MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Unboxing

Introduction

Last year, NVIDIA introduced to the world, their latest and greatest GPU architecture, codenamed Pascal. The new Pascal GPU powered everything from enterprise level supercomputer chips to blazing fast GTX 10 series graphics cards. Utilizing the 16nm FinFET architecture, NVIDIA unleashed a new generation of graphics cards that delivered the highest clock speeds on any consumer GPU to date, the fastest graphics processing capabilities and a wide range of memory technologies that were supported by these chips like HBM2 and GDDR5X.

A year has gone by since NVIDIA launched the fastest consumer graphics card, the GeForce GTX 1080, but NVIDIA is not stopping there. This year, NVIDIA has introduced a new flagship product, one that will offer even higher performance than the GeForce GTX 1080. Meet the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, a juggernaut GPU that is in a class of its own. Today, I'll be testing the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X variant and would like to thank MSI for arranging this sample for our review.

Meet GeForce 10 Series - Now Featuring The Behemoth GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

With Pascal, NVIDIA launched a new generation of GeForce cards, the GeForce 10 series. The GeForce 10 series comprises of Pascal based GeForce GTX 1080, GTX 1070, GTX 1060, GTX 1050 and now the GTX 1080 Ti. All cards feature the same Pascal DNA and aim at the entire top-to-bottom segment of the gaming market.

NVIDIA also launched the Titan X (Pascal) last year and the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti has a lot of resemblance to that card, except the latter comes at a lower price and features a better tuned core design for increased gaming performance.

NVIDIA GeForce 10 Pascal Family

Graphics Card Name	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 2 GB	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 3 GB	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 5 GB	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080	NVIDIA Titan X	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti	NVIDIA Titan Xp
Graphics Core	GP107	GP107	GP107	GP106 / GP104	GP106	GP106 / GP104	GP104	GP104	GP104	GP102	GP102	GP102
Process Node	14nm FinFET	14nm FinFET	14nm FinFET	16nm FinFET	16nm FinFET	16nm FinFET	16nm FinFET	16nm FinFET	16nm FinFET	16nm FinFET	16nm FinFET	16nm FinFET
Die Size	132mm2	132mm2	132mm2	200mm2	200mm2	200mm2	314mm2	314mm2	314mm2	471mm2	471mm2	471mm2
Transistors	3.3 Billion	3.3 Billion	3.3 Billion	4.4 Billion	4.4 Billion	4.4 Billion	7.2 Billion	7.2 Billion	7.2 Billion	12 Billion	12 Billion	12 Billion
CUDA Cores	640 CUDA Cores	768 CUDA Cores	768 CUDA Cores	1152 CUDA Cores	1280 CUDA Cores	1280 CUDA Cores	1920 CUDA Cores	2432 CUDA Cores	2560 CUDA Cores	3584 CUDA Cores	3584 CUDA Cores	3840 CUDA Cores
Base Clock	1354 MHz	1392 MHz	1290 MHz	1506 MHz	1506 MHz	1506 MHz	1506 MHz	1607 MHz	1607 MHz	1417 MHz	1480 MHz	1480 MHz
Boost Clock	1455 MHz	1518 MHz	1392 MHz	1708 MHz	1708 MHz	1708 MHz	1683 MHz	1683 MHz	1733 MHz	1530 MHz	1583 MHz	1582
FP32 Compute	1.8 TFLOPs	2,3 TFLOPs	2.1 TFLOPs	4.0 TFLOPs	4.4 TFLOPs	4.4 TFLOPs	6.5 TFLOPs	8.1 TFLOPs	9.0 TFLOPs	11 TFLOPs	11.5 TFLOPs	12.5 TFLOPs
VRAM	2 GB GDDR5	3 GB GDDR5	4 GB GDDR5	3 GB GDDR5	6 GB GDDR5	6 GB GDDR5/X	8 GB GDDR5/X	8 GB GDDR5	8 GB GDDR5X	12 GB GDDR5X	11 GB GDDR5X	12 GB GDDR5X
Memory Speed	7 Gbps	7 Gbps	7 Gbps	8 Gbps	8 Gbps	9 Gbps / 10 Gbps	8 Gbps	8 Gbps	11 Gbps	10 Gbps	11 Gbps	11.4 Gbps
Memory Bandwidth	112 GB/s	84 GB/s	112 GB/s	192 GB/s	160 GB/s	224 GB/s / 240 GB/s	256 GB/s	256 GB/s	352 GB/s	480 GB/s	484 GB/s	547 GB/s
Bus Interface	128-bit bus	96-bit bus	128-bit bus	192-bit bus	160-bit bus	192-bit bus	256-bit bus	256-bit bus	256-bit bus	384-bit bus	352-bit bus	384-bit bus
Power Connector	None	None	None	Single 6-Pin Power	Single 6-Pin Power	Single 6-Pin Power	Single 8-Pin Power	Single 8-Pin Power	Single 8-Pin Power	8+6 Pin Power	8+6 Pin Power	8+6 Pin Power
TDP	75W	75W	75W	120W	120W	120W	150W	180W	180W	250W	250W	250W
Display Outputs	1x Display Port 1.4 1x HDMI 2.0b 1x DVI	1x Display Port 1.4 1x HDMI 2.0b 1x DVI	1x Display Port 1.4 1x HDMI 2.0b 1x DVI	3x Display Port 1.4 1x HDMI 2.0b 1x DVI	3x Display Port 1.4 1x HDMI 2.0b 1x DVI	3x Display Port 1.4 1x HDMI 2.0b 1x DVI	3x Display Port 1.4 1x HDMI 2.0b 1x DVI	3x Display Port 1.4 1x HDMI 2.0b 1x DVI	3x Display Port 1.4 1x HDMI 2.0b 1x DVI	3x Display Port 1.4 1x HDMI 2.0b 1x DVI	3x Display Port 1.4 1x HDMI 2.0b	3x Display Port 1.4 1x HDMI 2.0b
Launch Date	October 2016	May 2018	October 2016	September 2016	August 2018	July 2016	June 2016	October 2017	May 2016	August 2016	March 2017	April 2017
Launch Price	$109 US	$119 US-$129 US	$139 US	$199 US	TBD	$249 US	$349 US	$449 US	$499 US	$1200 US	$699 US	$1200 US

