Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsBig Bess
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2017
So far so good, this beast can alone run most of todays modern games at 4k 60fps with high settings and AA off or low (which really doesn't make a difference due to the abundance of pixels), games that were released before 2013-2014 will run at 4K with ease.
Power Consumption - It only haves an 8 pin conector, i was worried about this but no more, i managed to OC this to 2,114MHz and sustain stable gaming consistently, while OC i up the voltage for a stable functionality. As other 1080s, it consumes 180W, and can go up max to 225W.
Temperatures - Right to business, on full load and with overclocked settings, max Temp i've seen is 70C, which is pretty good considering max temp she can handle is 93C, still, always make sure it doesn't go 75C for durability reasons. On idle, fans hover around 30% maintaining 35-40C temperature.
Performance - This card slaughters 1080p ultra, slaughters 1440p on ultra too. To achieve 4K 60 FPS, you must tweak and play with the settings. Use MSI afterburner and while playing, check for GPU usage, tweak your settings until you see the GPU usage hovering 85-95% usage which will result on the best image possible she can give you while maintaining solid 60 fps. Keep in mind 4K is lots of pixels so don't worry about sacrificing some settings in order to achieve stable FPS, believe me, it won't make a noticeable difference, go with low or medium Anti-aliasing depending the game, ambient occlusion is the only settings that at 4K really hammers the GPU, this setting is noticeable because it gives the image a better contrast between lights and shadows, but it really depends whether you want more fps and your taste in graphics quality. Be aware that in 4K drops will occur rewardless for the settings you select, to achieve 4K 60FPS on ultra, go with SLI the you won't have to worry about nothing.
Things to consider for novice gamers:
- Know that you'll need a good CPU that is able to keep up with the GPU demand so you can prevent a bottleneck. I currently use a 6700k OC to 4.4GHz and it reaches 65-70% usage when playing games like Watch Dogs 2 at 4K and Mafia III at 2K, all the other games i've played stay below 50% cpu usage.
- If you're aiming for full 4K gaming at highest settings go for SLI ( two 1080s)
- Case must have good ventilation and airflow to dissipate heat.
- Make sure the card is well attached to mobo's slot, lot of users have complained that their socket was damaged due to GPU weight.
- Don't OC GPU unless necessary, given it more unnecessary juice will result on drivers crash and GPU malfunction.
- Always monitor your system temperatures when playing at high resolutions.
