Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti: The monster graphics card 4K gamers have been waiting for
NVIDIA’S MIGHTY TITAN has fallen, as it always does.
Jaws dropped when the second-gen Titan X (go.pcworld.com/titanx2) stomped onto the scene in August, and for more reasons than one. The monster graphics card was the first to ever flirt with consistently hitting the hallowed 60-frames-per-second mark at 4K resolution with everything cranked to 11—but that privilege cost a cool $1,200. Fast-forward five months: Nvidia’s teasing the GTX 1080 Ti as the “ultimate GeForce” card (go.pcworld.com/ultgforce), with more performance than the Titan X for just—“just”—$700. That’s what the GTX 1080 Founders Edition (go.pcworld.com/1080fed) cost at launch, and Nvidia says the Ti stomps the base GTX 1080.
Graphics-card lust truly is the cruelest obsession (go.pcworld.com/gclust).
But does the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti live up to Nvidia’s hype? Is this the 4K-capable graphics card that gamers flush with tax-return money have been waiting for?
Yes. Oh my, yes. Let’s dig in.
Meet the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Nvidia’s Pascal GPU architecture launched almost 10 months ago, so you won’t find many surprises lurking underneath the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti’s aluminum Founders Edition (go.pcworld.com/80v70) shroud. Here’s a look at its technical specifications:
The most eye-opening revelation may be simply how little Nvidia’s nerfed the GTX 1080 Ti in comparison to the Titan X. Both are built around on the same GP102 graphics processor; the GTX 1080 Ti drops the render output unit (ROP) count from 96 to 88,