The Pascal GPUs were designed to deliver a generational leap in performance over its predecessors by embracing the latest FinFET process. The increasing demand of graphics performance in high-end gaming PCs and also the emergence of Virtual Reality market have opted graphics manufacturers to focus on next generation of DirectX 12 and Vulkan graphics while delivering increased performance to drive high-resolution, HDR capable displays.

Using the TSMC 16nm FinFET process, the Pascal GP102 GPU was crafted for GeForce gamers and offered in two products that stand a class apart from their predecessors like the 980 Ti and GTX Titan X. Right now, we are going to give you a run through of the entire GP102 GPU which is the heart of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card.

NVIDIA GP102 GPU Dissected - A More Tamed Version of NVIDIA's Flagship GP100 GPU

NVIDIA has gone all out with the specifications of their grandest graphics card to date. The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti features the same Pascal GP102 GPU featured on the NVIDIA Titan X but is better than that in all ways possible. The NVIDIA GP102 Pascal GPU packs 12 Billion transistors and has 6 graphics processing clusters of which two are disabled. This adds up to a total of 28 SM units with 128 cores each. The card is geared to power compute and memory hungry gaming applications at higher resolutions with tons of texture and geometry processing power.

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti features 3584 CUDA Cores, 224 Texture Mapping Units and 88 ROPs. These are clocked at a base clock of 1480 MHz and boost clock of 1582 MHz which can go as high as 2 GHz with overclocking. The Pascal cards are built to overclock like crazy and custom models will further boost the clock rates on availability day.

The Pascal FinFET architecture allows significant increase in clock frequency. The reference GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is clocked at 1506 MHz base anad 1683 MHz boost clock. The model ASUS sent us is clocked much higher thanks to their factory overclocked specs.

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti delivers 12 TFLOPs of compute performance on its stock configuration. All of this circuitry is housed in a 471mm² die size which is impressive. As for performance, you would be delighted to hear that the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is 35% faster on average and up to 40% faster than the GeForce GTX 1080 in gaming benchmarks. The GTX 1080 Ti’s blazing fast even comes at the same price of the original GTX 1080, at just $699 US.

