Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is a mean machine based on NVIDIA's second biggest implementation of its "Pascal" architecture, the 16 nm "GP102" silicon. This is the same chip that drives the TITAN X Pascal. The GTX 1080 Ti features the same number of CUDA cores as the latest TITAN, at 3,584 spread across 28 streaming multiprocessors. There is some cost-cutting here, but none that is designed to lower performance - the chip has a slightly narrower memory bus at 352-bit, that's one memory chip less than what you'd find on the TITAN X Pascal. The total memory amount is hence 11 GB. A cluster of ROPs is also disabled, so you now get 88 ROPs (as opposed to the 96 ROPs on the TITAN). The memory chips are, however, clocked 10% higher to make up for the 8.3% narrower memory bus. This move also translates into cost savings due to the lack of a 12th memory chip and probably better yields for the GP102 chip.



The ASUS GTX 1080 Ti STRIX OC we are reviewing today is the company's first full custom-design of the GTX 1080 Ti, and probably also the first custom GTX 1080 Ti that's getting reviewed. ASUS is using a cooler that's very similar to the cooler on their GTX 1080 STRIX OC visually - under the hood, serious changes have been made. Also included is a host of innovation that's relevant to gamers, such as VR Ready HDMI ports, case fan headers that sync your case's cooling to the GPU, and the ASUS Aura Sync RGB LED system. In this review, we compare it to the Founders Edition GTX 1080 Ti and other high-end cards we have at hand.

ASUS isn't 100% sure yet what the final retail price will be, but it will definitely be higher than the NVIDIA Founders Edition price. Best guess right now is something in the $740 range, which we will use throughout this review.