Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB Review

Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Doom, GTA V & Hitman

Doom (Vulkan)

Use of the same benchmark sequence and quality settings allows us to compare the new results in today’s story and older data from our Nvidia Titan X Pascal 12GB Review. Why does this matter? At a recent workshop for members of the press, Nvidia made it a point to mention performance improvements tied to DirectX 12- and Vulkan-based games.

Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080 Ti slips past the Titan X (Pascal), turning in a result that’s 30% faster than GeForce GTX 1080 and more than 76% quicker than the 980 Ti.

More to the point of the preceding paragraph, Titan X is almost 12% faster than when we first reviewed it. In the meantime, we did upgrade our test bed to a Core i7-7700K (from a -6700K), so let’s look at the 4K results, which further deemphasize platform performance.

The Titan X is now 14% faster than it was last August, so it does appear Nvidia exacted positive changes, either through its driver or via cooperation with id. GeForce GTX 1080 Ti similarly benefits from these improvements and is once again faster than Titan X (Pascal).

A more resource-laden GPU allows the 1080 Ti to outperform Nvidia’s vanilla 1080 by 34%. It’s a full 88% faster than last generation’s GeForce GTX 980 Ti. And although a higher resolution helps AMD’s Radeon R9 Fury X beat both the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and 1070, 1080 Ti is still 68% faster than the Fiji-based flagship.

Fortunately, all of the cards are fast enough at 4K to deliver what our unevenness index considers to be acceptable playability.

Grand Theft Auto V (DX11)

Our Grand Theft Auto V benchmark is made more demanding by the use of 4xMSAA (instead of 2x) and 4x Reflection MSAA (rather than Off). The rest of the settings are still maximized to whatever extent is possible.

This time around, Nvidia’s Titan X (Pascal) lands in the lead by a few frames per second. Still, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is more than 26% faster than the 1080, and 65% quicker than an older 980 Ti.

As we’ve seen over the past year, DirectX 12 tends to paint AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture in a favorable light. Radeon cards typically don’t fare as well in DirectX 11-based titles, though. Consequently, GeForce GTX 1080 Ti establishes its largest lead yet (89%) over the Radeon R9 Fury X in GTA V, the first DX11 game we’ve encountered.

The new GeForce’s advantage over AMD’s flagship grows to 95% at 3840x2160, where Nvidia’s top two cards are playable and the Radeon is not.

A higher resolution helps the 1080 Ti hop out ahead of Titan X (Pascal), extending the card’s lead over GeForce GTX 1080 to almost 36%.


MORE: Best Graphics Cards


MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table


MORE: All Graphics Content

Hitman (DX12)

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti matches the Titan X in our Hitman benchmark, and turns in an average frame rate just 14% faster than 1080.

Our unevenness index shows all six contenders delivering fairly smooth performance, even under the Ultra level of detail setting. So let’s move on to 4K testing for a more taxing workload.

A more graphics-bound task allows the 1080 Ti’s higher clock rate to exert an advantage over Titan X. At the same time, the 1080 Ti’s lead over GeForce GTX 1080 grows to 30%.

All of the cards in today’s line-up serve up playable frame rates, more or less. But the top-end 1080 Ti is more than 81% faster than last generation’s 980 Ti. Particularly at 4K, that’s a big difference.

  • dstarr3
    Oh my. I've got a 980 Ti now, and I thought I could hold out until Christmas 2018 or so to upgrade, but seeing that this card has nearly double the FPS... That's a pretty big deal...
    Reply
  • HaB1971
    Would love one, but pointless for 1080p gaming which is what I am restricted to thanks to 2 x 27inch 1080p monitors. I don't need to replace those either they work, they are good enough and not interested in VR etc. 4k for me, is still too pricey
    Reply
  • sillynilly
    So sexy and will be replacing my 1080. Amazing card
    Reply
  • salgado18
    19401792 said:
    Oh my. I've got a 980 Ti now, and I thought I could hold out until Christmas 2018 or so to upgrade, but seeing that this card has nearly double the FPS... That's a pretty big deal...

    Why not wait? Your card is still great, and you can pick up a 2080 or Vega 2 by then. Unless you can't live without 4K at Ultra, keep your card.
    Reply
  • Ray_58
    Hab1971, 4k really isn't that bad price wise, its ok, part of the problem is the LCD panel industry milking the crap out of 1080p resolutions still up to the 300$ pricepoint when in actuality we should have been at base standard 2k TN/IPS panels at the 160$-300$ range. Still today though the greatest costs are the fact 60htz is still standard and any increase is massive price cost increases, and obviously Gsync for NVidia. Still spending $500-$800 on a monitor and then dropping 700$ on this is a bit 2 much for the mainstream. Id rather buy a 2k IPS screen with Gsync at 700$ than a 4k 60htz monitor at 400$
    Reply
  • t1gran
    Why Titan X (Pascal) performance is worse here than it was in it's review?
    Reply
  • envy14tpe
    19401792 said:
    Oh my. I've got a 980 Ti now, and I thought I could hold out until Christmas 2018 or so to upgrade, but seeing that this card has nearly double the FPS... That's a pretty big deal...

    I feel the same. I see the jump in BF1 to be massive and enough to warrant a 1080 Ti for 1440p gaming. I'm holding out until June when the next Nvidia price drops.
    Reply
  • FormatC
    Teaser:
    Just started to bring this baby under water. Let's check, what OC is doing :)

    Reply
  • dstarr3
    19401838 said:
    19401792 said:
    Oh my. I've got a 980 Ti now, and I thought I could hold out until Christmas 2018 or so to upgrade, but seeing that this card has nearly double the FPS... That's a pretty big deal...

    Why not wait? Your card is still great, and you can pick up a 2080 or Vega 2 by then. Unless you can't live without 4K at Ultra, keep your card.

    Well, two reasons: 1) I'd like to upgrade to 1440p/144 this year. 2) I also have an HTPC with a 770 in it that needs an upgrade. I was considering buying a 1060 for that computer, but instead, I might just buy this 1080 Ti for my main rig and put its 980 Ti in the HTPC.

    Either way, no purchasing until Christmas, because I hate paying full price for just about anything. So I've got time to think about this.
    Reply
  • Clamyboy74
    competition is brewing, good
    Reply