Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 G1 Gaming Review

[Steve]

When Nvidia released the GeForce GTX 1080 last month, it was the biggest intergenerational performance leap that we've seen in six years. The GTX 1080 offers a massive 60% increase in performance over the GTX 980 that it's replacing. It does this while staying in roughly the same power envelope, making the GTX 1080 the most impressive GPU we have seen in recent memory.

Since first testing the reference Founders Edition GTX 1080 a month ago, we have been eagerly anticipating getting our hands on the board partner versions. The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 G1 Gaming is a triple fan cooled 1080 that also boasts a redesigned PCB. Even though it's currently out of stock pretty much everywhere, we expect availability to improve shortly.

When it comes to custom designed graphics cards, Gigabyte almost always does a great job -- for instance, we particularly liked the design of their Gigabyte GTX 780 GHz Edition and Radeon R9 290X OC graphics cards. So, when we got the opportunity to check out the new G1 Gaming version of the GTX 1080, we pounced right on it.

Read the complete review.

 

[darkzelda]

It's disappointing to see the highest end cards hitting around 60 minimum fps in some games even at 1440p.

 

[itx1530]

Given the headroom with Maxwell, Pascal has been disappointing in this regard. People were saying this was just the FE reference but were now seeing it on the AIBs too.

 

[mosu]

Just 2 small questions: 1 Why Hairworks is off when testing a Nvidia video card with Nvidia sponsored title ....and 2. Please show power consumption at idle so we can determine the in-game power draw.

 

[pencea]

Just 2 small questions: 1 Why Hairworks is off when testing a Nvidia video card with Nvidia sponsored title ....and 2. Please show power consumption at idle so we can determine the in-game power draw.

I don't get this too. I notice a lot of sites turning off Hairworks when reviewing the GTX 1080.

 

[Evernessince]

Just 2 small questions: 1 Why Hairworks is off when testing a Nvidia video card with Nvidia sponsored title ....and 2. Please show power consumption at idle so we can determine the in-game power draw.

Because HairWorks and GameWorks in general sucks. No point in enabling Nvidia's planned obsolescence project, it'll only make you cry.

Thanks for the review steve! This card does further the point that these early pascal cards do have a pretty hard overclock limit, which is a real shame.

 

[cldmstrsn]

Just 2 small questions: 1 Why Hairworks is off when testing a Nvidia video card with Nvidia sponsored title ....and 2. Please show power consumption at idle so we can determine the in-game power draw.

How are people still asking this question. Its for parity when also showing the performace of AMD cards so people dont ***** about sites being for AMD or Nvidia.

 

[EEatGDL]

Just 2 small questions: 1 Why Hairworks is off when testing a Nvidia video card with Nvidia sponsored title ....and 2. Please show power consumption at idle so we can determine the in-game power draw.

It's a simple answer: AMD cards are being tested too, they get an even bigger penalty in performance and wouldn't be fair to show them even worse in comparison to NVIDIA, with Hairworks enabled.

 

[Nero7]

It's disappointing to see the highest end cards hitting around 60 minimum fps in some games even at 1440p.

Its because Techspot is using SMAA Ultra.

 

[Odium]

Omg! OMG! That amazing 2 fps performace boost over stock 1080. Must be a good reason to pay 50$ more. Wow and look at that HUGE 4 fps overclock performance boost! Definately is overclockers dream.

 

[Evernessince]

Its because Techspot is using SMAA Ultra.

SMAA is a similar tech to FXAA and does not carry a huge performance penalty. On Ultra it's only two fps on my GTX 780

 

[madboyv1]

Hnng want this card for my ML08 but sold out everywhere...

 

[Burty117]

Omg! OMG! That amazing 2 fps performace boost over stock 1080. Must be a good reason to pay 50$ more. Wow and look at that HUGE 4 fps overclock performance boost! Definately is overclockers dream.

You do realize it's 50$ less right?

 

[Autoimmunity]

Omg! OMG! That amazing 2 fps performace boost over stock 1080. Must be a good reason to pay 50$ more. Wow and look at that HUGE 4 fps overclock performance boost! Definately is overclockers dream.

It's $50 cheaper, not $50 more. The founder's edition is $699.

 

[Odium]

Omg! OMG! That amazing 2 fps performace boost over stock 1080. Must be a good reason to pay 50$ more. Wow and look at that HUGE 4 fps overclock performance boost! Definately is overclockers dream.

It's $50 cheaper, not $50 more. The founder's edition is $699.

EVGA version costs 600$. I didn't say about founders edition. Sorry for confusion.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Considering the performance out of the box, the amount of overclock I can achieve over a Founders Edition card will not persude me from getting a GTX 1070 whatsoever. I certainly don't buy cards based on what I can potentially get from an overclock, but any gains are welcomed.

"Though the improved thermals did nothing to help overclocking performance or performance in general, as a result the G1 Gaming is no faster than our overclocked Founders Edition GTX 1080."

I didn't see the clocks of the overclocked GTX 1080 FE in this review.
I would have also liked to see the actual in-game boost clock. What you see as boost clock in GPU-Z is not the max the card will hit.

 

[skline00]

Nice card. I custom water cool and decided to get the first GTX 1080 FE available so I bought a ZOTAC GTX 1080 FE. The FE Cooler is really well made and since they have released a fix for the fan curve. hopefully it has been fixed. Under water the GTX is very cool.

 

[Ascaris]

I would have also liked to see the actual in-game boost clock. What you see as boost clock in GPU-Z is not the max the card will hit.

Good point. If it is anything like my Kepler, it will be the TDP limit that matters the most. With a stock TDP of 180w and a theoretical max of 225w with the 8-pin power connector, there is a little room to use a utility like MSI Afterburner to raise the TDP, if the firmware (and cooling) will allow it. I had to edit the firmware on my Kepler to get it to increase TDP. I don't know if there will be a tool to do this as easily as I did with Kepler BIOS Editor, or tweaker, or whatever the heck it was called.

 

[Tommy Lee]

Given the headroom with Maxwell, Pascal has been disappointing in this regard. People were saying this was just the FE reference but were now seeing it on the AIBs too.

The problem with these cards people don't know how to overclock them properly the fact of the matter Core overclocking is useless it's all Memory overclocking

This is what NVIDIA failed to mention you can't up clock the Core but you can Upclock the crap out of the Ram
which brings great results so to answer your question they overclock well you just need to understand Coreclocking is dead and memory overclock is what is going to boost performance

I have a 1080G1 and overclocking the memory has given me great results

 

[TheJ88]

Preferred the aesthetic of the 980 Ti G1 Gaming to TBH...

 

[cliffordcooley]

Because HairWorks and GameWorks in general sucks. No point in enabling Nvidia's planned obsolescence project, it'll only make you cry.

However this is a review. I've gotta admit I'm on a fence with this question, as I can see both sides. While compared to AMD they should be turned off. And while they may become obsolete, that doesn't make them irrelevant today. And any review that doesn't include them at least in one graph is incomplete.

 

[cldmstrsn]

I just bought mine for 629 and its perfect for the performance I want at 1440. After this I dont see me upgrading for years. At least till 2020 or beyond. Just depends when I want to make the jump to 4 or 5k.