The card also features a 11 GB GDDR5X VRAM that run across a 352-bit bus interface. NVIDIA has shipped their flagship with the fastest G5X solution to date. The Titan X (P) used 10 GB/s models while the 1080 Ti makes use of the new 11 GB/s memory chips which results in a cumulative bandwidth of 484 GB/s that’s going to be on par with SK Hynix’s HBM2 memory launching in Q2 2017. The card is powered by a 8+6 Pin power configuration and has a rated TDP of 250 Watts.

For those who are wondering what to do with the massive 11 GB frame buffer? Well, NVIDIA is touting this card as a 5K ready frame buffer so you can enjoy your favorite games at even higher resolutions then was ever possible before.

With the new compression and tiled caching system, the bandwidth on GTX 1080 Ti can be boosted up to 1200 GB/s which is more than what’s achievable with HBM2 as of right now.

 In addition to better performance, NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is also packing new technology features such as compression and tiled caching boost bandwidth, tiled rendering, DirectX 12 Flex and Flow, NVIDIA Aftermath (A New Tool To identify cause of GPU crashes) and Shadowplay Highlights which will further boost gamer experiences running GeForce hardware.

Faster clocked GDDR5 memory still offers great performance and loads of bandwidth to the card. There are tons of features enabled on the Pascal cards such as Compute Preemption, memory compression, simultaneous multi-projection which you can read in our detailed post here. Also, NVIDIA has launched the full fat configuration of the GP102 GPU on the latest NVIDIA Titan Xp graphics card which was just launched a few days ago.

NVIDIA GeForce 10 Pascal Feature Slides:

The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X features a fully custom card design. There are two things to note here, the Twin Frozr VI cooling and a beefy PCB design with Military Class components. The card is cooled by a thick aluminium fin block which comes with multiple 8mm copper heat pipes. The heapipes are directly connected with a wide area GPU baseplate that makes use of a premium thermal compound for efficient heat dissipation.

The cooling is provided by dual Torx 2.0 fans that come with dispersion fan blades and double ball bearings. These extend the cooling airflow and deliver low noise output even under intense loads. Furthermore, MSI's ZeroFrozr technology is onboard which means that the fans won't spin unless temperatures hit beyond 60C (Degrees). MSI also features an anti-bending plate to support the PCB alongside a PCB backplate. The top shroud has LED functionality allowing you to change the colors of MSI logo on the side of the card.

In terms of clock speed, we are looking at three modes which are listed below:

• 1683 MHz / 1569 MHz / 11124 MHz (OC Mode)
• 1657 MHz / 1544 MHz / 11016 MHz (Gaming Mode)
• 1582 MHz / 1480 MHz / 11016 MHz (Silent Mode)

The higher clock speeds are a great addition but users can also manually overclock their cards since this packs a enthusiast class PCB design. The card comes with larger PCB for extra cooling and packs a 8+2 phase PCB that includes Hi-C CAPs, Super Ferrite Chokes and Japanese Solid Caps. The card is powered by dual 8-Pin connectors and would be a great product for high-end builders.

The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X comes in a large rectangular box. MSI uses an all red color theme to package their Gaming series products and they have become renowned for it. The front of the package features a stylish picture of the Twin Frozr VI embedded card which looks great.

The back side of the box contains overview of the various features along with the graphics cards specs. Some key information about MSI's custom LED Lighting through their Mystic LED system is displayed on the box. There’s also detailed overview of MSI's Twin Frozr VI heatsink and MSI's Gaming App.

Features such as DirectX 12, Gameworks, Ansel and VRWorks are labeled on the front along with MSI Gaming X, VR Ready, DirectX 12 and 11 GB GDDR5X memory marketing logos. The new GeForce 10 series graphics are also fully compatible with NVIDIA GeForce Experience technology allowing for on-the-go Game-Ready driver updates, Optimized Game Settings and the ability to Capture, Share, Screenshot and broadcast games.

Accessories in the package come in two separate sections. The foam packaging contains a compartment which includes a dual 6-Pin to single 8-Pin molex connector. A nice MSI golden card welcomes you as the box is opened for the first time. This contains additional accessories.

The accessories included in this card are a Quick User Guide, MSI stickers for different features, a "Lucky The Dragon - Computer Workshop" comic and a Thank You card by MSI.

The comic is really fun to read and a nice addition by MSI. Lucky has become MSI's Gaming product mascot and they sell stuffed toys and figures of this comic in various regions where Lucky is very popular.

