphics card in the world, made better - sweatmantherond

At a Peek

Expert's Rating

Pros

Threefold 8-bowling pin connections amps up the potential for lofty overclocks
Efficient ACX 3.0 cooling
Overclocked in excess of 2.1GHz connected air
Outstanding functioning on all benchmarks

Cons

Requires a little more power than the Father's Edition

Our Finding of fact

This is the GeForce GTX 1080 you've been waiting for. The EVGA GTX 1080 FTW puts EVGA's personal mend Nvidia's beastly card, and it's a winner, from its high base clock and custom-made cooling to its extra 8-pin power connection.

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This is the GeForce GTX 1080 you've been waiting for.

Don't get me wrong: The reference version of the GTX 1080 exploded onto the scene as the virtually badass art carte ever. Only the first volley of GTX 1080s available—in real moderate quantities—were unfree to rebrands of the Nvidia Founders Version alone. While that's a courteous card, the Founders Edition costs $100 over the GTX 1080's $600 MSRP, and that surcharge doesn't still get you an overclock or a beefy custom cooling solvent. You couldn't aid but wonder what would happen once the wide world of nontextual matter card vendors out there were able to stamp their personal cutaneous senses along Nvidia's hellish batting order.

The EVGA GTX 1080 FTW ($680 on Newegg, when it's in stock) is the answer. This overclocked graphics card's al-Qa'ida clock is nigh as malodorous as the GTX 1080 Founders Edition boost clock, and between its custom cooling and extra 8-pin power connection, it has the potential to cristal a blaze of a sulfurous higher.

OH, and did I mention that it's cheaper than Nvidia's less capable Founders Variant? Let's travail in.

Run across the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW

With EVGA yet to release a Classified, Headpin, or Hydro Cop versions of the GTX 1080, the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW currently represents the pinnacle of the company's lineup. As with all custom graphics cards, the nub spectacles of the GTX 1080 FTW largely mirror what you'll find with the reference version. It's still built around Nvidia's new 16nm Pascal GPU, with 8GB of cutting-edge GDDR5X memory flying at a speedy 10Gbps. EVGA didn't overclock the Tup. You can catch up on totally of the base-level technical details connected the first page of PCWorld's GeForce GTX 1080 review.

That said, there are some major, better differences 'tween the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW and its Founders Variant counterpart. You'll notice the first one as soon as you set u the card: Piece the Founders Edition draws 180 Watts of power over a single 8-pin connectedness, the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW is rated at a 215W TDP via a twin of 8-pin connections. That extra succus amps up the potential for impressive overclocks, though your GPU's level bes speed always depends on how lucky you get in the silicon lottery. (That's why we don't ofttimes include overclocking results in nontextual matter card reviews, though we will for this one.)

evga gtx 1080 ftw specs — The EVGA GTX 1080 FTW's substance spec sheet. (Click to enlarge any double in this article.)

Speaking of which, the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW rocks a fairly healthy overclock out of the boxful. While the stock GTX 1080 uses a 1,607MHz base and 1,733MHz boost clock, the EVGA FTW starts at 1,721MHz and boosts equal to 1,860MHz. That gives EVGA's carte du jour a decent leg up complete Nvidia's Founders Variant.

And that advantage is multiplied by the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW's competent ACX 3.0 cooling. The spic-and-span generation of EVGA's vaunted custom-temperature reduction solvent features a pair of massive 100mm fans that blinking off in low power scenarios and contain double lump-bearings that assistant them last up to four times longer than competing card game, EVGA claims. Those sit over a full-pig-sized set of heat sink fans, with the GPU itself splashy by a large copper plate with cardinal heat pipes of different sizes snaking taboo of it. The card's memory and MOSFET are beaded by a cooling system home base, too, and the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW supports 10 power phases (compared to the Founders Edition's quint).

evga gtx 1080 ftw acx 3 — EVGA's ACX 3.0 cooler dissected.

The importance of slapping a powerful custom cooler on the GTX 1080 can't be overstated. Spell we technically overclocked the Founders Edition to up to 2,088MHz (on air!!!), in use the card began thermal-strangulation speeds down to 1,870MHz or less under encumbrance, as Nvidia's single-fan vapor chamber cooler struggled to keep the GPU cool. EVGA's ACX 3.0 solution, on the other hand, kept an overclock running at 2,050MHz or higher across the board, top-hole out at a plain 74 degrees Celsius in gameplay scenarios.

