Now that Nvidia has launched its Pascal graphics architecture, all of its board partners are scrambling to get new high-end GPUs out the door. MSI has a total of six of these cards to do battle against the likes of Asus, EVGA and Zotac.
The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G is the company’s flagship GTX 1080 graphics card. It uses essentially the same Twin Frozr VI thermal solution as MSI’s high-end 900-series graphics cards, and it has the same black metal backplate.
The GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G is clearly designed to be overclocked, as it has an aggregate 10-phase power design and includes an additional PCI-E power connector. Technically, Nvidia designed the GTX 1080 with a 180 W TDP, and going by the company’s specs, it requires just one eight-pin power connector. Between the eight-pin connector and the power from the motherboard, the GPU already has access to up to 225 W of power, but MSI opted to include a six-pin PCI-E power connector that brings the card’s total available power up to 300 W.
Clearly, the graphics card doesn’t need this much power, but extreme overclockers will find this additional power helpful when pushing the GPU to its limits.
MSI also has a water-cooled GTX 1080 that uses Corsair’s H55 Hydro cooler and a custom shroud. MSI didn’t make it clear if this is the same physical card as the GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G with a different cooler or if it is a different card entirely, and we have no information on its power design. As such, we are unable to compare these two GPUs in any way except to say one is water-cooled and one is not.
MSI didn’t disclose many details on the remaining four cards, either. Two of these GPUs are essentially the same; both use MSI’s Armor 2X thermal solution with two fans. The only difference between the two cards is that one has “OC” in its name. The OC card will almost certainly have a higher clock speed, but other than that, they are the same.
The last two cards are nearly identical to each other as well, again with the key difference being that one bears the “OC” label. These cards use MSI’s Aero Exhaust thermal solution, which is a single-fan cooler designed to vent out of the back of the PC case.
Unfortunately, MSI did not disclose clock speeds on any of the graphics cards, so there is little information available for comparing against similar GPUs announced today.
There is currently no word on pricing or availability for these cards.
| MSI Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Product Lineup | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU | GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G | GTX 1080 Sea Hawk | GTX 1080 Armor 8G OC | GTX 1080 Armor 8G | GTX 1080 Aero 8G OC | GTX 1080 Aero 8G |
| Core | GP104-400 | GP104-400 | GP104-400 | GP104-400 | GP104-400 | GP104-400 |
| Base Clock | 1607 MHz | 1707 MHz | 1657 MHz | 1607 MHz | 1632 MHz | 1607 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1847 MHz | 1847 MHz | 1797 MHz | 1733 MHz | 1771 MHz | 1733 MHz |
| Memory | 8 GB GDDR5X | 8 GB GDDR5X | 8 GB GDDR5X | 8 GB GDDR5X | 8 GB GDDR5X | 8 GB GDDR5X |
| Memory Clock Speed | 10108 MHz | 10010 MHz | 10010 MHz | 10010 MHz | 10010 MHz | 10010 MHz |
| Thermal Solution | Twin Frozr VI | Corsair H55 Hydro | Armor 2X | Armor 2X | Aero Exhaust | Aero Exhaust |
| Backplate | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| LED | Yes (RGB) | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Connectivity | 3 x Display PortHDMIDL-DVI-D | 3 x Display PortHDMIDL-DVI-D | 3 x Display PortHDMIDL-DVI-D | 3 x Display PortHDMIDL-DVI-D | 3 x Display PortHDMIDL-DVI-D | 3 x Display PortHDMIDL-DVI-D |
| Dimensions (L x W x H) | 279 x 140 x 42 mm | Card: 270 x 111 x 40 mmCooler: 151 x 120 x 52 mm | 279 x 140 x 37 mm | 279 x 140 x 37 mm | 269 x 111 x 35 mm | 269 x 111 x 35 mm |
Update, 5/27/16, 3:16pm PT: Updated table with clock speeds.
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