STRIX GTX 1080 aka ROG-STRIX-GTX1080-O8G-GAMING is the first Pascal-based graphics card to feature ASUS’ DirectCU III cooler and also arrives with a factory overclock.
Product on Review: ROG STRIX GTX 1080 GAMING
Manufacturer & Sponsor: ASUS
Street Price: UK: £659.99, US: $700-850 USD
The past few weeks have been some of the most exciting we’ve experience in the computer tech industry. Not least because of the spate of interesting announcements at Computex 2016 but taking centre-stage was one of the most significant GPU releases in recent times. Last month, NVIDIA unveiled their new flagship graphics card, the GeForce GTX 1080. Starting at the top end, this high-performance GPU, based on Pascal architecture leaves no stone unturned and is NVIDIA’s most powerful single-GPU they’ve released; even surpassing the performance of the highly revered TITAN-X. Today, we’ll be taking a look at our first partner version of this highly anticipated card.
In the spotlight today is the ASUS STRIX GTX 1080. ASUS has taken this Pascal-based card, applied a significant factory overclock to its Base/Boost Clock, dropped on their much loved DirectCU III cooling solution and decked the front and reverse with Aura RGB LED lighting. The NVIDIA’s Founder’s Edition of the GTX 1080 has already had a few blips with fan speeds jumping to 3000RPM and Base Clocks throttling back after ~30 minutes of usage – today, we’ll be analysing this STRIX card to see if those discrepancies exist. Let’s begin!
ASUS on their STRIX GTX 1080
ROG Strix GeForce® GTX 1080 gaming graphics cards are packed with exclusive ASUS technologies, including DirectCU III Technology with Patented Wing-Blade Fans for 30% cooler and 3X quieter performance, and Industry-only Auto-Extreme Technology for premium quality and the best reliability. Aura RGB Lighting enables a gaming system personalization and VR-friendly HDMI ports let gamers easily enjoy immersive virtual reality experiences. ROG Strix GeForce® GTX 1080 also has GPU Tweak II with XSplit Gamecaster that provides intuitive performance tweaking and instant gameplay streaming.
Technical Specifications
Below are the technical specifications surrounding STRIX GTX 1080, directly from ASUS:
Chipset
GeForce GTX 1080
Digital max resolution
7680×4320
Core Clock
OC Mode – GPU Boost Clock : 1936 MHz , GPU Base Clock : 1784 MHz
Gaming Mode (Default) – GPU Boost Clock : 1898 MHz , GPU Base Clock : 1759 MHz
Memory Clock
10 Gbps
Process Technology
16 nm
CUDA Cores
2560
Memory Size
8GB GDDR5X
Memory Bus
256-bit
Card Bus
PCI-E 3.0
Memory Type
GDDR5X
DirectX
12
OpenGL
4.5
PCB Form
ATX
Multi-view
4
I/O
1x Dual-link DVI-I
2x HDMI 2.0
2x Display Port 1.4
Suggested Power requirement
600W (with 6+8pin external power connector)
Card Size
11.73 ” x 5.28 ” x 1.57 ” Inch
29.8 x 13.4 x4 Centimeter
GeForce GTX 1080
Digital max resolution
7680×4320
Core Clock
OC Mode – GPU Boost Clock : 1936 MHz , GPU Base Clock : 1784 MHz
Gaming Mode (Default) – GPU Boost Clock : 1898 MHz , GPU Base Clock : 1759 MHz
Memory Clock
10 Gbps
Process Technology
16 nm
CUDA Cores
2560
Memory Size
8GB GDDR5X
Memory Bus
256-bit
Card Bus
PCI-E 3.0
Memory Type
GDDR5X
DirectX
12
OpenGL
4.5
PCB Form
ATX
Multi-view
4
I/O
1x Dual-link DVI-I
2x HDMI 2.0
2x Display Port 1.4
Suggested Power requirement
600W (with 6+8pin external power connector)
Card Size
11.73 ” x 5.28 ” x 1.57 ” Inch
29.8 x 13.4 x4 Centimeter
Packaging & Bundle
Since we’re dealing with the ASUS STRIX line, our graphics card comes packaged with the refreshed livery – a strong emphasis on RGB lighting via AURA is clearly evident. The front of the packaging lists some of the integral NVIDIA features while the reverse runs through some of the key features this card brings (all of which we’ll be covering in this article). Technical details and ports are also listed.