Beyond the cooler, the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW packs multi-hued RGB lighting across the entire distance of the card that can be adjusted via the company's PrecisionXOC software, which can as wel be used to overclock your placard. (There's a dual BIOS switch onboard to help you go back if you push things too far.)

The overall physical design of the poster is attractive indeed, with a mordant and silver design, metal everywhere, and an eye-fetching EVGA-branded backplate. The port pick consists of an HDMI 2.0b porthole, DVI-I (rather than the GTX 1080-basic DVI-D), and three DisplayPort 1.4 connections.

Of course, the EVGA GTX 1080 as wel supports the Pascal GPU's arsenal of fresh features, including DirectX 12-boosting asynchronous compute additions and simultaneous multi-projection (elaborated in depth on page two of PCWorld's GTX 1080 review), software package perks like Ansel screenshots, and fancy custom-built overclocking with GPU Boost 3.0 (careful happening page three of our GTX 1080 review), and Nvidia's new high-speed SLI bridge over.

Got it? Good. Army of the Pure's move on to the fun stuff—game performance!

Succeeding page: Testing frame-up

Testing the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW

Just like ever, we proved the GeForce GTX 1080 on PCWorld's devoted graphics posting benchmark system, which is loaded with high-stepping-remainder components to avoid potential bottlenecks in other parts of the automobile and prove avowedly, unfettered graphics performance. Discover highlights of the build:

Intel's Center i7-5960X ($1,016 on Newegg) with a Corsair Hydro Series H100i closed-loop water ice chest ($105 happening Newegg).
An Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard ($380 on Newegg).
Corsair's Vengeance LPX DDR4 memory ($65 along Newegg), Obsidian 750D full towboa case ($140 on Newegg), and 1,200-Watt AX1200i mightiness supply ($308 on Newegg).
A 480GB Intel 730 series SSD ($250 on Newegg)
Windows 10 Pro

To see how badass EVGA's beast really is, we're comparing it against a slew of high-end graphics card game. There's the reference $500 GTX 980, $460 MSI Radeon 390X Gambling 8GB, and $500 vent-cooled Asus Strix Fury, as well as $650 Radeon Wildnes X and $1,000 Giant X. The $750 GTX 1080 Founders Edition (both stock and overclocked to up to 2,088MHz) and $550 GTX 1070 Founders Edition are also enclosed, course. AMD never transmitted United States of America a $1500 Radeon Pro Duo to psychometric test, unfortunately, so you won't find dual-Fiji GPU results registered. All proprietary AMD/Nvidia artwork technology is disabled during testing, and we use the stated in-game default option presets unless noted other than.

Overclocking results

Overclocking's always a roll of the dice thanks to the Silicon Lottery, but the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW was clearly built with overclocking in mind with those cardinal 8-pin power connections, so we decided to include some overclocking results in a few of our tests.

Ignoring the custom per-voltage overclocking capable with GPU Boost 3.0, we manually inched clock speeds upward in EVGA's PrecisionXOC software until things started to break out. The final result: an additional 110MHz boost over the GTX 1080 FTW's already boosted core clock speeds, and an additional 175MHz added to its memory clock speeds. In exercise, that resulted in a uttermost core time hurrying of 2,113MHz during a Unigine Nirvana run, though speeds typically hung out around 2,050MHz in actual games.

Yes, that's an overclock in excess of 2.1GHz connected bare. The engineering work that Nvidia put into improving speeds for both the computer memory and the core clock are impressive so, A are the tweaks EVGA made to make the GTX 1080 more overclocking-friendly. The extra speed gives the overclocked EVGA 1080 FTW a decent (but not mind-blowing) boost finished the GTX 1080 Founders Edition.

Next varlet: Division and Hitman performance

The Division

Ubisoft's The Division, a third-person shooter/RPG set that mixes elements of Destiny and Gears of Warfare, kicks things bump off. The game's hardening in a beautiful and brave refreshment of base-apocalyptic New York, running on Ubisoft's new Snowdrop railway locomotive. We've disabled the handful of Nvidia GameWorks features to level the playing bailiwick. Despite scaling well across all nontextual matter card game the game actually tends to run slightly better connected Radeon computer hardware—at to the lowest degree until the GTX 1080 gets involved.

EVGA's GTX 1080 FTW commands a slight lead o'er the GTX 1080 Founders Variation here, though Nvidia's extension card inches slightly ahead of EVGA's model when overclocked. Nvidia's powerful GPU blows AMD's best cards out of the water, albeit for a good deal more money.

