When comparing EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW GAMING ACX 3.0 vs Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium Edition, the Slant community recommends Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium Edition for most people. In the question“What are the best GTX 1080 cards?” Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium Edition is ranked 2nd while EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW GAMING ACX 3.0 is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium Edition is:
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.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Good value for money
At $649, it's on the cheaper side as far as 1080 graphics cards go. While not really excelling at anything, it has no serious drawbacks either. Making it a good card for people who want a compromise between price and performance.
Pro Compact
With a length of 267mm and height of 128mm, the GTX 1080 FTW is one of the most compact 1080 cards available.
Pro Lots of headroom to overclock and tweak
The FTW ACX 3.0 leaves a lot of room for tweaking. You can overclock for up to +147MHz Core and +176MHz Memory before starting to lose on either core or memory speed.
Pro Good value for the money
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.
Pro Usually very quiet
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.
Pro Decent cooling
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.
Pro LED lighting
The case lighting can be changed to any color you want, so you can match it to your fan lighting, for example.
Pro Comes packaged with a G-Panel SKU
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.
Cons
Con Issues with cooling
Some people have problems with cooling, where the GPU needs a thermal kit from EVGA.
Con Annoying LED power connector
There's a 4-pin power connector which feeds the LEDs in the middle-top of the card that sticks like a sore thumb and that's pretty annoying.
Con Can be a bit large for some
The Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock is 285mm long and 133 tall and weighs 1.2kg. It can be quite large for some builds, especially those that use a dual-GPU implementation since a single 1080 GameRock occupies two and a half expansion slots.
Con Not readily available for US
The easiest way to get the card to the US would be to order it from Europe.
Con Unpleasant color scheme
The color scheme for the GameRock 1080 consists of: black, grey, and blue. This is rather unorthodox for graphics cards and may be a bit hard to find other parts that have matching colors if you are going for a transparent case.