Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 11Gbps Review

Performance Analysis

GTX 1080 performance is a known entity at this stage, so none of the results we see are especially surprising. Across all the tests, the card averages a 2.5 percent lead on the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW that uses 10Gbps GDDR5X and is clocked to almost the same speed as this Aorus card on the GPU (a fraction faster, in fact). Memory bandwidth is rarely the sole bottleneck, so a 10 percent improvement leading to gains only a quarter this size again isn't surprising.


It maintains a lead of more than 20 percent over a heavily overclocked GTX 1070, while an equivalent GTX 1080 Ti will net you 25-30 percent more performance than what we see here, so the GTX 1080 remains rather neatly positioned between the two. This is a card that offers outstanding performance at 1440p, with only one minimum frame rate result dropping below 60fps. Only at 4K will you start to see its limits, and you may need to drop down to high settings as opposed to ultra, but in many titles it's still capable of smooth frame rates even when pushing this many pixels out the door.

Power consumption is in-line with previous GTX 1080 results, so there's no apparent reduction in efficiency as a result of the faster memory.


The beastly Aorus cooler has no trouble dealing with the GTX 1080. In the default Gaming Mode, a constant speed of 1,949MHz was maintained, which increased to 1,962MHz in OC Mode. A constant boost speed is a good indicator that the card is not being thermally limited, and the temperature chart confirms this with a delta T result of just 44°C. The fans only needed to spin up to 45 percent (roughly 1,425 RPM), which is lower than we saw on the GTX 1080 Ti (as expected). At these speeds, it's a very quiet experience.

With the card boosting four-five percent higher with our overclock applied and a 10 percent higher memory clock, we saw gains of between five and eight percent. This isn't massive, and we reckon that with more voltage we could have got even higher core speeds, but it thankfully didn't come at the cost of much more power consumption or heat, so it's worth having a play to see what more you can squeeze out of it.

Conclusion

The GTX 1080 11Gbps isn't a game-changer, but nor is it designed to be. Nvidia rules the roost at this end of the market and is effectively free to do as it pleases. With the GTX 1070, GTX 1080, GTX 1080 Ti, and the new Titan Xp, it has exceptional high-end offerings starting at less than £400 and going all the way up to a bonkers £1,200 with no real competition at all from AMD. Many will see this as a sad state of affairs, but there's no denying the quality of hardware on offer.


The value offering gets worse the higher up the stack you go, but it doesn't really matter; if you've got £500-£600 to play with for a GPU upgrade at the moment, you're getting a GTX 1080.

With this specific offering, Aorus has a decent proposition, offering basically every high-end feature there is, excellent cooling, and a solid out-of-box overclock. The design isn't our favourite on the market, but aesthetics aside there's loads to love. The pricing of £550 is far enough away from the GTX 1080 Ti to keep it compelling, although bizarrely you can get the other version of this card, the Aorus GTX 1080 11Gbps Xtreme, for £10 less, despite it actually being clocked higher. As such, it right now makes no sense to opt for this exact SKU, but this pricing discrepancy probably won't last long. Either way, while this isn't the best value GTX 1080 on the market, it's a damn fine one.