Out of the box, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X is one huge graphics card. It’s tremendous in size and we can also expect the same in terms of performance. That’s about it as far as the package is concerned and we move over to the unboxing section where we will get a detailed look at the card and other aspects of the product.

MSI's Twin Frozr VI heatsink may look compact but it's actually a monster in disguise. It measures 290mm (length) x 140mm (width) x 51mm (height). The cooling extends all the way to the back of the PCB and it requires a casing with good interior space for proper installation.

It is recommended that a case with 2.5 free slot space is required for proper functioning of cooling on this card. The card also weighs in at 1257 grams which is a whole lot of stress for the PCI-Express slot. But all that heft load means that the card packs a good bunch of components with an emphasis on quality.

In terms of design, we are looking at an updated version of the Twin Frozr heatsink which is now in its sixth variation. The new heatsink looks absolutely phenomenal with a red and black design and dragon claws featured on the back of the card. It's one beauty to look at.

The card has two fans on the front, all of which are 100mm and come with MSI's patented Torx 2.0 fan design that offers 22% more air pressure, allowing for increased air flow and cooler operation of the card itself.

On the back of the card, we spot an extremely good looking MSI Dragoon backplate. The whole plate is made of solid metal and adds to the durability of this card. The matte black finish on the backplate gives a unique aesthetic and has the Dragoon logo at the end which looks great. There are cut outs in screw placements to easily reach the points on the graphics card.

Coming back to the fans, the card actually features two different fan designs based on the Torx 2.0 system. The first fan uses a dispersion fan blade technology that has a steeper curved blade that accelerates airflow and as such increases effectiveness in keeping the GPU cool. The second fan is more of a traditional one which pushes down a steady build of airflow to keep the heatsink cool. Both fans deploy double ball bearing design and can last a longer time while operating silently.

MSI also features their Zero Frozr technology on the Twin Frozr VI heatsink. This feature won't spin the fans on the card unless the reach a certain threshold. In the case of the Twin Frozr VI heatsink, that limit is set to 60C. If the card is operating under 60C, the fans won't spin which means no extra noise would be generated.

The GTX 1080 Ti GPU comes with two SLI gold fingers which technically mean that the card supports 4-Way SLI but that has changed in the GeForce 10 series. While 4-Way SLI support is physically present, there are little applications that can even scale well on 4 or even 3-Way SLI. NVIDIA recommends the use of 2-Way SLI with the new high-bandwidth SLI bridge for the best scaling and SLI performance in games that support Multi-GPU. For those who are still interested in 3 or 4 Way SLI can register at NVIDIA’s site for a SLI key to enable support on their cards.

Display connectivity on the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X includes two Display Port 1.4 (4K @ 120 Hz), two HDMI 2.0b (4K @ 60 Hz) and a single DL-DVI which means that it is capable to support all next-gen displays with new standards such as HDR, VR and multi-res / multi-screen panels.

The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X features a custom PCB which means the power circuitry is entirely non-reference. Power is provided through a dual 8-Pin connector configuration which means we are looking at a maximum power input of 300W. The card has a official TDP of 250W but the premium components make sure that every bit of juice gets supplied to core, memory and VRMs when overclocked.

MSI has fused the Twin Frozr VI heatsink with dragon blade accents. These red colored patterns emit RGB LED lighting and you can configure them through the MSI Gaming App. These are part of the MSI Mystic LED system that is incorporated within a wide range of their gaming products.

The MSI and Dragon logo on top of the SLI connectors also features LED Lighting which can be configured through MSI's Gaming App. The labels are inverted so when you plug the graphics card inside your PC, they will show up straight rather than upside down.

There's a large "GeForce GTX" label on the side of the shroud. It does look great but doesn't come with any backlit LED lighting. It's not that big of a deal but it should have looked even better since you are paying a good sum for this graphics card.

As far as cooling is concerned, the fans do their job well but the real heat is handled by the might heat sink block inside the MSI Graphics card. The Twin Frozr IV heatsink is based on five 8mm thick copper heat pipes that offer direct contact to the GPU when running through the copper base plate. The GPU base plate is a solid nickel-plate copper design with loads of surface area for efficiency dissipating heat load. MSI says that they are using a premium thermal compound on their GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X cards so we will see if they do a better job than the other 1080 Ti we tested.

