ASUS ROG GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Poseidon Review - Introduction

ASUS ROG GeForce GTX 1080 Poseidon Platinum 11GB
I got the Poseidon, I got the remedy I got the pulsating rhythmical remedy!

We'll take the best that ASUS has got to offer on the table, that mighty ASUS ROG GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Poseidon Platinum. This graphics cards comes 100% customized with factory tweaks, a hybrid dual fan and liquid cooled block solution combined with a very impressive RGB setup. So yes, you can actively cool the card (without a liquid cooling loop), but also simply (and much advised) hook it into your liquid cooling loop and go massive on cooling performance. Armed with a massive liquid cooling block (DirectCU H2O), a custom PCB, quality components and a factory overclock this product is bound to perform, whilst staying totally silent. Combine all that with the default goodness the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti has to offer.

It is among the fastest graphics card your money can get you, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti based on Pascal architecture. Armed with 11 GB of GDDR5X graphics memory and an all new GP102-350 GPU, we are certain we're gonna break some records today. It has been eight months since Nvidia released the first GP102 based product, the Titan X. To date, a hugely impressive graphics card that will resemble what we review today and very similar on a lot of levels. Really, the 1080 Ti is the Titan X, just with one GB of that GDDR5X memory less and the one ROP partition tied to it. So let me break it down swiftly and quickly; the new high-end GTX 1080 Ti features 3584 CUDA Cores, 224 Texture Units, a 352-bit memory controller and 11 GB of faster (11 Gbps) GDDR5X memory. The card has the same "GP102" GPU as the TITAN X Pascal, but the GTX 1080 Ti was slightly reconfigured. Most interesting is the 352-bit wide GDDR5X memory interface, this was not expected. This translates into 11 memory chips on the card which run at 11 GHz (GDDR5X-effective), the memory bandwidth is 484 GB/s. This invokes the change in ROP count to 88 (from 96 on the TITAN X Pascal), and the TMU count of 224. The Pascal based unit is a bit of a beast alright, the GPU die size is 471 sq mm. If you look at the wider product stack, then a GeForce GTX 1080 has 2,560 shader processors, the GeForce GTX 1070 has 1,920 shader processors, the GeForce GTX 1060 has 1,280 of them. The Nvidia GeForce 1080 Ti has 3,584 shader processors active inside that GP102 GPU, I say active here deliberately as it still isn't even a fully enabled GPU. This means it is has 28 SMs active (28 streaming multi-processors x 128 shader cores (2x64). The cards will be equipped with fast GDDR5X memory as well for this 11 GB model. That memory is tied to a 352-bit wide bus locked in at 11 GHz (GDDR5X-effective). The combination of that memory type and clock frequency gives the 1080 Ti an effective memory bandwidth of 484 GB/s. 

Armed with bulky designed looks you will see a product today that has been overhauled and designed all custom with power phase design, a rather serious cooling system. It is factory tweaked clock speeds, back-plate and sure, configurable RGB LED lit activities up top and at the back side. This Pascal 102 GPU empowered product keeps that unit at, or just under, the 50 Degrees C marker depending on game load with liquid cooling. The ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Poseidon Platinum edition comes with a factory overclock and that hybrid cooler which packs two fans, a large heatsink and yes ... a water block. This means you can just use the air-cooling, but alternatively you can fire up liquid cooling as well. This is the 11 GB edition that comes factory clocked faster for you and heck you will even receive a three year warranty with this product. But have a peek at the product we test today and then head on-wards into the review. We'll show you that in the photo-shoot of course. Yeah we have a lot to talk about alright, 43 pages actually. Let's dive into the review.