MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X PLUS 8G review - Introduction

MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X PLUS with all new 11 Gbps 8GB
Does 11 GHz graphics memory really speed up your card?

We reviewed many GeForce GTX 1080 cards, but a while ago Nvidia announced that it would be releasing updated versions of the GeForce GTX 1060 and 1080, both with faster memory partitions. MSI jumped onto that wagon and inserted products with super fast graphics memory and names it their PLUS models. Once you combine Gaming X & PLUS you just know you'll have something good at hand, an all custom, tweaked and cooled better product. Let's check out the new 8 GB model from MSI, the GTX 1080 GAMING X PLUS with 11 GHz clocked memory.

Last year the full range of Pascal based processors was released. Among them the GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080. Both models honestly are equally impressive in its product positioning, though I do feel the 1070 will be the more attractive product due to its price level, a 1080 card is really what everybody want (but perhaps can't afford). The good news though is that the board partner cards 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 to the reference one. In this AIB review we look at the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X PLUS model, fitted with a Pascal GP104 based GPU. A product series that replaced the GeForce GTX 980. It's all customized with 10 power phases, has a nice dark aesthetic feel and comes with the incredibly silent TwinFrozr VI model cooler You will have noticed the X in the product name and that means a faster out of the box clocked product. The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X PLUS has default clock frequencies of 1822 MHz (boost) / 1683 (base) MHz with a reference clocked 8192 MB GDDR5X / 11000 MHz effective data-rate on the memory. This card tested today comes with three DP, one HDMI connector and then one DVI connector.

The board is fed by an 8-pin and 6-pin power connectors. The GPU is clocked at 1.683 MHz with a 1.823 MHz boost at default clocks. This is 100% similar to the regular Gaming X model. However the effective memory data-rate was bumped up from 10.000 MHz towards 11.000 MHz (effective data-rate). Precisely that increase offers the PLUS model 10% more memory bandwidth. And yes the GeForce GTX 1080 very much so likes more graphics memory bandwidth, The card has a dual-slot design with two-fan cooling solution. Embedded as well is some funky RGB LED lighting system really. And yeah, we have enough to talk about and to show. Right, we have enough to talk about and to show, let's head on-wards in the review. We'll start with a product overview in the photo-shoot.
 
 

MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G PLUS