MSI adds extra protection to their impressive PCB by including a rugged anti-bending plate. This also acts as a memory cooling plate while the PWM heatsink with micro fins keeps the VRM cool under stressful conditions. MSI makes use of a 8+2 phase PWM design that includes their Military Class 4 components such as Hi-C Caps, Super Ferrite Chokes and Japanese Solid Caps.

MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Mystic Aura Gallery:

Following is a look at the different lighting modes that this card is able to display with the MSI Mystic Light lightning feature.

We used the following test system for comparison between the different graphics cards. Latest drivers that were available at the time of testing were used from AMD and NVIDIA on an updated version of Windows 10. All games that were tested were patched to the latest version for better performance optimization for NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.

ASUS ROG STRIX GTX 1080 Ti OC Test Platform:

CPU	Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.5 GHz
Motherboard	Gigabyte AORUS Z270X-Gaming 8
Video Cards	ASUS ROG STRIX GTX 1080 Ti OC (Overclock) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition (Reference) MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Armor X OC (Overclock) MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning OC (Overclock) XFX Radeon R9 Fury X (Reference)
Memory	G.SKILL Trident Z Series 32GB (4 X 8GB) CL16 3600 MHz
Hard Disk	Samsung 960 EVO 500 GB M.2 NVMe
Storage Disk	Seagate 3 TB (7200 RPM) Hard Disk Drive
Power Supply	Corsair RM 750X Gold Plus
Drivers	NVIDIA GeForce 378.92 WHQL / AMD Radeon Software Crimson Relive 17.4.1
Operation System	Windows 10 64-bit Anniversary Edition

• All games were tested on 2560×1440 (2K) and 3840x2160 (4K) resolutions.
• Image Quality and graphics configurations have been provided in the screenshots below.
• Games with PhysX were benchmarked with the settings on Low or off for fair comparisons.
• The "reference" cards are the stock configs while the "overclock" cards are factory overclocked configs provided to us by various AIB partners.

Do note that the OC profile also overclocks the memory to 11124 MHz which is higher than what's usually shipped by other AIBs making 1080 Ti custom model. This would yield an additional gain in performance.

MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Overclocking:

For overclocking, I pushed the core to +175 MHz beyond it’s overclock profile and +450 MHz on the memory. The end result was the memory bandwidth boosting beyond 528 GB/s and the core boost beyond 2150 MHz under gaming load. By increasing the power limit, I managed to get a pretty big overclock out of this card as seen below:

DOOM

In 2016, Id finally released Doom. My testing wouldn’t be complete without including this title. All cards were capable to deliver ample frame rates on 1440p resolution using Nightmare settings so my focus turned over to 4K. Here, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is almost twice as fast as the Fury X and the 980 Ti on the highest 4K resolutions. Same can be said for the 1440P results.

Ashes of The Singularity

NVIDIA and AMD have been tweaking performance of their cards for Ashes of the Singularity since the title released. It was the first to make use of DirectX 12 API and the first to leverage from the new Async compute technology that makes use of the DX12 renderer to improve performance. Here, the GTX 1080 Ti deliver a good increase over the GTX 1080 at both 4K and 1440P resolutions. The AMD cards have had a slight edge with the title since launch but nothing new in the high-end department has come out from the red team since Fury X. We will test this title again once Vega hits the road.

Battlefield 1

Battlefield 1 takes us back to the epic bloodshed that was World War 1. Using the latest Frostbite tech, the game does a good job at looking gorgeous in all ways possible. From the open ended environments to the intense and gun blazing action, this multiplayer and single player FPS title is one of the best Battlefield's to date. The GeForce cards show a strong performance in Battlefield 1 with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti scoring over 100 FPS at 1440P and the latter delivering more than 60 FPS at 4K resolution while delivering maximum visual quality.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Using the new Anvil Next engine that was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, Ghost Recon: Wildlands goes wild and grand with an open-world setting in entire Bolivia. This game is a tactical third person shooter which does seem an awful lot similar to Tom Clancy's: The Division. The game looks pretty and the wide scale region of Bolivia looks lovely at all times (Day/Night Cycle). Here, the GTX 1080 Ti is the only card that manages to break past the 65 FPS barrier at 1440P and 45 FPS barrier at 4K on full quality settings.