Inside, there is an inner box which contains the card and the accessories. The card is encased with some foam padding and there is a small assortment of bundled items. They are as follows:
• Driver/Software CD
• 2x fabric cable ties
• 1x Power Cables – Y-cable (8pin to dual 6-pin)
• Installation Guide
• World of Warships Promotional Card
Closer Look (With Cooler)
The basis for the STRIX 1080 is the now well-known DirectCU III cooling solution. Adopting a triple fan configuration, this cooler consumes the card. Later in the article we’ll analyse the different aspects of our cooler in plenty of detail.
Overall the design with the plastic shroud looks aggressive, appealing to the eye and will likely pair up with other hardware very well – especially since we can modify the LED lighting strips (seen around the cooling fans), using ASUS Aura software. Our only criticism is that we’re dealing with plastic here; a card carrying such a price-tag should be using more robust materials such as metal.
The actual size of this graphics card is: 29.8 x 13.4 x 4 cm, which is significantly larger than the Founder’s edition which sits at: 26.67 x 11.1 x 4 cm.
Flipping the card over, on the reverse we have a large steel backplate which protects the components on our graphics card and also prevents it from flexing or bending. Having such a feature on a graphics card is encouraging as it provides rigidity and prevents potential damage. There are pockets of ventilation for significant components.
This backplate also features the ROG logo which acts as an LED – this lighting can be tweaked via the AURA software and changed to a colour of preference.
As seen on other DirectCU III coolers, the STRIX 1080 arrives with three WingBlade cooling fans which ASUS claim will deliver 30% better cooling and 3X quieter performance. During light load these cooling fans will cease to spin – rendering the card completely silent.
Running along the edge, ASUS has placed Republic of Gamers branding which also synchronizes with the LED lighting.
The GTX 1080 is clearly marked out for Ultra-High Definition gaming – as such we have an assortment of video out ports on the Rear IO section. These include:
• 1x Dual Link DVI-D port (Up to 3K)
• 2x DisplayPort 1.4 (8K @ 60Hz)
• 2x HDMI 2.0 port (4K @ 60 Hz) (VR + display)
The inclusion of 2x HDMI over 3x DisplayPort + 1x HDMI means that users can still use one of the HDMI ports for display while using the other HDMI port for a VR headset.
The selection of ports here should entertain most users, it’s great to see DP 1.4 being used as this now supports up to 8K output and was only released a matter of months ago.
As is customary for an NVIDIA graphics card, our STRIX 1080 arrives with multi-SLI ports which allows us to pair up this card with more than one other graphics card. The GTX 1080 also has the added benefit of using SLI HB (High Bandwidth) meaning the bandwidth is now doubled from 1GB/s to 2GB/s.
The Founder’s Edition of GTX 1080 requires a single 8pin PCI express connection but for our STRIX 1080 its necessary to use 8+6pin – the custom PCB, factory overclock, upgraded components and not to mention the RGB functionality all allude to needing more power. As per the technical specifications.
Since the Founder’s Edition demanded a 500W PSU, we can expect STRX 1080 to require a little more juice at 600W.
Seen above, there are tiny LEDs next to the PCI express connections – these LEDs indicate whether the plug is connected properly. A white LED signifying a good connection while RED showing a problem.
Closer Look (Without Cooler)
We’ve reviewed quite a few graphics cards from ASUS which use the DirectCU and this third iteration of the well-known cooler doesn’t fail to impress.
The foundation for DirectCU III is a large heatsink comprising of aluminium fins and four copper heatpipes which make direct contact with the GPU. The heat is transferred away from the GPU, through the fins and the cooling fans help to dispel the remaining warmth.
With this cooler now detached from the graphics card we can see take a look at the inner-workings and what ASUS has designed.
All of the components across our board are employed using Auto Extreme – the process which sees the construction take on a fully automated process.
The driving force behind our GTX 1080 is the new GP104 which uses NVIDIA’s Pascal architecture. This GPU comprises of 7.2 million transistors created by the 16nm TSMIC process. ASUS has applied a factory overclock to this card, increasing the GPU clock from 1607MHz to 1784MHz (1936MHz GPU boost) – the memory clock has been untouched at 10Gbps.
Our graphics card employs an 8+2 power design and there are Super Alloy Power II components used throughout the PCB.
Super Alloy Power II includes: SAP II CAPs, SAP II Chokes, SAP II DrMOS and SAP II POSCAPs. In return, by using these components we can expect longer lifespan, better efficiency and more headroom for overclocking.
At the end of the card there are two fan headers. The idea being – you can connect up cooling fans which are nearby for targeted cooling when the graphics card is under heavy load. Usually fans which are connected using the headers on the motherboard will factor in CPU temperatures – this nifty inclusion will help to drive down temperatures specifically when the GPU is being taxed.
