Palit GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GameRock Premium Review

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Conclusion

Conclusion

The GameRock Premium edition GTX 1080 Ti is a funky little dude, and I like it. It is fast, has plenty of cooling performance and nice unique looks. However Palit will need to compete with the premium ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte cards out there and thus the end-users (consumers) will zoom into very narrow margins and differences. It is within these narrow margins that Palit lacks a bit of cooling performance and is offering a slightly more noisy product. Now trust me, the card ran max ~73 Degrees C, and that is still great for the 1080 Ti, as long as you steer clear from the 80 Degrees C threshold you are fine my man. The noise level in the standard factory tweaked OC mode is measured at 42 DBa. Normally I'd rate that as moderately noisy, but the thing is... it really isn't. Measuring DBA levels is tricky, basically the four fans create a bit of what I can only describe as turbulence. You can hardly hear that turbulence, but our DBa measuring equipment picks up on that. So I am inclined to say that the GameRock Premium is silent enough for what it needs to be. You hear some airflow, that's it. But I also know that you guys will stare yourself blind at DBA charts and make decision based on that. The cooling is good enough as it allows you to game at give or take, 73 Degrees C with that MASSIVE graphics processor under the hood. You need to factor in that it is doing all that at a nice extensive factory tweak. The MSRP of 699 USD is for the the Founders Edition. Palit is selling this puppy for roughly $775 converted from 835 Euro, which this card costs in the EU. We doubt you'll see US availability though as Palit aims at the EU and Asia markets mostly. Compared to a reference card overall you are looking at an up-to 6% on average extra in performance. And that means the product as tested today passes Titan X performance levels. 

 
 

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 Aesthetics

The GTX 1080 Ti GameRock Premium is a nice looking card. It has that nice dark and blue appeal to it from the PCB to both sides, the LED inclusion has been done subtly and can be configured in any manner you prefer, the choice is yours. We do remain skeptical about backplates, they potentially can trap heat and thus warm up the PCB. But the flip-side is that they can look better and can protect your PCB and components from damage and, well, they can look nice as they can have a certain aesthetic appeal. Combined with that LED logo and copper block admittedly I have to admit, this is looking very tasteful and that copper block actually serves a good purpose. So in the end, on looks you certainly get that premium feel of detailed aesthetics and quality. All that combined with a nicely designed 12 phase PCB again in matte black, well what's not to like, eh?

Cooling & Noise Levels

The reference design (Founders Edition) of the GTX 1080 Ti is set at an offset threshold of 80 degrees C and quite easily hits 84 Degrees C under load/stress. As such, the reference card, once that GPU gets warmer, will clock down on voltage and that dynamic turbo clock to try and keep the card at that temperature threshold. That's throttling and it's part of the design and falls within advertised turbo frequencies. The GTX 1080 Ti GameRock Premium runs at only around the 73 Degrees C marker, and with the temperature threshold set at 80 Degrees C it has no need to throttle. Please do note that you will need proper ventilation inside your chassis to achieve that number as the card oozes out warm air at the top side and cooler vents. Overall though the cooling design shaves off over 10 to 15 Degrees C over reference. As mentioned expect (moderate) sound pressure values in the ~42 dBA range at max under load and warm circumstances. So you can hear a bit of airflow. Alternatively if that would bother you you can select BIOS mode 2 (Silent) and that DBa level will dropped marginal to 41 DBa. We did hear some coil noises/whine at high FPS, you likely will not hear it inside a closed chassis. Weirdly enough we seem to hear it with all 1080 Ti cards we have tested to date. 


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Power Consumption

The GP102-350-A1 Pascal GPU is rated as having a 250 Watt TDP. This GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme sits at just give or take 300 Watts depending on your game title and GPU load. This higher wattage has everything to do with the factory tweak. At this performance level you are looking at 450~500 Watts for our PC in total, that is okay. We think a 600~650 Watt PSU would be sufficient and, if you go with 2-way SLI, an 800~900 Watt power supply is recommended. Remember, when purchasing a PSU aim to double up in Wattage as your PSU is most efficient when it is under 50% load. Here again keep in mind we measure peak power consumption, the average power consumption is a good notch lower depending on GPU utilization. Also, if you plan to overclock the CPU/memory and/or GPU with added voltage, please do purchase a power supply with enough reserve. People often underestimate it, but if you tweak all three aforementioned variables, you can easily add 200 Watts to your peak power consumption budget.

