GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Review - Introduction

The One Beast That Rules them All?
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Benchmarked - Tested - Reviewed

In this article we'll look at the fastest graphics card your money can get you, the all new Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti based on Pascal architecture. Armed with 11GB of GDDR5X graphics memory and an all new GP102-350 GPU, we are certainly 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 massively 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 swift and fast, 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 slighty reconfigured. Most interesting is the 352-bit wide GDDR5X memory interface, this was not expected. This translates to 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. A reference Ti card will boost up to roughly 1600 MHz, but the overclocking potential (boost requency) is much like all GeForce Pascal cards, in the 2 GHz range. 
  

 
As such, if you are a 1080p gamer, this card might be a bit out of your comfort zone; it isn't going to make much sense as at 1920x1080 you'll be limited by your processor, as yes, even the fastest 8 and 10 core processors will not be able to keep up properly. The gamers that can afford it and will purchase this product will need to focus on at least Wide Quad HD (2560x1440) or Ultra HD gaming mostly. Below that resolution, honestly mate, go look at a GTX 1070 or 1080. The Pascal GP102, fabbed at a 16nm node with fins, that smaller 16nm FinFET fabrication process works out really well for Nvidia. The 1050, 1060, 1070 and 1080 have been a high clocked success story ever since their launch.

The FinFET 16nm node works out well for Nvidia. Much like the 1080 architecture you'll again spot high clocks and again a very nice memory configuration (11 GHz effective!), this a product series that will be massively interesting, but surely expensive. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will receive a similar looking design just like the 1070/1080 Founder edition coolers, with some aesthetic tweaks of course. The Pascal based unit is a bit of a beast alright. Tied to a 7+2 phase power (2x dual-FET power) delivery 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. But let's compare some arbitrary numbers a bit in order to realize what the product can do. 

 
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti founders edition with the Nvidia GP102-350-A1 GPU (1,480 MHz core  / 1,582 MHz boost  / 11,010 MHz memory)