Gigabyte Chills Pascal With Windforce 3X Cooler On Their GeForce GTX 1080 G1 Gaming Card

by Brandon Hill — Friday, June 03, 2016, 02:30 PM EDT

As we’ve seen in our recent review of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080, Pascal is kicking some serious butt and shows no signs of taking orders from anyone. Luckily, plenty of NVIDIA’s board partners have lined up to produce graphics cards based on Pascal and here we are today staring at Gigabyte’s GeForce GTX 1080 G1 GAMING, which will be vying for your attention on digital store shelves across the internet.

As you might expect coming from Gigabyte, this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill Pascal card; it actually uses the company’s signature WINDFORCE 3X cooling system that incorporates a trio of fans to keep heat in check. The fans use triangular blade edges and feature a 3D stripe on the blade surface that helps increase airflow by up to 23 percent compared to traditional coolers. WINDFORCE 3X also uses copper composite heat pipes that have direct contact with the GPU for more efficient heat dissipation.

In addition, 3D Active Fan technology allows the fans to turn completely off when your gaming rig is idle so that your work environment isn’t droned out with fan noise. There’s even an LED indicator that alerts you when the fans have stopped.

Given this that is a gaming card, you’ll need at least few “show off” features for those peering through the side panels of your gaming rid. You’ll find the card dolled up with a black shroud and orange accents. To spice things up a bit further, a Gigabyte logo is lit up by RGB LEDs, which provides 16.8 million customizable color options and a wealth of lighting effects to choose from (the LED are controlled using the included XTREME Engine utility software).

But what you really want to know about is performance, of course. The stock NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 has a base clock of 1697 MHz and a boost clock of 1733 MHz. In Gaming Mode, the GeForce GTX 1080 G1 GAMING has a base clock of 1695 MHz and a boost clock of 1835 MHz. Cranking it up a notch to OC Mode, the base and boost clocks jump to 1721 MHz and 1860 MHz respectively.

Unfortunately, the GeForce GTX 1080 G1 GAMING is not yet available to purchase, and we don’t have any word on pricing. And we’re still looking forward to the official announcement of the “EXTREME” Pascal card coming from Gigabyte. Expect that announcement any day now.

Tags: Gigabyte, pascal, geforce gtx 1080, windforce 3x

Brandon Hill

Brandon received his first PC, an IBM Aptiva 310, in 1994 and hasn’t looked back since. He cut his teeth on computer building/repair working at a mom and pop computer shop as a plucky teen in the mid 90s and went on to join AnandTech as the Senior News Editor in 1999. Brandon would later help to form DailyTech where he served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008 until 2014. Brandon is a tech geek at heart, and family members always know where to turn when they need free tech support. When he isn’t writing about the tech hardware or studying up on the latest in mobile gadgets, you’ll find him browsing forums that cater to his long-running passion: automobiles.

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