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Final Analysis
A couple of engineers, a lot of copper, light metals, a screw fetishist, a printed circuit board, a box full of components, an accountant, and PR specialists all meet up. After lots of trial and error, the result of their efforts is on the table in front of us. It's visually stunning, and then you pick it up. Weighing almost 1.5kg, the Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition 11G is a heavy bundle of joy that should keep enthusiasts enthralled.
Gigabyte leaves little to be desired when it comes to cooling. That's pretty rare these days. The company's board layout and component choices are reasonable as well. Our only criticism involves the software. Its pre-defined overclocking settings are a little too optimistic, since they don't bump the power target up high enough relative to the other values. If you end up with a lower-quality GPU, you'll want to abstain from overclocking altogether, adjust the settings you use manually, or try a utility like Afterburner instead of this one.
But if all goes well, this card certainly pushes a few boundaries. Its power target can be set well beyond the cooling hardware's ability to remove heat. Of course, a practical ceiling of around 350W (100W more than stock) for slightly better benchmark scores is a matter of taste and opinion, particularly when the 250W default setting gets you more performance at lower temperatures and less noise than Nvidia's Founders Edition version.
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