Hitman

IO Interactive's wonderful sandbox of bump off leans to a great extent toward AMD card game, though the GTX 1080's full-fat GP100 GPU has enough sheer power to outpunch AMD's Vehemence card. The GTX 1080s too significantly trump their GTX 900-series brethren.

Hit man's built around IO's Glacier engine. We tested the game in DirectX 11 mode, because Hitman's bolted-on DirectX 12 support can be bad wonky even in the best of times.

The EVGA GTX 1080 FTW's beefier ice chest starts to show its benefits here. Because the card ne'er tops 75 degrees Celsius while it's pouring the game, the GPU never starts to throttle spine clock speeds, which allows EVGA's card to deliver high performance results taboo-of-the-box than the overclocked Founders Edition, despite the ostensibly higher max time speeds of the latter.

Next page: Rise of the Grave Raider

Rebel of the Grave Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider is flat-out one of the most gorgeous games ever released, peculiarly if you have a powerful graphics card capable of pushing high framework rates with all the bells and whistles enabled. The GTX 1080 is just much a card, landing at close to 60 frames per second even at 4K resolution. IT blows everything else out of the water. AMD's flagship Furiousness X, meanwhile, can only polish off roughly half that.

Outer of the box, the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW's performance lands nip-dab between the parentage GTX 1080 Founders Edition and the overclocked Founders Variant. As with Hitman, we test RoTR in DirectX 11, as its secured-on DX12 support actually results in let down average entrap rates—though information technology also raises minimum average build rates aside a decent margin, resulting in a smoother overall see.

Next page: Far Cry Primaeval performance

Former Armed Forces Cry Primal

Yep, we use two antithetic Ubisoft games in our lineup—but Far Cry Primal runs on a completely antithetical locomotive than The Division, using the fashionable version of the long-pouring and well-respected Dunia engine. We test the game with the free 4K HD Texture Pack installed.

While Radeon card game hold the advantage at mainstream price points, the GTX 1080 pulls away from the large number, with the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW performing slightly better than the overclocked Founders Edition.

Next page: Ashes of the Singularity and DX12

Ashes of the Singularity and DX12

Between the bolted-happening DirectX 12 support in Hitman and Rear of the Tomb Raider and the built-in limitations in testing Windows Store apps—which don't support overlays or benchmarking tools like FRAPS—there's only a single game with a stellar DX12 implementation to test: Ashes of the Singularity, track on Oxide's customised Atomic number 7 engine.

Beyond being a refreshingly fun regressive divine by classic real-time strategy games, AoTS was an crude flag-pallbearer for DirectX 12, and the performance gains AoTS offers in DX12 over DX11 are optic-opening—at least on Radeon cards. The Fury X even manages to come within spitting distance of the GTX 1080 when it's running game DX12!

AoTS 's DX12 implementation makes heavy purpose of asynchronous cipher features, which are supported past dedicated hardware in Radeon GPUs, but non GTX 900-serial Nvidia cards. In fact, the software preemption workaround that Maxwell-settled Nvidia cards use to mimic the async cypher capabilities tank performance so hard that Oxide's game is coded to ignore async compute when it detects a GeForce GPU. Those card game really execute worse when gushing AoTS in DX12 despite the large gains shown past AMD cards.

That's non true with GTX 10-serial publication card game, which see humble gains in DX12 compared to DX11 even with async compute on the face of it still disabled.

The EVGA GTX 1080 FTW's impressive cooling solution and impossible-of-the-box overclock doesn't do much to compensate for Nvidia's ho-HUM DX12 showing, but it is enough to increase average frame rates by a few frames per second over the Founders Edition, both at sprout clocks and overclocked. And even with Radeon's async compute advantage, the GTX 1080 GPU's overpowering power gives it the performance lead crossways the board, even when the Fury X is using DX12. That gap widens significantly when all cards are running in DX11.

Next paginate: Celluloid benchmarks.

3DMark Fire Strike and Fire Strike Ultra

We also tested the GTX 1080 using 3DMark's highly respected Ardour Strike and Fire Strike Ultra man-made benchmarks. Provok Affect runs at 1080p, while Give notice Strike Ultra renders the same scene, but with more intense effects, at 4K resolution.

There are no major surprises here. The EVGA GTX 1080 FTW performs a bit better than the Founders Version, equally expected, and absolutely blows everything other away—as we've already established in the GTX 1080 Founders Variant review.

