Posted by Nathan Kirsch | Tue, Feb 28, 2017 - 10:00 PM

Just moments ago at GDC 2017, NVIDIA announced the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti after months of anticipation. The GeForce GTX 1080 features the GP102 ‘Pascal’ GPU with 3,584 CUDA Cores and it topped of with 11 GB of GDDR5X memory running at 11Gbps on a 352-bit wide memory interface. For comparison sake, the NVIDIA Titan X has the same GP102 GPU with 3,584 CUDA cores and runs 12GB of GDDR5X memory on a 384-bit wide interface.

When you look at clock speeds the NVIDIA TITAN X is clocked 1417MHz core and 1480 MHz typical boost (1531MHz for maximum boost). The only number NVIDIA has given us for the new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is a typical boost clock of 1600MHz. The fact that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X has a higher boost clock than the Titan X is good sign as is the fact that they didn’t disable any of the CUDA cores on the card.

GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Video Card Specifications

12 Billion Transistors

1.6 GHz Boost, 2 GHz OC capable clock speeds

28 SMs, 128 CUDA Cores each

3,584 CUDA Cores

28 Geometry Units

224 Texture Units

6 GPCs

88 ROP Units

352-bit GDDR5x Micron Memory

220W TDP

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti does have some things disabled. For example you have eight fewer ROPs and a narrower 352-bit wide memory bus. NVIDIA hasn’t dished the details on some of the other specifics including things like the base clock, memory bandwidth (likely 492 GB/s) , texture units and pixel outputs, so we need to wait for some of those details to come out. NVIDIA did say the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will be faster than the Titan X, so this card is going to be a beast.

These specifications are rather impressive and NVIDIA showed that the performance gain with this series Ti is larger than previous generations. The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is 35% faster than the GeForce GTX 1080, which is impressive. Could NVIDIA be worried about AMD Vega GPUs? They have really pushed the clock speeds and left all the cores on the GP102 enabled, so it also feels like they were trying to get all the performance that they could out of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti for gamers. Back in the day the GeForce GTX 980 Ti offered a 25% performance bump over the GTX 980 and an 18% gain on the GeForce GTX 780 Ti over the GTX 780.

Here is the GeForce GTX 108o versus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti performance data to see the differences in a number of different game titles. Click the image to be able to read the titles and resolution each test was done at.

NVIDIA has a redesigned vapor chamber cooler that is being used on the GTX 1080 Ti and it cools better and allows the card to run cooler than the one designed for the GeForce GTX 1080. NVIDIA says that the doubled the cooling area on the vapor chamber GeForce GTX 1080 Ti If the GeForce GTX 1080 and GeForce GTX 1080 Ti were both running at 220W with their perspective coolers, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti would run 5C cooler and 2.5dB quieter thanks to the improvements. NVIDIA showed a demo during the launch event that had the cards GPU clock running over 2GHz (overclocked) with a GPU temperature of just 66C. That is impressive!

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti looks just like the GeForce GTX 1080 for the most part, but up top along the edge of the card you can see that there is now an 8-pin and a 6-pin power connector.

This is because the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is a 220W TDP card whereas the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Founders Edition was a 180W TDP card with a single 6-pin connector.

The video connectors on the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition graphics card consist of three standard DisplayPort connectors and one HDMI. There is no DVI connector on this board, so the airflow from the blower style fan can easily exhaust the hot air from the chassis.

Since the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti has 11GB of GDDR5X memory it means that you’ll likely never run into a frame buffer size issue on any current game titles. NVIDIA said that the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti easily has enough memory to handle Watch Dogs 2 and Deus Ex at 5K screen resolutions.

There will be overclocked versions of the GeForce GTX 1080 8GB coming with 11 GBPS GDDR5X memory as well as a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 video card with faster 9 GBPS GDDR5 memory very soon.

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition will launch first and then AIC cards will launch at a later date. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will be available from the AICs at the MSRP. The price of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will be $699.

NVIDIA has also lowered the price of the GeForce GTX 1080 down to $499.

Having a powerful graphics card is now more affordable thanks to the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti! Amazing prices and it looks like it has killer performance. We can’t wait to see how it performs as it comes out next week! AMD better hope VEGA is good as NVIDIA just dropped the hammer and it looks like they delivered an amazing card.