When comparing Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Waterforce 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 Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Waterforce is ranked 8th. 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 Excellent performance over other custom GTX 1080 cards
The card's base GPU clock runs at 1784 Mhz and memory clock at 1302 MHz producing 9.134 TFlops of computing power. That's an increase of almost 10% over a reference GTX 1080 card.
In the real world it means that at 1440p on max settings DOOM, Far Cry Primal and Battlefield 4 on Gigabyte Xtreme Waterforce averages 140, 84, and 118 fps respectively while a reference card averages, 125, 78, and 110 fps respectively.
Pro Offers extended four years of warranty
Gigabyte is offering an extended Xtreme Care warranty period of four years, which is significantly longer than any other manufacturers offer - typically just one year. In the event of a failure within this period, Gigabyte will repair the card or send you a replacement model. Online registration is required.
Pro The best cooling system ensures no throttling
The Waterforce closed loop cooler on the this Xtreme Gaming card handles heat the best out of any current GTX 1080 graphics cards, and temperatures remain quite low as a result. The idle temperature of the card is about 24° Celsius, which is just barely above room temperature. Even more impressive is the maximum temperature under load: the GPU tops at 50 degrees Celsius, even with these increased clock speeds. For comparison, a reference GTX 1080 Founders Edition has a load temperature of 82° C.
Low temperatures not only benefit longevity of the card, but it also prevents throttling which will improve performance. Throttling occurs when a temperature of at least 80° C has been reached. At that point, the graphics card will slow itself down in order to stay below 80 degrees - effectively sacrificing performance. This never occurs to the Xtreme Gaming card because of the efficiency of the cooling system.
Pro Adjustable RGB lightning looks sweet
The exterior of the Gigabyte GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming features a lot of RGB lights and you can adjust the color of these lights via Gigabyte's included software package. This allows you to customize the look of the graphics card, which can be useful if your setup is built with a specific color scheme in mind.
Pro Comes with a frontpanel for easier use of virtual reality headsets
The GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming cards are especially suitable for virtual reality headsets. Some headsets such as the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive require two HDMI-ports, which aren't always easily accessible on all graphics cards. Included in the packaging is a 5.25" extension bay, with two USB 3.0 ports and a set of HDMI inputs. With this frontpanel, users are no longer required to route their VR headset through the back of the system. The graphics card itself features two HDMI-ports on the opposite site of the usual ports, which allows a quick pass-through to this frontpanel. When using these two specific HDMI ports, two of the three DisplayPort inputs are disabled.
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 Fan can get loud
When at 100% output, the cooling fan on the GTX 1080 Xtreme Waterforce can produce up to 56.4 dB of noise - more than most other graphics cards. This produces a noticeable noise, even if it isn't considered loud (it's just a touch quieter than the average conversation when measured).
Con Liquid cooler uses PET tubing
Because the tubing is made of PET (polyethylene terephthalate - common in plastic water bottles and food containers), the tubing of the enclosed liquid cooler is easier to crack than other materials if the tube is accidentally bent, which could then leak coolant. This isn't likely to occur, but it is one of the risks of liquid cooling.
Con Requires additional 8-pin power connector
In order to provide extra power for the watercooling solution and the higher clock and memory speeds, an additional 8-pin power connector is required, for a total of two. A reference GTX 1080 only requires a single 8-pin connector. This can be an issue with power supplies with limited wattage or if you don't have enough spare 8-pin connectors available.
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.