So bearing all this in mind, we’re left in no doubt of this graphics card’s capabilities. Over the next series of pages we’ll be running this graphics card through our benchmarking suite.
Test Setup & Methodology
How we test graphics cards
Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphics card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and even out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and latest drivers so this does certainly need to be taken into consideration when viewing our testing results. Each game and benchmark is tested times with the lowest and highest scores omitted out of the 5 results and the average then taken from the three remaining to give us our final result for each resolution and setting used.
Hardware
Taking Intel’s High-End Desktop platform, our hardware utilises the Intel X99 chipset. Combined with this we use the Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to a realistic and achievable 4GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB (4x4GB) of DDR4 at 2666MHz and a 750GB SSD there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.
High End Graphics Cards on test:
PowerColor RED DEVIL RX 470 (Crimson 16.8.1)
PowerColor RED DEVIL RX 480 (Crimson 16.7.2)
ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme (NVIDIA 368.81)
ASUS STRIX GTX 1080 (NVIDIA 368.81)
Gainward GTX 1070 Phoenix Golden Sample (NVIDIA 368.81)
MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X (NVIDIA 368.64)
Gainward GTX 1060 Phoenix Golden Sample (NVIDIA 368.64)
NVIDIA GTX 1060 (NVIDIA 368.64)
NVIDIA GTX 980Ti OC (NVIDIA 368.81)
NVIDIA GTX 980 (NVIDIA 368.81)
NVIDIA GTX 970 (NVIDIA 368.81)
AMD Radeon RX 480 CrossFire (Crimson 16.7.2)
AMD Radeon RX 480 (Crimson 16.7.2)
XFX R9 FURY (Crimson 16.7.2)
AMD Radeon R9 390X (Crimson 16.7.2)
Special thanks go to Intel, Corsair, MSI and AOC for providing the extreme spec components used for our test bench:
Motherboard: MSI X99S GAMING 9 AC
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR HX1050
Hard Drive – Samsung 840 EVO 750GB
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H105 240mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2879VF
Capture Card – Razer Ripjaw
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR HX1050
Hard Drive – Samsung 840 EVO 750GB
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H105 240mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2879VF
Capture Card – Razer Ripjaw
Benchmarks
If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we’ve chosen:
DOOM (OpenGL 4.5 & Vulkan)
Total War: Warhammer
Rise of the Tomb Raider
HITMAN
DiRT Rally
Total War: Warhammer
Rise of the Tomb Raider
HITMAN
DiRT Rally
To capture framerates we use a combination of in-game benchmark tools, FRAPS and PresentMon.
We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included three of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:
Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike
Futuremark 3DMark Time Spy
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike
Futuremark 3DMark Time Spy
Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…
Power, Temperatures, Acoustics
To test for power consumption, we take a measurement from the plug socket. It is important to note that the figures below represent total system power use and not just the GPU. The CPU was always in a fixed state (4GHz overclock) so did not affect the additional power load when the GPU was placed under 100% load using Heaven 4.0 which was ran for 20 minutes at which point a load reading was taken. Idle readings were taken 5 minutes after system boot to ensure any background services and applications had loaded.
Temperature
To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests we set Heaven 4.0 running continuously for ~30 minutes recorded the peak/maximum GPU temperature.
Acoustics
Noise from the cooling fans isn’t disruptive at all, even during gaming sessions when the system is loaded – take a look and listen on our video.
Overclocking
In our overclocking efforts we managed to squeeze more performance out of our GTX 1080 – bumping the GPU clock up by 70MHz, the memory clock wouldn’t budge. Although this is only a conservative overclock, by increasing the Base Clock we get an impressive result in Heaven 4.0.
DX12: 3DMark Time Spy
With its pure DirectX 12 engine, which supports new API features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, 3DMark Time Spy is the ideal benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards.
DX11: 3DMark FireStrike
Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremark’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.
DX11: Unigine Heaven 4.0
Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.
DX11: Unigine Valley
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.
DX12: DOOM OpenGL 4.5
By default DOOM utilises an OpenGL 4.5 renderer, and is one of relatively few Windows PC titles to not use DirectX 12. It tests how well NVIDIA and AMD’s GPUs deal with a less mainstream approach, especially in regards to driver optimisations, and like all of id titles stretches graphics quality to the limit.
