Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Waterforce vs Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium Edition

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The GameRock Premium Edition is priced at $629.99. For that price it offers pretty good performance. It achieved a 3DMark Firestrike score of 20,014 and averages at 127-133 FPS with the latest games such as Fallout 4 and Hitman at Full HD resolution.

When the fans are at their minimum, which is when the card is at about 60 degrees C, the noise level is at 33dBA, virtually inaudible unless you put your head next to the case. Under heavy load when gaming, the fans will generate noise at about 38dBA, which is a barely audible hum.

The large size and the twin 95mm fans it's equipped with help a lot with keeping the card cooled. The fans will also switch off at low load which helps with the noise levels as well. The I/O plate has a honeycomb plate to help with the ventilation which again, greatly contributes to the overall cooling performance of the card.

Benchmark-wise, it achieves 39 degrees C while idle which is a pretty standard temperature for 1080 cards. Under heavy load however, it reaches up to 73 degrees C. Still lower than the 80 degrees C set by the reference card, but a tad bit higher than what was achieved by some other GTX 1080 cards.

The case lighting can be changed to any color you want, so you can match it to your fan lighting, for example.

The GameRock comes with a G-Panel equipped with a 3.12" LCD display. You can connect it with the supplied USB 3.0 header to the motherboard and it will display information related to the graphics card such as: fan speed, temperature, and memory usage.