Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 G1 GAMING review - Introduction

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 G1 GAMING
Now I'm feeling so fly like a G1!

Gigabyte released their GeForce GTX 1080 G1 GAMING edition graphics card. This bad boy is what many of you have been waiting for, all custom, all tweaked and cooled much better opposed to the founders edition. Join me in a review of this 8 GB demon From Gigabyte, the GTX 1080 G1 GAMING located under SKU code GV-N1080G1 GAMING-8GD with that all new WindForce 3X cooler.

The GPU industry has been on hold, waiting for a smaller GPU fabrication process to become viable. Last generation GPUs were based on a 28 nm fabrication, an intermediate move to 20 nm was supposed to be the answer for today’s GPUs, but it was a problematic technology. Aside from some smaller ASICs the 20 nm node has been a fail. Therefore the industry had to wait until an ever newer and smaller fabrication process was available in order to shrink the die which allows for less voltage usage in the chips, less transistor gate leakage and, obviously, more transistors in a GPU. The answer was to be found in the recent 14/15/16 nm fabrication processors and processes with the now all too familiar FinFET + VLSI technology (basically wings on a transistor). Intel has been using it for a while, and now both Nvidia and AMD are moving towards such nodes as well. Nvidia is the first to announce their new products based on a TSMC 16 nm process fab by introducing Pascal GPU architecture, named after the mathematician much like Kepler, Maxwell and Fermi. That stage has now passed, the GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080 have been announced with the 1070 and 1080 cards slowly becoming available in stores as we speak. Both models are equally impressive in its product positioning, though I do feel the 1070 will be the more attractive product due to its price level, the 1080 cards really is what everybody want (but perhaps can't afford). The good news though is that the board partner cards will offer SKUs for less opposed to the Nvidia reference / Founder edition cards. Obviously the higher-end all customized SKUs will likely level with that founders edition card price level again, but I am pretty certain you'd rather spend your money on a fully customized AIB card that is already factory tweaked a bit opposed the the reference one. 

In this AIB review we look at the Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 GAMING fitted with a Pascal GP104 based GPU. A product series that actually was released is to replace the GeForce GTX 980. It's all custom with 8 GPU + 2 memory power phases, has a nice dark aesthetic feel and comes with the new model WINDFORCE 3X cooler. The cooler is direct heatpipe touch based, meaning the heatpipes actually sit on top of the GPU. Much like many premium graphics cards up-to 60 Degrees C the card will even stay in passive mode, e.g. the fans will not spin. The WINDFORCE 3X cooler is now intensified a top RGB LED logo which can be color controlled and animated. You will spot one 8-pin power connector and at the backside you'll find a matte black solid backplate.

The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 G1 GAMING has default clock frequencies of 1835 MHz (boost) / 1695 MHz (base) with a reference clocked 8192 MB GDDR5X / 10108 MHz effective data-rate on the memory. With the help of XTREME ENGINE software by pressing a button the card will go into OC mode and gets a 26 MHz overclock. That OC mode requires you to have the software active at all times, hence we will not use it. We test the graphics card at its default out of the box and thus BIOS settings. Let's head on-wards in the review. We'll start with a product overview in the photo-shoot.

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 G1 GAMING (8GB)