Gaming Performance

From 1080P to Ultra HD the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti shows some serious numbers. But here's a paradox - the more difficult things get - the better the product will perform. E.g. Ultra HD is its true domain. Much like fine wine that ages well, that means this GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will last you a long time with future more GPU intensive games. This much performance and 11 GB of GDDR5X graphics memory helps you out in Ultra HD, DSR, VR and hefty complex anti-aliasing modes. That, and of course the latest gaming titles. I consider this to be a very viable single GPU solution that allows you to game properly in Ultra HD with some very nice eye candy enabled with a single GPU. Drivers wise we can't complain at all, we did not stumble into any issues. Performance wise, really there's not one game that won't run seriously well at the very best image quality settings. Gaming you must do with a nice Ultra HD monitor of course, or at least a 2560x1440 screen. Now, we can discuss the advantages of that 11 GB frame-buffer, but hey, you can draw your own conclusions there as performance isn't limited. And with 11 GB of it, you won't run out of graphics memory for years to come, right? So in that respect the card is rather future proof.

Overclocking

This card will not overclock much higher for the simple reason that Palit however defined a factory tweak and applied it already for you. It is roughly your maximum with maybe 25~35 MHz room left on that GPU base clock frequency. As such, at default this card hovers in that familiar ~2,000 MHz range. So there is no real need to overclock per se as hey, this tweak is covered by your warranty as well. If you do want to tweak, you'll get a bit more out of the base clock and roughly 1.2 GHz on the memory. You can also allow the board power limiter to go up towards 116%. All these factors combined (power limiter/GPU clock/MEM clock) offer a notch more performance. Especially the memory tweak helps as the GP102 GPUs is a bit memory deprived 


Concluding

Honestly the GameRock Premium edition GeForce GTX 1080 Ti from Palit is an good and proper graphics card. However I am afraid that many of you at this price level only will go for something "excellent". A few markers might hurt Palit here a bit as the temps a few degrees higher compared to the bigger names and sure, that is the same for the DBa levels. I'ver stated already, that noise level is not likely to be an issue. It is just that the four fans create turbulence which the DBa meter picks up. You can hear some airflow under hefty gaming, but really that's all. 

Tweaking performance could have been a bit better, however realistically if we take the fastest tweaked product available and then compare to this Palit card you are talking about 2% perf differentials. And that is the reality and micro-managed margin we look at these days. The size and weight you do need to factor in though, some dislike three slot designs and that weight, well you need to secure the card properly as that's a lot of pressure on any PCI Express slot. Your stress gaming temperature will sit at the ~73 Degrees C threshold, which is fine considering what GPU lies under the hood. In my previous 1080 Ti review I have not recommended cards like these for 1080p gaming. I am revising that claim a bit as there are people that want 144 FPS on their 144 Hz monitor of course. Next to that, 1080p rendering with DSR enabled also can have its benefits, and this card would be perfect for that. Broadly speaking though, at 2560x1440 the card really kicks in and at this resolution the 1080 Ti actually makes a lot of sense as it has heaps of power and memory hence it is going to last you a long time. Really, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is that Wolf Titan X in disguise. Nvidia had to do something to it and decided to ditch 1 GB of memory, bringing that VRAM number to a weird 11 GB. This means slightly fewer ROPs and a rather unusual 352-bit memory bus as well. But then they do use faster DDR5X memory and slightly faster than Titan X clock frequencies. So the performance drop is immediately annihilated and in fact the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is as fast or sometimes even faster compared to the Titan X (Pascal). You've seen the numbers, for Ultra HD gamers and even 2560x1440 gamers this product works out well, really well. Overall we are impressed by the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, very much so.

Compared to the Founders Edition from Nvidia this product has improved on performance with roughly an 6% average,  In closing, we feel the Palit GameRock Premium edition GTX 1080 Ti is a lovely product. However the big brand names out there are a tiny step better in cooling and noise levels. But all this can still be rated as really good. You have seen the thermal images, these show excellent results as the card throughout all locations remains at relatively proper temps. Palit will be Palit, in a few weeks time this probably is among the more affordable cards available on the market. If you can pick it up for the right price then we can wholeheartedly recommend it. The heart of this beast is a GP102 GPU and it is one of the fastest graphics cards your money can get you as hey, this dawg is up-to 40% faster than the GTX 1080 and can be up-to twice as fast as one GTX 1070!

Happy gaming.

 - H

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