When comparing EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080, the Slant community recommends NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 for most people. In the question“What are the best GTX 1080 cards?” NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 is ranked 5th while EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 is:
In benchmarks, the GTX 1080 FE (Founder's Edition) is a hair slower than *two* GTX 980 units in SLI configuration (the difference is 2% in 3DMark 11). In gaming tests, the GTX 1080 FE achieved 61fps average in Need For Speed 2016 on high settings at 4K resolution. For comparison, the AMD Radeon R9 Fury scored 40fps (34% lower), and the GTX 980 scored 34fps (44% lower than the GTX 1080 FE). The only slowdowns you will encounter in maxed out 4K graphics is during extremely demanding scenes. The GTX 1080 FE also supports GPU Boost 3.0 which lets it ramp up performance even higher as long as the temperature doesn't rise too much.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Great ACX 3.0 cooler prevents throttling
The EVGA GTX 1080 ACX 3.0 uses its own built-in cooling system which includes two fans. The ACX 3.0 cooler has been used on a lot of high-end graphics cards, and the GTX 1080 by EVGA is no different. In an idle situation, the EVGA GTX 1080 generally reaches temperatures up to 56° Celsius. At a first glance, that's pretty high, but the fans don't start spinning unless a temperature of 60° is reached. During full load, the EVGA GTX 1080 chip heats up to a maximum of 75 degrees Celsius - eight degrees cooler than a reference (Founders Edition) GTX 1080.
The maximum temperature of 75° C also means that throttling doesn't occur with the EVGA GTX 1080 SC Gaming ACX 3.0, something that tends to occur with other GTX 1080 cards with worse coolers. In other words, the graphics card won't slow itself down in order to stay cool: performance will be 100% at all times.
Pro Stays virtually silent
The GTX 1080 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 is a virtually silent card. In a non-gaming idle situation, the two fans of the cooler don't spin up at all - the card stays completely inaudible up to temperatures of 60° Celsius. Even during full load and intensive gaming situations, this edition of the GTX 1080 is remarkably quiet and stays under 40 decibels (when measured two inches above the motherboard in an open environment). For comparison: the reference GTX 1080 produces 45.5 dB of noise. Annoying coil whine sounds are not present in this edition either.
Pro Higher clock speed for slightly better performance
The GTX 1080 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 features a higher clockspeed compared to a reference GTX 1080, which means it has been factory overclocked to reach higher framerates and overall better performance. The base clock speed has been set at 1708 MHz, which is a 6.3% increase compared to the reference 1607 MHz. The boost clock has also received a factory overclock to 1847 MHz compared to the standard 1733 MHz, a difference of 6.5%.
This results in a slightly better performance, although practical performance differences aren't as noticeable. For example: In Rise of the Tomb Raider at 1080p and maximum settings, the SC ACX 3.0 is nearly 5 FPS faster than a regular GTX 1080. In the benchmarking suite 3D Mark Fire Strike Extreme, a GTX 1080 with reference clock speeds achieves a score of 9,387 points while the EVGA Superclocked takes the crown at 9,622 points. Although the performance differences between this overclocked card and a reference GTX 1080 are minimal, the extra power is nice to have nonetheless.
Pro Best price : performance ratio
The EVGA offers the most performance for the dollar, and is $100 cheaper than almost any other decent GTX 1080 card. It has a great cooler, and comes with a decent clock speed without compromising the noise the card makes making it a well balanced option.
Pro Relatively low energy consumption
As it only requires 1 8 pin connector, it draws much less power for those whom may not have a high wattage rating power supply. Making this more eco friendly when it comes to energy usage.
Pro Epic 4K performance
In benchmarks, the GTX 1080 FE (Founder's Edition) is a hair slower than two GTX 980 units in SLI configuration (the difference is 2% in 3DMark 11).
In gaming tests, the GTX 1080 FE achieved 61fps average in Need For Speed 2016 on high settings at 4K resolution. For comparison, the AMD Radeon R9 Fury scored 40fps (34% lower), and the GTX 980 scored 34fps (44% lower than the GTX 1080 FE).
The only slowdowns you will encounter in maxed out 4K graphics is during extremely demanding scenes.
The GTX 1080 FE also supports GPU Boost 3.0 which lets it ramp up performance even higher as long as the temperature doesn't rise too much.
Pro Well optimized
NVIDIA properly optimized the GTX 1080 FE for DirectX. This means that games supporting DirectX 11 will see a slight performance boost, but more-so for the upcoming games using DirectX12.
Pro Very power efficient
While performance is higher than its competitors, the GTX 1080 FE actually uses less power. The maximum amount of power consumption this GPU requires is around 185 watts, which is an improvement of over 35% compared to NVIDIA's previous generation high-end graphics card, the GTX 980 Ti. This also plays a positive role when choosing a power supply, or determining if you need to upgrade your existing PSU.
Cons
Con Hard to get due to availability issues
The GTX 1080 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 is hard to get, availability (at the recommended MSRP of $649.99) remains an issue.
Con No native support for 3- and 4-way SLI
SLI - short for Scalable Link Interface - is NVIDIA's technology of combining the power of two or more identical GPU's in order to reach a better performance. In other words, you can use multiple GTX 1080 video cards to further increase performance. Although the GTX 1080 supports 2-way SLI without a problem, NVIDIA does not offer support for 3- and 4-way SLI. The included SLI-bridge which serves as a connector between the two cards, is only compatible in a 2-way configuration. 3-way and 4-way SLI are possible but aren't supported. You'll have to use an older SLI-bridge found on older GeForce models and you'll need to generate an 'Enthusiast Key' on NVIDIA's website. However, NVIDIA does not guarantee a 3- or 4-way configuration will provide any noticeable benefits.
Con Disappointing performance improvements when using Vulkan
Vulkan is a graphical API that allows developers to communicate better with the GPU, which in theory should result in performance improvements compared to the more standard DirectX 12 or OpenGL API's. The GTX 1080 doesn't perform particularly better in Vulkan however, and the difference with the standard OpenGL is minimal at higher resolutions.
Doom is one of the first (and only) titles with support for Vulkan and serves as a good benchmark for OpenGL vs Vulkan performance. In 1080p Full HD resolution and Ultra settings, the GTX 1080 is able to reach an average framerate of 140 FPS in OpenGL. Vulkan improves the frame rate to 166 FPS, a fifteen percent increase. Starting from 1440p resolutions however, performance improvements using Vulkan are very minimal and not noticeable during gameplay. 1080 does pretty well at 109 FPS in 1440p, while Vulkan only marginally improves this result with 145 FPS, a 5% increase. For comparison: AMD's RX 480 card does perform significantly better with Vulkan and higher frame rates, with a performance boost of 29.3%. Similar results are seen when testing in 4K. In this case, the GTX 1080 using Vulkan actually performs worse than the standard OpenGL, with 59 FPS and 60 FPS respectively. AMD's RX 480 is better optimized, as it's able to achieve a performance increase of 24.7% in this scenario.
In short, Vulkan performance seems particularly useful when gaming in Full HD, but it doesn't provide much performance benefits otherwise. It would appear that NVIDIA's Pascal architecture isn't optimized for high-resolution Vulkan gaming.