Next page: Power and fire u.

Power and heat

Finally, let's take a look at the GTX 1080's power and thermal results.

The EVGA GTX 1080 consumes quite a little more power than the GTX 1080 Founders Edition, but that's to be expected with its beefy overclock, additional fans, and extra 8-pin power slot. That said, even when EVGA's card is cranked to concluded 2GHz, it still draws roughly every bit much king as AMD's Fury and far little succus than the Radeon R9 390X. AMD's current cards are absolute power hogs.

It's worth noting that our power and temperature tests represent a worst-causa scenario, pushing nontextual matter cards to their limits. Power is measured by plugging the intact system into a Watts Up meter, then running a emphasise test with Furmark—which Nvidia calls "a might virus"—for 15 proceedings.

That obviously inches our maximum temperature readings upward too, which are taken during that Furmark run exploitation both the computer software's collective-in tool as substantially as Speedfan.

It's worth noting once many how efficient EVGA's ACX 3.0 cooling system result is. With its out-of-the-boxful overclock, the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW runs cooler than the GTX 1070 Founders Edition despite drawing 100 more watts. When we manually maxed out the tease at 2113MHz, it still ran cooler than the stock GTX 1080 Founders Edition. And again, these numbers are the absolute bad-case scenario. Even at 2GHz, the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW gain 74 degrees Celsius in The Division, and 68 degrees in Far Cry Primal.

This aerial cooler does its job and does its job well, put differently—though the sealed-loop-the-loop liquid cooling integrated into AMD's Delirium X by nature runs even colder. The EVGA GTX 1080 FTW's awful cooling pays clear execution dividends, allowing the card to run at high clocks much to a greater extent consistently than the GX 1080 Founders Edition, which starts throttling the indorsement you overclock it if you preceptor't tinker with fan speeds.

Last page: The bottom product line

The new Riley B King, like a sho in royal garb

When we reviewed Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition, we hailed the GPU as the novel king of PC gaming (at least until the inevitable GTX 1080 Ti hits). The card delivered a 70-plus percent saltation in performance over the older GTX 980—an absolutely monstrous jump for a single GPU generation—patc veritably sipping power and running about as quiet as whatsoever air-cooled reference carte du jour we'd ever laid ears on. Moving happening from 28nm GPUs is every fleck American Samoa wonderful as gamers had hoped, and the GTX 1080 is everything Nvidia secure and much.

Our only major lament was the lack of customer partner cards at launch. The Founders Edition commands a steep cost premium, and WHO knew what Nvidia's 16nm Pascal GPU would be able of with fancy coolers, superior features, and hefty overclocks applied?

Now we know.

The GTX 1080 is the most powerful graphics scorecard ever created, and EVGA's GTX 1080 FTW is superior to Nvidia's Founders Variant in every possible way. It's faster, IT's quieter, IT's cooler, it's gorgeous, and heck, IT's eventide cheaper than Nvidia's circuit board (though more basic GTX 1080 variants start at around $600). Nvidia's flagship GPU shines brighter in EVGA's susceptible hands.

Sure, the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW demands slightly more power than the Founders Edition, but it uses the same 500W recommended power supply, and the handful of extra pennies you'll pay connected your monthly energy bill is meriting it for everything you render exchange.

The GTX 1080 family still ISN't for everyone. Current GTX 980 Ti and Titan X owners probably shouldn't upgrade for any rational reason unless you're eligible for EVGA's sea wolf Step-Up Program. While IT comes close, the GTX 1080 won't quite hit 60 Federal Protective Service at 4K with every the bells and whistles enabled in every game. And IT's distinctly overkill for gaming on a 1080p admonisher—you should support an eye proscribed for reviews of AMD's $200 Radeon RX 480 instead, which is launching on June 29.

Simply forget all that. As I said in my original Founders Edition reexaminatio, the GTX 1080 is badass incarnate. EVGA's GTX 1080 FTW is that badass incarnate on steroids. If you're on the market for a killer custom version of PC gaming's freshly laureled GPU champion, the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW ($680 on Newegg) comes highly, extremely, extremely recommended—if you can get one in stock. These things are selling like-minded hotcakes when you can even find them available, and rightfully so.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/415385/evga-gtx-1080-ftw-review-the-most-powerful-graphics-card-in-the-world-made-better.html

Posted by: sweatmantherond.blogspot.com