DX12: DOOM Vulkan
id have also released an optional Vulkan rendering path for DOOM. This API is a development of AMD’s Mantle low level which has been taken on board by the Kronos Group for implementation as the next generation of Open graphics APIs. Like DirectX 12 Vulkan is capable of Asynchronous Compute in specific configurations.
DX12: Total War: WARHAMMER
Total War: WARHAMMER is a pseudo Real-Time Strategy title which leverages DirectX 12 to render huge numbers of complex units on screen at any one time.
DX12: Rise of the Tomb Raider
Square Enix’s Rise of the Tomb Raider is the sequel to 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot. An enormously challenging title graphically, the developers also released an optional DirectX 12 render path for Windows 10 users. Although it has undergone a number of iterations this rendering pathway notably doesn’t currently utilise the full capabilities of DirectX 12.
DX12: HITMAN
Yet another DirectX 12 title, 2016’s Hitman from Square Enix and developer IO Interactive has a more robust DirectX 12 implementation than Rise of the Tomb Raider. We’ve tested at a full range of resultions, from 1080p through to 4K, which provides a look at the impact of GPU speed and memory utilisation.
DX11: DiRT Rally
Overall Performance
Here we take a look at the overall performance of the graphics card. This figure is determined by finding the average FPS across all of the settings used in a particular benchmark(game) to give us an overall value.
Value For Money
We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.
Conclusion
NVIDIA’s Pascal launch has been one of their biggest yet and now that partner cards of the custom cooled variety are hitting shelves an already momentous release has just got even more interesting. If you’re seeking to jump onto the bandwagon, the ASUS STRIX GTX 1080 is one of those graphics cards you just can’t ignore.
The Founder’s Edition GTX 1080 has unfortunately hit a few hurdles since its inauguration not least because of the problematic excessive fan RPM burst but also due to a BIOS iteration which limits the clock speed after a set temperature is reached. Most of the published reviews fail to highlight this problem because their tests are simply not performed for an extended duration – once the card is tested for ~30 minutes the temperatures reportedly hit 90C and this in turn throttles the clock speeds down. Since gaming sessions are usually longer than 20-30 minutes various Founder’s Edition reviews won’t reveal such a problem – but we’re happy to report there are no such issues with the STRIX GTX 1080. Our temperature test on the preceding pages was run for 50 minutes and clock speeds were monitored also, we actually discovered that our card ran at 1999MHz – beyond the stated frequencies!
DirectCU III cooling has been a strong fixture for ASUS graphics cards. This third instalment of the popular cooling solution not only keeps the temperatures at an acceptable level but it emits very little noise at all – with the fans completely stopping during low-load and light usage. The inclusion of RGB lighting courtesy of ASUS Aura is another nice addition too as it means you can tailor the colour to the theme of your system.
So far as performance goes, this GTX 1080 is a monumental card. The factory overclock helps frame rates hit an impressive mark in Ultra-High Definition (UHD) – and really this card is designed for gamers who intend to run their games at 3K+. We note the inclusion of the newly released DisplayPort 1.4 on this STRIX card, which now offers support for up to 8K @ 60Hz. Those wanting to play the latest gaming titles at UHD with detail presets set on high-maximum will be able to do so and still enjoy fluid framerates.
While we weren’t able to apply a substantial overclock to this card, the small increase from 1785MHz to 1855MHz revealed quite a bump in score within Unigine’s Heaven 4.0. The STRIX 1080 is already an impressive card with the factory overclock ASUS has applied they’ve certainly squeezed plenty out of this Pascal-based offering.
The ASUS STRIX GTX 1080 arrives with a price-tag of £689 GBP / $700-850 USD. This certainly isn’t for the faint hearted but those who want the absolute best will be required to “dig deep”. At such a cost, we’re reminded that this isn’t too far away from overclocked variants of the GTX 980Ti and since this card trumps the Maxwell counterpart, it isn’t so bad at all.
Boasting a stylish aesthetic and arriving with both a factory overclock and DirectCU III cooling, the STRIX GTX 1080 impresses in the gaming arena. If you’re looking for a high-performance graphics card to cut through the latest triple-A titles, look no further.
VIDEO REVIEW – VORTEZ TV
Pros
+ Aggressive styling
+ Customisable LED lighting
+ Comes with factory overclock
+ Low-noise
+ Effective cooling
+ Excellent performance
+ DirectX 12 ready
+ 2 years warranty
Cons
– None!
+ Aggressive styling
+ Customisable LED lighting
+ Comes with factory overclock
+ Low-noise
+ Effective cooling
+ Excellent performance
+ DirectX 12 ready
+ 2 years warranty
Cons
– None!
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
