GTX 1080 Mini-review

[FlyingPenguin]

I upgraded the gaming rig to a GTX 1080 from a GTX 980 and moved the 980 to my workstation where is seems to be making a considerable difference in video transcoding times with good quality.

The GTX 980 was no slouch, and I really didn't expect to see as much improvement as I saw.

I benched the 2 games I play the most right now using the same settings and drivers on both cards. In all cases the video settings were High (I don't really like using Ultra settings since I prefer to have lots of framerate headroom - especially in multiplayer games, and my Gsync monitor really shines at high framerates).

Here's the results. Very simple bench just parking my character in the very same location, facing the same way, in both tests. This is BEFORE overclocking the 1080 (which it easily overclocked to 2000MHz):

DOOM (using the Vulkan API):
GTX 980 / GTX 1080
80 / 125

Killing Floor 2:
GTX 980 / GTX 1080
111 / 144

The card's fan never goes over 55% and you can barely hear it over the much loader PSU fan, that despite the fact that this is the single fan version. It uses a single 8 pin power connector instead of the 980's 6 & 8 pin, and it looks puny compared to the 980 (which had a massive heatsink and pipes on it, along with three fans).

[Losbot]

Which make/brand did you get?

[FlyingPenguin]

EVGA Founders Edition. Got a very good deal on it from a friend who sold it to me because it didn't fit properly in his case.

It's not what I would have purchased normally - I don't like single fan cards. I prefer 2 or 3 BIG fans, but this thing hardly gets warm when it's working hard. Quite amazing.

[wvjohn]

I think all the FE cards use binned chips. If you think you might be doing VR stuff, take a look at the Gigabyte 1080 extreme. http://techreport.com/review/30362/giga ... d-reviewed. This comes with a 5.25 faceplate for video and usbC out, and has a seriously huge heatsink/fan set up that takes of 2.5 slots. I swapped to this card from my original FE. I ends up with lots of video outs 4 in back and 2 in front. I haven't pushed the oc on this, but it slide up around 2000 mhz. Since this is the cadillac of the line, I would guess it uses binned chips as well.

[FlyingPenguin]

Didn't want to name drop because you hadn't mentioned it here before, but thanks for the deal on the card, John.

[Err]

I finally got the go ahead to step up to a 1080. I'm showing that EVGA received it late Tuesday so hopefully I'll get my 1080 within the week.

[wvjohn]

FP - glad it found a good home.

The new card is actually a little longer that the old one, but the end sits higher so it doesn't squish my SATA port. They are remarkable cards in terms of speed, and make a big difference at 2560 x 1440.

[Err]

I should get my 1080 Monday.

I've been running on a borrowed 680 GT so I haven't been gaming much. It not that it won't run my games. I just don't want to mess with my settings. I also purchased PowerDVD Ultra on sale so I could watch Blu-ray on my PC without ripping them first. All of the "free" solutions don't work well. Now I can just pop in a disc and watch it. It came with Media Espresso 7.5 converter. I normally use Handbrake for everything but I'm going to start using Media Espresso for basic conversion to H264. Handbrake is strictly a CPU encode so it takes be ~2 min per 1 min of video. I tried an encode with Media Espresso last night with the GPU acceleration enable and was able to convert a 22 minute file in 12 minutes. I'm going to try it again once I get my 1080. The only downside to Media Espresso is that it's very bare in what you can do. For example, you can't burn in subtitles which won't be a problem most of the time. This would only come into play for me in converting Anime as I can understand Japanese.

[Err]

I got my card in today. I've been putting off installing the latest drivers so I went ahead and updated those also. The card runs great. I was playing Doom earlier (OpenGL) at 3840 x 2160 DSR without any issues. My Firestrike benchmark didn't go up much compared with my 980Ti but my TimeSpy (DX12) got more of a jump. The only problem I had was with Oblivion. The game doesn't think a 1080 is capable of supporting shader model 3.0 and when HDR was enabled, I got a black screen. The work around wasn't too bad but it was just a nuisance. Since this may affect Fallout 3 and NV, here is what you need to do: Start the game and let it detect your card. Look at the renderinfo.txt located in Documents\my games\oblivion and note the Shader Package line. My was pointing at 2. Navigate to the Oblivion\Data\Shaders directory and in my case rename shaderpackage002 to .bak. Then copy shaderpackage019 and paste it in the same directory. Rename the copy shaderpackage002. Now open the oblivion.ini file (same location as the renderinfo.txt) find the line bAllow30Shaders=0 and change it to bAllow30Shaders=1. Then save. You should now be able to play with HDR on without a black screen.

Benchmarks: From left to right - 1080, 980ti, 6800




1080 and 980ti only

[wvjohn]

One of my main games is Guild Wars2 which is a DX9 game like Oblivion. I haven't fooled with it, but a lot of people use SweetFX or another shader program (ReShade ? ) and say it makes a big difference.

[Err]

One of my main games is Guild Wars2 which is a DX9 game like Oblivion. I haven't fooled with it, but a lot of people use SweetFX or another shader program (ReShade ? ) and say it makes a big difference.

I've been meaning to give SweetFX a shot. I remember trying it a while back but didn't like the particular preset I chose. I'll eventually try it again. The real trick with these old Bethesda game is simply to keep them from crashing.



One thing I forgot to mention about my 1080 is that I notice a bit of whine when running graphically intensive games. These noise is not coming from the fans as they weren't even on yet when I first noticed it. It's not very loud but I've never had a card do this.

[FlyingPenguin]

I don't hear that on mine, but that's inductor whine. Some card designs are prone to it.

[wvjohn]

ran firestrike (free version)

FS score 16,396

Grapics 1 110 fps
#2 90.38

physics 11,191

4790 @ 4.4
gigabyte 1080
16 mb ram
run from Samsung 840