Gigabyte Previews GTX 1080 G1 Gaming Card, Hints At Xtreme Gaming SKU

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By Kevin Carbotte
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Today is Nvidia GTX 1080 day. The Founder’s Edition cards are now available, and Nvidia’s partners, such as EVGA, Asus and Zotac, have been revealing their own spins on the GTX 1080 specification. Gigabyte revealed its upcoming GTX 1080 G1 Gaming card, but the company was scant on the details.

The Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming will feature the company’s WindForce 3 cooling system, albeit with some slight enhancements. Gigabyte said the three WindForce fans feature a fresh design for the GTX 1080 cooler. The company didn’t elaborate further on the benefits of the new fan design. The top side of the cooler’s shroud features an illuminated Gigabyte logo and a fan stop light. Both are lit by RGB LEDs that can be altered through Gigabyte’s OC Guru II utility. The card also includes a pre-installed aluminum backplate.

Gigabyte said it puts the GPUs selected for the GTX 1080 G1 Gaming through its GPU Gauntlet sorting process. Gigabyte only uses GPUs that demonstrate higher than average power efficiency and low power consumption for the G1 Gaming series. The company has not yet revealed the clock speeds at which the G1 Gaming card will operate, but we expect to see a reasonable overclock over the Founder’s Edition. Don’t expect miracles, though. Gigabyte opted to stick with the single 8-pin power connector on this release, so we’ll likely have to wait for the Xtreme Gaming edition if you’re looking for maximum overclocking.

Gigabyte has not yet revealed the release date for the GTX 1080 G1 Gaming, but the company said it will be “available very soon.” It also appears we won’t be waiting very long for the Xtreme Gaming edition, either. In a reply to a comment on the Gigabyte Xtreme Gaming Facebook page, Gigabyte said that the Xtreme Gaming card launches next week.

We’ve reached out to Gigabyte for more details about the GTX 1080 G1 Gaming and Xtreme Gaming cards.

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Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

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7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • turkey3_scratch
    Those fans remind me of BeQuiet fans.
    Reply
  • Sam Hain
    Gigabyte, if you are reading (or care) PLEASE fix OC GURU in all of it's versions, before releasing a newline of GPUs.

    It fails on many fronts, here's a few but not limited to:

    1- Profiles sometimes do not save
    2- OSD never has worked on ANY version
    3- When setting up profiles w/SLI, they (GPUs) do not sync and have to be done individually then synced

    These have been MY personal experiences, hence why I use MSI AB/Riva.
    Reply
  • thor220
    Given that yields of 1080s are low right now and that these are still 1 8 pin only, what exactly is the testing going to consist of? Best power efficiency among the 5 they have on hand? Overclock might get to a max of 2100 if they are lucky but that leaves no headroom for you.
    Reply
  • Ahmedivx
    The Asus Strix is 8+6 pins it's not clear on the G1 or Xtreme models from Gigabyte or the Gaming X8 model from MSI but we can see more 8+6 pins in the future
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    there are a ton of cards with 6 and 8 pin connections and even some with 2 x 8 pins!!! lots of specs released yesterday on many custom cards. nothing mind blowing yet for overclocks but none of the top end models have released specs yet.

    got all the info available so far in the megathread. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3047729/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1000-series-megathread-faq-resources.html#17902597
    Reply
  • falchard
    Gigabyte, if you are reading (or care) PLEASE fix OC GURU in all of it's versions, before releasing a newline of GPUs.

    It fails on many fronts, here's a few but not limited to:

    1- Profiles sometimes do not save
    2- OSD never has worked on ANY version
    3- When setting up profiles w/SLI, they (GPUs) do not sync and have to be done individually then synced

    These have been MY personal experiences, hence why I use MSI AB/Riva.

    Why bother trying to get them to do it better than MSI when MSI AB will work with any GPU?
    Reply
  • fil1p
    Looks good overall. However, they could have gone for an 8+6 pin or 8+8 pin design. Even though Pascal is quite efficient, throttling due to power consumption is unfortunate when you don't mind the extra power draw. With good VRM circuitry and a custom BIOS past generation cards could be pushed nicely past the power limit.

    Hope to see similar things here, especially since Gigabyte's Windforce cards have been some of my favorites recently.
    Reply