Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB Review

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Conclusion

Prior to Jen-Hsun’s pricing announcement on-stage in San Francisco, the Tom’s Hardware team debated where GeForce GTX 1080 Ti might land. $800 sounded cheap. $900 would have even been reasonable, given the card’s theoretical similarities to Titan X (Pascal) at $1200. Nobody suggested that Nvidia might replace GTX 1080 altogether at $700.

Why not? For a couple of reasons.

A $700 GeForce GTX 1080 Ti makes a $1200 Titan X look pretty ridiculous. The Titan’s only advantage is an extra 1GB of GDDR5X, after all. So it’ll either need to go away or drop in price significantly. Because Nvidia only sells the card though its own site, though, controlling Titan X’s fate seems like a simple matter. There’s always the 3840-core GP100 processor, if there ever came a need for a beefier Titan card…

Then there’s the fact that 1080 Ti effectively replaces 1080 at the same price point. If you’re a gamer who didn’t upgrade when the 1080/1070 launched last year, this is great news. But if you bought a 1080 Founders Edition card one month before GDC, then you’re probably reading up on return policies. Shoot, even Oculus knew it’d get backlash after announcing its $600 Rift/Touch package. The company dropped $50 into our Store account, since we had registered our Touch controllers within the 30 days leading up to GDC. But Nvidia says there are no plans to do something similar.

Gamers who were previously on the fence about a new high-end graphics card are looking at an entirely new class of performance at a price point we simply weren’t expecting. In essence, it’s a Titan X at the 1080 Founders Edition’s price. Does Nvidia know something about AMD’s upcoming flagship that nobody else does and is pricing accordingly? Perhaps. Truth be told, secrets don’t last very long in this business. But the beginnings of GeForce GTX 1080 Ti likely started with Nvidia figuring out what it could harvest out of GP102s saddled by a bad ROP cluster or memory controller.

What results is a card capable of smooth performance at 3840x2160, in many games with the quality settings max’ed out. It tears through 1440p too, if you prefer gaming on a fast-refresh display, or want to give G-Sync a spin. We have VR titles in the lab that cause a GTX 1070 to trip up. In time, they’ll start overwhelming 1080s as well, necessitating something like the 1080 Ti to maintain a constant 90 Hz.

Of course, Nvidia is handling this launch differently than Titan X. Board partners will have their own custom designs, to start. The $700 MSRP applies equally to the third-party and Founders Edition models, we’re happy to report. And although some SKUs will undoubtedly command premium pricing, we expect Nvidia’s implementation to anchor the rest, preventing the rampant inflation that plagued Pascal last summer.

When a room full of experienced reviewers hears a price that makes them all look at each other, muttering “wow,” then you know the product’s going to do well. GeForce GTX 1080 Ti delivers frame rates we could have predicted at a price that caught us by surprise.

Equally relevant is the pressure that 1080 Ti puts on the old guard. GeForce GTX 1080 cards are already selling for $500 online, and the Founders Edition board dropped to $550 on Nvidia’s own site. GeForce GTX 1070s aren’t any cheaper yet, but that move could be waiting in the wings once Radeon RX Vega makes itself known.

Oh, right. Vega. We already know so much about what AMD’s next-generation flagship can do. And yet we’re still waiting for some indication of what it can do. It’s hard for us to imagine a scenario where Radeon RX Vega delivers notably better performance per dollar than what we just tested. But we invite AMD to prove us wrong. Really. AMD, please.


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Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
  • 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