Hitman (2016)

With the latest drivers, NVIDIA has managed to up the performance of their Pascal and Maxwell parts in Hitman (2016). The game has been a major win for AMD graphics cards that still show a strong gain in performance when switching over from DX11 to DX12 but NVIDIA is slowly catching up with their drivers game. Here, the GTX 1080 Ti delivers more than 70 FPS at the highest settings on 4K resolution. That's almost twice the FPS of Fury X.

Rise of The Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the most beautiful game that I have played recently and was patched to the DX12 API. The game features a wide variety of settings and we chose Very High, HBAO+ without any AA. The game managed to hit 60 FPS on the 1080 Ti at 1440P and over 100 FPS at 4K.

Batman Arkham Knight

The final chapter in the Batman Arkham series, Arkham Knight, is a great hack n slash title. It features a great story line how ever, the PC version was plagued with several issues at launch but was fine tuned as time went on. Now, the game delivers an impressive visual quality and is very optimized for the PC platform. The game comes with NVIDIA's Gameworks technology but we will be keeping those disabled for a fair test showdown. The game does well on GeForce and even AMD cards with most hitting north of 100 FPS at 1440P. At 4K, most of the high-end cards manage to close in the 60 FPS mark while the 1080 Ti goes way past them to touch the 90 FPS barrier.

Civilization VI

Civilization VI is the sixth entrant in Sid Meir's long running Civilization series. You can spend countless time playing a single game and that still won't be enough. The game supports DirectX 12 but we opted DirectX 11 for testing results. They look a bit odd but in both cases, the game is playable at 4K and 1440P over 60 FPS with modern high-end cards.

Fallout 4 (Hi-Res Textures)

Fallout 4 is a great addition in the Fallout universe. Fallout fans like me have fallen in love with this new game since it was released. Being a huge fan on RPGs and especially Sci-Fi RPG (Mass Effect for life), the game has the most advanced version of the Creation engine which was recently updated with NVIDIA’s GameWorks feature. The latest Hi-Res texture pack was released a while ago and weighed in over 50 GB which is mind boggling for a texture pack, I mean, what the hell Bethesda?

Grand Theft Auto V

GTA V is the most optimized gaming titles that has been made for the PC. It’s so optimized, it even runs on my crap GT 840M based laptop with a smooth FPS on a mix of medium/low settings. I mean what???

Aside from being optimized, GTA V is a great game. It was the Game of The Year for 2013. At 1440p Ultra quality, the game gave us smooth frames on all cards were tested. For 4K, we toned down the settings to High quality to get around 50-60 FPS on the high-end cards. The GTX 1070 was the fastest in our testing when over clocked. At stock speeds, it was a single FPS slower than the 980 Ti Lightning (overclocked).

Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Using the new Anvil Next engine that was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, Ghost Recon: Wildlands goes wild and grand with an open-world setting in entire Bolivia. This game is a tactical third person shooter which does seem an awful lot similar to Tom Clancy's: The Division. The game looks pretty and the wide scale region of Bolivia looks lovely at all times (Day/Night Cycle). Here, the GTX 1080 Ti is the only card that manages to break past the 65 FPS barrier at 1440P and 45 FPS barrier at 4K on full quality settings.

The Witcher 3 (GOTY)

Witcher 3 is the greatest fantasy RPG of our time, it has a great story, great gameplay mechanics and gorgeous graphics. This is the only game I actually wanted to get a stable FPS at 4K. With Gameworks disabled, I gave all high-end cards the ability to demonstrate their power. While the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 were fast last year, they still weren't able to run the game at 4K with visual quality toned down. Fast forward to 2017, and I can finally enjoy Witcher 3 in all its glory at over 60 FPS with everything turned to max. Isn't the technology cycle great?

Mass Effect Andromeda

Being a huge fan of the Mass Effect series, I was highly anticipating the arrival of Andromeda to store shelves. Now that it's here, I put the fastest gaming card to the test. Using Frostbite, the latest Mass Effect title looks incredibly gorgeous and the open world settings on the different planets immerses you a lot.

This means that the game has to be a bit graphics intensive which it is. The GTX 1080, GTX 1080 Ti and the 980 Ti Lighting can hit 60 FPS or 60+ FPS (for 1080 / 1080 Ti) at 1440P but 4K means you need to sacrifice a little visual quality to hit the golden 60 FPS mark. Here, the 1080 Ti achieves around 44 FPS with the OC profile and 47 FPS average with manual overclock. The GTX 1070 founders edition only manages 37 FPS while the other cards barely hit 30 FPS.

