NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Performance Review: Pascal, The New King

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards in this article on a Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P motherboard powered by an Intel Core i7-5960X octal-core processor and 16GB of Corsair DDR4 RAM. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" settings and disable any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's X.M.P. profile was enabled to ensure optimal memory performance and the solid state drive was then formatted and Windows 10 Professional x64 was installed and fully updated. When the installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, games, and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.

HotHardware's Test System Intel Core i7 Powered

Hardware Used: Intel Core i7-5960X (3GHz, Octa-Core) Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P (Intel X99 Chipset) Radeon R9 Fury X GeForce GTX 980 Ti (Asus STRIX) GeForce GTX Titan X GeForce GTX 1080 16GB Corsair DDR4-2133 OCZ Vertex 4 Integrated Audio Integrated Network

Relevant Software:  Windows 10 Pro x64 (10586) AMD Catalyst 16.5.2 NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v386.16 Benchmarks Used: Unigine Heaven v4 3DMark "Fire Strike" Thief MIddle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor Ashes Of The Singularity Hitman 2016 LuxMark Steam VR Performance Test FRAPS

Unigine Heaven v4.0 Benchmark Pseudo-DirectX 11 Gaming

Unigine's Heaven Benchmark v4.0 is built around the Unigine game engine. Unigine is a cross-platform, real-time 3D engine, with support for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11 and OpenGL. The Heaven benchmark--when run in DX11 mode--also makes comprehensive use of tessellation technology and advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion). It also features volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm and a dynamic sky with light scattering.

Unigine Heaven

The GeForce GTX 1080 took the top spot in the Unigine Heaven benchmark, easily besting all of the other cards we tested. Please note as you look through out performance tests that we used an Asus STRIX GeForce GTX 980 Ti, which is factory overclocked, and that card's higher clocks are what allow it to outperform the Titan X. We used the STRIX because we feel it better represents what most gamers would buy today, if they were shopping for a 980 Ti.

Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Fire Strike has multiple benchmark modes: Normal mode runs at 1920x1080, Extreme mode targets 2560x1440, and Ultra mode runs at a 4K resolution. GPU target frame buffer utilization for normal mode is 1GB and the benchmark uses tessellation, ambient occlusion, volume illumination, and a medium-quality depth of field filter. The more taxing Extreme mode targets 1.5GB of frame buffer memory and increases detail levels across the board. Ultra mode is explicitly designed for high-end and CrossFire / SLI systems. GT 1 focuses on geometry and illumination, with over 100 shadow casting spot lights, 140 non-shadow casting point lights, and 3.9 million vertices calculated for tessellation per frame. And 80 million pixels are processed per frame. GT2 emphasizes particles and GPU simulations.

3DMark Fire Strike

The GeForce GTX 1080 also led the pack in 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra. The card was about 20% faster than the Titan X and 10% faster than the factory-overclocked GeForce GTX 980 Ti. The Fury X was further behind and trailed the pack here.

3DMark didn't identify the GeForce GTX 1080's clocks properly, but you can see the GPU temperature curve and framerate fluctuations in the various tests in the details above.