So I got my card but I started having reboots. I'll skip the long story and head straight to the solution. It wasn't the card, it was my power supply. Pop in a shiny new Corsair CX850M power supply and all problems are gone. So with that out of the way, here's a brief review that just gets to the points you may want to know if you are interested in buying one.
Why are they always out of stock? Evidently TSMC(?) the chip manufacturer is not having good yields, so chips are in short supply. Estimated time frame for the supply chain to stabilize and get enough cards in stock is sometime in August. If you want one, have Newegg put you one notice when the one you want comes in. If you get notified, order immediately. Average in stock time is between 2 and 8 minutes. Mine was out of stock 4 minutes after I ordered.
How big is the performance boost? Depending on what you are running now, pretty huge. Anything other than a GTX 980 ti or a Titan, you can expect a significant jump in frame rates while simultaneously increasing eye candy. Coming from a GTX 780 ti, it's a really, really nice boost to FPS.
Does it run hot? Download the MSI Afterburner program and set your fans to a 1:1 ratio. It doesn't really get above 70 degrees C under normal gaming loads. 83 degrees is where it starts to self throttle to protect itself, so you're basically good.
Did they fix the fan throttling up and down? Yes. New hotfix drivers resolved the issue.
Is it quiet? Yes. Unless the case is right next to your head or you literally have the sound turned off, you probably won't even notice it when you are gaming.
How well does it overclock? Not very well. Unlike previous new cards, Nvidia has done it's best not to leave too much extra performance on the table untouched. No matter which model GTX 1080 you get, regardless even of the cooling solution or if you get one with extra power connectors, 2.0 - 2.1 Ghz seems to basically be the max you are going to get out of any GTX 1080. Even then, it's not a very large boost to FPS over stock. So essentially don't buy one based on how much you think you can get it overclocked because it's about the same for all of them. If you buy one, buy one based on your budget and which cooling system works best for your case. Founders Editions all blow the hot air out the back of the case, so if you have a small tower case or you plan to run them in SLI, the Founder Edition cooling solution makes good sense. Otherwise, get an aftermarket board with the cooling system that works for you. You also have to ask yourself, if the card already crushes most games, are you overclocking it because it really needs it or just because you love to overclock?
How does it do in most games? It crushes them. I run at 2560 x 1440 and just turn all eye candy to max. 60 FPS with no real effort on it's part. It's total overkill for playing at 1920 x 1080 and it's more than adequate for 2560 x 1440. It can do 4K but unless it is an game that is a few years old, you need to drop the eye candy down a bit in order to keep good FPS. Then again, unless you have a 32" or greater monitor, you probably aren't running 4K. Essentially it will be the last card you would ever need to buy (until it dies) if you don't ever plan to go to 4k. It's an excellent long term investment.
How does it do in WOFF? It does very well, but not as well as it does in other games / sims. WOFF had DX9 support added in later and my guess is that as awesome as all of Ankor's magic is, it still isn't the same as a native, from the ground up, DX9 game. I suspect there are still parts of WOFF that are CPU dependent that would be GPU dependent if it was coded with DX9 from the start. That said, I can still run 60 FPS at 4X time compression over the front in 1918 with all 5'S in the Workshop. That includes 5's for both terrain detail and scenery density. The eye candy in the sim is just amazing with the card and it certainly lets me put the graphics quality far higher than my old GTX 780 ti did. Of course, you also need to factor in, given WOFFs CPU demands, that I'm running a 6700K overclocked to 4.6 Ghz. You can't expect to throw it on a minimum spec CPU and get the same results.
Would I buy a Founders Edition again? If I had my choice, I'd have purchased the MSI Twin Frozr cooling system version, but mostly only because its black and red coloring would match my motherboard and keyboard. Again, performance wise there is very little difference in FPS between the various boards. Performance wise, I have zero complaints about the board. The Founders Editions are well built, quiet and fast. The $100 premium is a rip, but that's basically the price for being an early adopter. Knowing that the other versions don't really offer any significant advantage in performance takes some of the pain out of the price for me, but if I had my choice because they were all in stock (wishful thinking) then no, I'd buy one of the other cards just because they cost less.
Is it worth the price? Well that depends on a lot of personal factors like your current CPU, your available funds and how much you think you'd actually use it. Dollar per performance wise, the GTX 1070s are actually the best deal. You get Titan level performance for around $400, which is basically 60 percent less than the cost of a Titan. Hard to say no to that. If that number is still out of reach, the AMD 480s are going to be released soon and you get outstanding performance for around $200 - $250. If you have a GTX 980 ti or Titan, there's really no reason to upgrade. You are probably already crushing most games just fine. Coming from a 780 ti and knowing that I won't need to buy another card again for a very long time makes it worth the price to me. I was initially planning to wait and get the ti version whenever it finally shipped, but honestly I don't think I'm missing anything. This card more than handles whatever I throw at it and unless you are doing 4K, it probably would for you too.
Hopefully some of that info helps anyone who might be interested in a 1080.
BTW, I just ran a couple of full WOFF campaign missions and the GPU never got about 53 degrees C.