Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Rate This Thread
Hop To
#4275745 - 07/03/16 10:54 PM EVGA GTX 1080 Founders Edition mini review  
Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 4,433
Hellshade Offline
Hellshade
Hellshade  Offline
Hellshade
Senior Member

Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 4,433
Florida
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.


Flying Wings Over Flanders Fields: Between Heaven & Hell II
videos at www.youtube.com/hellshade68

#4275763 - 07/04/16 01:54 AM Re: EVGA GTX 1080 Founders Edition mini review [Re: Hellshade]  
Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 7,532
DukeIronHand Offline
Hotshot
DukeIronHand  Offline
Hotshot

Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 7,532
High over the Front
Thank you very much for the info Hellshade.
Pretty much all I expected except in regards to WOFF.

Do you think, to put it roughly, that we are approaching the point of "dimishing returns" with WOFF and hardware?
Put another way I could have a computer, let's say 3 times more powerful then your current CP, and I am certainly not going to get 3x the FPS. I may do better then yours but not by much?
Be advised I am not a super hardware guy so forgive the imprecise language.

#4275765 - 07/04/16 02:15 AM Re: EVGA GTX 1080 Founders Edition mini review [Re: Hellshade]  
Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 4,433
Hellshade Offline
Hellshade
Hellshade  Offline
Hellshade
Senior Member

Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 4,433
Florida
Duke,

The challenge is that most of the improvements in CPUs these days are coming in terms of efficiency. Even the last few generations of Intel CPUs haven't seen large single thread processing power advances. Mostly they run cooler and on less juice and maybe a little 5 to 15 percent boost in speed. So basically, you aren't going to get too much better than either a 4970K or a 6700K over clocked to 4.2 - 4.8 Ghz and a GTX 1080 at the moment. Even though I bought some pretty fast RAM, everything I've seen says faster RAM doesn't actually have a big impact on gaming. GPUs (video cards) will continue to get a bit more powerful in the next couple of years, but I don't think it will be a big help for WOFF. Nvidias Voltaire family of GPUs (due out in 2018) is supposed to be another big leap, but my suspicion is that a lot of that power will be directed towards Virtual Reality processing.

So the short answer is "Yes, I think we have reached the point of diminishing returns with new hardware, however the top end hardware today does produce some pretty good results with WOFF." I have everything maxed and the only reason I haven't turned off my FPS counter yet is because it makes me smile to see the number 60 painted solid as a rock on the screen after so many years of fiddling with settings to get the best possible results. I think my fiddling days are done. With enough current hardware, you can get all that WOFF has to offer.

I just reloaded the optional WOFF 2.09 effects - the one that got pulled out because too many cards wouldn't display the black smoke properly and the trail would disappear and re-appear, etc. Check out how it looks on the 1080. I think it's amazing!




Flying Wings Over Flanders Fields: Between Heaven & Hell II
videos at www.youtube.com/hellshade68

#4275801 - 07/04/16 08:19 AM Re: EVGA GTX 1080 Founders Edition mini review [Re: Hellshade]  
Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 7,532
DukeIronHand Offline
Hotshot
DukeIronHand  Offline
Hotshot

Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 7,532
High over the Front
Nice!

#4290490 - 08/25/16 01:26 PM Re: EVGA GTX 1080 Founders Edition mini review [Re: Hellshade]  
Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 4,433
Hellshade Offline
Hellshade
Hellshade  Offline
Hellshade
Senior Member

Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 4,433
Florida
FYI -It appears the supply channel for GTX 1080 products has finally begun to normalize and the cards are in stock with (most of the time) the correct pricing. A few sellers are still trying to get $200+ premiums on the cards but these are finally easy to avoid given so many reasonable options.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLis...&ignorear=1

My personal opinion is that if someone is looking to buy a new upper end card, the GTX 1070 series will be more than adequate for almost anything running at 2560 x 1440 or less. Those cards are priced around $400 and give the equivalent of the previous Maxwell generations Titan level performance. Is the 1080 worth the extra dollars? Yes - but only if you have the extra dollars to spare. Otherwise I expect most folks would be more than happy with the GTX 1070 series and keep the extra $300 or so in their pocket.

If you want single GPU 4K performance, then either you take the current GTX 1080s for good (not perfect) 4K performance, pay $1,200 for the new Pascal Titan GPU for great 4K performance or wait to see if they will release a 1080 ti which will probably cost less than the new Titan but still likely offer better performance than the stock 1080s. I'm purely guessing that if they release the 1080 ti, it will be very close to the $999 mark.


Flying Wings Over Flanders Fields: Between Heaven & Hell II
videos at www.youtube.com/hellshade68


Moderated by  Polovski 

Quick Search
Recent Articles
Support SimHQ

If you shop on Amazon use this Amazon link to support SimHQ
.
Social


Recent Topics
Carnival Cruise Ship Fire....... Again
by F4UDash4. 03/26/24 05:58 PM
Baltimore Bridge Collapse
by F4UDash4. 03/26/24 05:51 PM
The Oldest WWII Veterans
by F4UDash4. 03/24/24 09:21 PM
They got fired after this.
by Wigean. 03/20/24 08:19 PM
Grown ups joke time
by NoFlyBoy. 03/18/24 10:34 PM
Anyone Heard from Nimits?
by F4UDash4. 03/18/24 10:01 PM
RIP Gemini/Apollo astronaut Tom Stafford
by semmern. 03/18/24 02:14 PM
10 years after 3/8/2014
by NoFlyBoy. 03/17/24 10:25 AM
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.6.0