Watch Dogs 2

Finally, we have Watch Dogs 2. Gone is Aiden Pearce as the new game takes us away from Chicago and puts us in the feet of Marcus, a seasoned hacker in San Francisco. Running off the Disrupt engine, the game is based on DirectX 11 API and is a graphics hungry monster. You can see the results for yourself below:

No graphic card review is complete without evaluating its temperatures and thermal load. The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X is fitted with the most advanced version of the Twin Frozr VI cooling design. The latest Frozr VI cooler features a massive heatsink with multiple heatpipes which extend beyond the aluminum fin based design that lead towards the incredibly dense heatsink block. The card comes with PWM cooling and an anti-bending plate that keeps the card sturdy and durable in the most harshest environments inside your PC.

The Patented Torx fan 2.0 design and Zero Frozr technology featured on this card make sure that it delivers the best cooling performance and best acoustics while operating.

Note – We tested load with Kombuster which is known as ‘Power viruses’ and can permanently damage hardware. Use such software at your own risk!

I compiled the power consumption results by testing each card under idle condition and while it was peaking during gaming sessions. Each graphics card manufacturer sets a default TDP for the card which can vary from vendor to vendor depending on the extra clocks or board features they plug in on their custom cards. Default TDP for the GTX 1080 Ti is set over 250W and since we are testing a custom board, the figures can be lower or also exceed the default TDP.

The new 16nm process on the GeForce 10 series cards based on Pascal architecture deliver huge increases in performance per watt values meaning that the GTX 1080 Ti is able to deliver higher performance while sipping in drastically lower power than the 980 Ti OC.

You can see the results for yourself below which show that the GTX 1080 Ti has a total power input of 293W with OC profile while the GTX 980 Ti Lightning has a peak draw of 351W. We can see that the GTX 1080 Ti offers much more performance at a lower power input even when been factory overclocked or manual overclocked.

Even with no competition, NVIDIA went ahead and bested themselves. For a whole year, they had the fastest consumer graphics card on the market, the GTX 1080. Sure they launched the Titan X but that behemoth sold for $1200 US and it wasn't a wise choice to get when economics are taken into consideration. The 1080 Ti launched and became the fastest graphics card on the planet. Soon afterwards, the 1080 Ti was made public in custom variants too but at the same time, NVIDIA launched another Titan, now known as Titan Xp. That is another $1200 US graphics card and currently reigns supreme as the fastest on the planet but our focus today is the GTX 1080 Ti gaming X from MSI.

The GTX 1080 Ti replaced the GTX 1080 as the fastest consumer graphics card at the same price of $699 US. The card I tested today goes for $749 US and you need to have a big wallet if you are buying one. At this price however, you get some of the fastest and most impressive gaming performance we have seen to date. It's 35% north of the GTX 1080, add more for the custom variants. The price point makes it seem really good once you get to know the performance potential.

The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X makes every other card seem like a generation old already even though it's utilizing the same Pascal architecture that is featured on the GTX 1080, GTX 1070 and Titan X. It offers a massive uplift to game performance and has three different profiles for gamers who want silent card operation, good gaming performance and enthusiast caliber OC performance. But that's not it, this card allowed me to see the full potential of the Pascal GP102 chip. The overclock of around 200 MHz on the core and 500 MHz on the memory means that this card is theoretically on the same levels as the Titan Xp, closing the gap.

Also, I was shocked how well the Twin Frozr VI cooler performed under the OC profile and manual overclock load. I resorted to push the fans to 100% operation which was a bit too loud since I could hear the fans from my closed PC chassis but it resulted in a good drop of 6-8C which was impressive. And to top it all up, the Twin Frozr VI heatsink looks sexy as hell and anyone can tell from the design language of the custom cooler that it's purely aimed at the gaming market.

The Twin Frozr VI and Pascal GP102 GPU makes for a perfect combo. The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X is literally a dragon in terms of performance and rather than breathing fire, it stays cool under the most heavy loads with OC profiles and manual overclocks reaching 2100 MHz. For $749.99 US, the MSI GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X will offer you ample amount of gaming performance whether you are moving from a GTX 980 Ti or a GTX 1080. It's a beautiful card for the most high-end gamers and enthusiasts out there looking to upgrade their PCs.

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.