Nvidia GTX1080 Ti Preview

(Time for a family reunion)

 

As you can see the GT 1080 Ti offers a very similar external aesthetic to the company’s other GT 10-series graphics cards, though a lot has changed under the hood, with Nvidia removing a DVI output to give this GPU more room to exhaust heat out of your system. 

This GPU will come with an 8+6-pin power configuration, giving this GPU an increased maximum TDP of 250W, which is a 75W increase over the GTX 1080. 

With the GTX 1080 Ti being bigger GPU with a higher TDP than the GTX 1080, Nvidia has had to radically change the cooling on their GTX 1080, coming with a new vapour chamber plate and a denser aluminium matrix/fin stack. This shift in cooler design is designed to allow Nvidia to keep their GTX 1080 quiet under load, though you will have to wait for our full review for a proper overview on thermals and noise levels. 

Below are all the known specification of the GTX 1080Ti and Nvidia’s other 16nm 10-series GPUs. 

As you can see above the GTX 1080 Ti is designed to compete with the GTX Titan X Pascal, despite its more affordable pricing, offering slightly more memory bandwidth and the same CUDA core count.   

The only real downgrade, when compared to the GTX Titan X Pascal, is the reduction in memory bus size from 384-bit to 352-bit, which takes away 8 ROPs and reduces this GPU’s VRAM capacity from 12GB on the GTX Titan X pascal to 11GB. Thankfully due to the upgrade to faster 11GHz GDDR5X memory, this GPU’s memory bandwidth actually is higher than the Titan X Pascal, despite the smaller memory bus size.    

With these specifications, the GTX 1080Ti should offer very similar performance to the GTX Titan X Pascal though the difference in ROP count and memory bandwidth means that there is no clear performance leader when looking at specifications alone. 

 

  

 

Conclusion

The GTX 1080Ti is certainly an interesting GPU launch, with Nvidia calling this GPU their best performing Ti to date, both in terms of sheers GPU grunt and when looking at the performance gains when compared to the GPU’s GTX X80 series counterpart. 

Nvidia states that this new GPU will offer a performance increase of 35% in games when compared to the GTX 1080, making the 1080Ti a significant upgrade over Nvidia’s existing 1080 GPU. 

The launch of the GTX 1080 Ti has also brought with it a $100 price decrease to the GTX 1080 and a $50 price decrease to the GTX 1070, giving PC builders a lot more value for money out of their GPU purchases.  

With a price tag of $699, the GTX 1080Ti will be a hard sell for most PC gamers, though it must be remembered that this price is similar to some high-end GTX 1080 models before Nvidia’s price decreases, so this can’t really be seen as anything other than good value in comparison.  

Yes, this GPU is expensive and yes this GPU will be overkill for gamers who use low-resolution displays. The GTX 1080 Ti is a graphics card that is designed for those on the bleeding edge, who crave high refresh rates and high display resolutions.

This may be the first consumer GPU that is truly 4K-ready, which is certainly an exciting prospect for PC gamers. 

 

You can join the discussion on the GTX 1080Ti on the OC3D Forums

8th March Update: we’ve made a little strip down video incase you’re interested!