EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW Review

Conclusion

We'll start with some words on the GTX 1080 generally. So far, we haven't really mentioned the pricing, but with it starting at £525 or so there's no denying that it's expensive. Given that the GTX 980 had a £429 launch price, this is definitely going to irk many consumers. Then again, the GTX 1080 is faster than a pre-overclocked GTX 980 Ti, and AMD has nothing to challenge it. This is clearly the new best as far as consumer graphics is concerned, and it looks set to stay that way for some time. In that light, it's difficult to see why it wouldn't be this expensive, even though a lower price would of course be appreciated.

With Pascal, Nvidia has successfully continued what it kickstarted with Maxwell, namely the drive to better efficiency. Its gains here come not just through the new production process, but through careful optimisation of the physical elements that make up the GPU, the GDDR5X memory and the bridges between them. This is a card with many more transistors, significantly higher clock speeds and almost 70 percent more performance than a GTX 980, yet the bump in power consumption is very modest. This paves the way for some very cool and quiet Pascal cards, especially with upcoming lower end models.


Hardware-level improvements net the GTX 1080 solid VR credentials as well – we're excited to be able to test what it can do here. Similarly, improvements seem to have been made that specifically benefit DX12 performance, which will only become more relevant in future months and years.

Nvidia's handling of the SLI situation was fairly poor – there has been some back and forth and much confusion surrounding it, and the green team should definitely have clarified its position immediately. We think the decision to limit SLI support in games to two-way setups makes sense, all things considered. We rarely recommend even two-way setups, and have always been against anything beyond this because of the diminishing returns and additional driver-related hassles and quirks, so we can't say we'll miss it. It will be interesting to see if this has a knock-on effect on motherboard design and form factors in the future as well – it arguably makes ATX motherboards even less relevant.

Ultimately, if you want the best current consumer GPU, then the GTX 1080 is the card for you. For GTX 980 Ti owners, it probably isn't especially compelling unless you're also an early adopter of VR, though even then you might want to wait for the GTX 1080 Ti. But if you have an earlier generation top-end part, the GTX 1080 probably looks pretty tempting right now, and don't let us get in the way of your dreams.


As for EVGA, it hasn't really put a step out of line. We'd like to have seen a factory overclock on the memory and our own additional overclocking wasn't particularly impressive, but it's too early for us to say much more in that regard. What you do get is a respectable factory core overclock, a well made and good looking card, and a premium cooling solution that makes good use of its slightly boosted size to remain very quiet in all situations. The extra power circuitry credentials may appeal to some as well, and the RGB lighting and exclusive features in Precision XOC are neat too. Ultimately, the GTX 1080 FTW makes a compelling case for you to opt for it instead of the similarly priced Founders Edition, and EVGA does have the GTX 1080 SC if you're not fussed by the custom PCB. We'll also be testing more partner cards in the coming weeks as well as some GTX 1070 models, so stay tuned!

Update 16/06/2016: We're seeing multiple reports here and around the web that people are getting more out of their cards when overclocking than we managed ourselves. Our sample here was one of the first in the world of this SKU (hand-carried back from Computex, in fact) and thus missed out on final validation stages. As such, we are going to be getting a sample of this card in for testing direct from a retailer, thus avoiding any cherry-picking of samples, and redoing our overclocking to see if there's a difference. We will provide further updates with our results as soon as possible.