Nextgen PC gaming arrives
Nvidia’s latest PC graphics technology is here, but with great power comes exorbitant pricing.
Our first look at Nvidia’s new Pascal architecture at the GeForce GTX 1080 launch blew our eyes out the back of our skulls. The GTX 1080 unit we got for review was big swanky Asus Strix GTX 1080 from its Republic of Gamers line-up.
The good part about this Strix is that it’s a slightly overclocked version, so it’s roughly 5 percent faster than the stock GPU. The housing is plastic, which is a bit of a letdown, but the plastics used are tough and housed three large fans Asus has dubbed WingBlade, which are meant to be quiet.
When the card powered up, the fan side of the card as well as the RoG eye logo on the other side lit up with Asus’ new Aura lighting system. The heatsinks within the card also started glowing in RoG’s default orange.
The bloom of the light not only highlights the card, but also spills onto the other components. We loved tweaking and fooling around with Aura using its handy panel. We could set the effect to breathing, in time with music, or to the colour we wanted. The back IO panel had quite a lot of connectivity options. The best part though, and something that should be there in all cards, is the dual HDMI slots.
Accompanying that were two DisplayPort connectors so you can connect your G-Sync monitors to this. Lastly, there was one lone DVI port.
The two HDMI ports made sense, especially considering virtual reality units come with HDMI connectors now. If you don’t have VR, you can output this to a HDTV to switch to when you want to game on a bigger screen.
Asus has overclocked this GTX 1080, and it really flew through all the games we threw at it. With 4K not yet mainstream here, we benchmarked at 1080p resolutions. Our rig was a simple 3rd-generation Intel i5 3570K CPU with 16 GB of RAM, and a hybrid drive. It's modest, but it works.
We dropped the 1080 in and it was like a pumpkin converted into a Lamborghini. We saw average framerates from Hitman’s benchmark on DirectX 12 Ultra peaking at about 84 frames per second (fps), and going to about 240 fps at High. Then we cranked up things a bit, loading in The Division's benchmarks. With VSync and all the frame limiters on and graphics set to Ultra, the framerate was a smooth 60 fps. With frame limiters off, the average FPS was about 80 fps.
We then loaded up Assassins Creed: Syndicate, and with everything turned up high, we got about 76 fps as an average. We were happy to have gotten the card just as the new DLC of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, entitled Blood and Wine dropped. We noticed no drops below 60 fps, even though there were several characters on screen, including a massive club-wielding monster.
Lastly, we took the 1080 with us to hell in Doom, which was flawless. With everything turned up way high, the 1080 never broke a sweat and was rock steady at 60 fps.
The GTX 1080 is as fast as, or faster than, the far more expensive Titan X. We did try a bit of 4K gaming as well as a bit of super sampling, and we did notice the fps drop below 60 a few times, but we would chalk that one up to the CPU probably being a bottleneck.
While performance is great, the GTX 1080 is grossly overpriced. The Founders Edition retails at about Rs 60,000, while the Asus Strix, a faster card, retails at Rs 65,000. This is very expensive, especially considering the original GTX 980 retailed at about Rs 45,000 and the price for the GTX 1080 in the US is $699 (approx Rs 47,000).
As a piece of tech, the GTX 1080 is perfect for your gaming needs. With so much power packed in, this card will last you at least for the next two or three generations of GPUs, as long as the games scale up easily. The GTX 1080 is exactly what PC gaming needed – an infusion of fast graphics tech to push along innovation. We just wish the card was priced a bit more sensibly.
Our first look at Nvidia’s new Pascal architecture at the GeForce GTX 1080 launch blew our eyes out the back of our skulls. The GTX 1080 unit we got for review was big swanky Asus Strix GTX 1080 from its Republic of Gamers line-up.
The good part about this Strix is that it’s a slightly overclocked version, so it’s roughly 5 percent faster than the stock GPU. The housing is plastic, which is a bit of a letdown, but the plastics used are tough and housed three large fans Asus has dubbed WingBlade, which are meant to be quiet.
Size-wise the Strix is a few millimeters larger than the normal reference card. This is mostly to accommodate the triple fans. In our NZXT Phantom mid-tower case, it just barely fit after removing a fan. For power, the card needed one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector, though two 6-pins worked fine.
When the card powered up, the fan side of the card as well as the RoG eye logo on the other side lit up with Asus’ new Aura lighting system. The heatsinks within the card also started glowing in RoG’s default orange.
The bloom of the light not only highlights the card, but also spills onto the other components. We loved tweaking and fooling around with Aura using its handy panel. We could set the effect to breathing, in time with music, or to the colour we wanted. The back IO panel had quite a lot of connectivity options. The best part though, and something that should be there in all cards, is the dual HDMI slots.
Accompanying that were two DisplayPort connectors so you can connect your G-Sync monitors to this. Lastly, there was one lone DVI port.
The two HDMI ports made sense, especially considering virtual reality units come with HDMI connectors now. If you don’t have VR, you can output this to a HDTV to switch to when you want to game on a bigger screen.
Asus has overclocked this GTX 1080, and it really flew through all the games we threw at it. With 4K not yet mainstream here, we benchmarked at 1080p resolutions. Our rig was a simple 3rd-generation Intel i5 3570K CPU with 16 GB of RAM, and a hybrid drive. It's modest, but it works.
We dropped the 1080 in and it was like a pumpkin converted into a Lamborghini. We saw average framerates from Hitman’s benchmark on DirectX 12 Ultra peaking at about 84 frames per second (fps), and going to about 240 fps at High. Then we cranked up things a bit, loading in The Division's benchmarks. With VSync and all the frame limiters on and graphics set to Ultra, the framerate was a smooth 60 fps. With frame limiters off, the average FPS was about 80 fps.
We then loaded up Assassins Creed: Syndicate, and with everything turned up high, we got about 76 fps as an average. We were happy to have gotten the card just as the new DLC of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, entitled Blood and Wine dropped. We noticed no drops below 60 fps, even though there were several characters on screen, including a massive club-wielding monster.
Lastly, we took the 1080 with us to hell in Doom, which was flawless. With everything turned up way high, the 1080 never broke a sweat and was rock steady at 60 fps.
The GTX 1080 is as fast as, or faster than, the far more expensive Titan X. We did try a bit of 4K gaming as well as a bit of super sampling, and we did notice the fps drop below 60 a few times, but we would chalk that one up to the CPU probably being a bottleneck.
While performance is great, the GTX 1080 is grossly overpriced. The Founders Edition retails at about Rs 60,000, while the Asus Strix, a faster card, retails at Rs 65,000. This is very expensive, especially considering the original GTX 980 retailed at about Rs 45,000 and the price for the GTX 1080 in the US is $699 (approx Rs 47,000).
As a piece of tech, the GTX 1080 is perfect for your gaming needs. With so much power packed in, this card will last you at least for the next two or three generations of GPUs, as long as the games scale up easily. The GTX 1080 is exactly what PC gaming needed – an infusion of fast graphics tech to push along innovation. We just wish the card was priced a bit more sensibly.
