Gigabyte's new gaming brand AORUS has released their first graphics card. It is the GTX 1080 Xtreme Edition, which is the company's highest-clocked GTX 1080, having the same clock speeds as the Gigabyte GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming. The rest of the card is also very similar, using the same triple-slot, triple-fan configuration Gigabyte first showed at Computex. Compared to the reference design GTX 1080, the AORUS Xtreme is 9% faster in 4K, which is a good result, but a handful of other custom designs do slightly better here. Compared to the GTX 1070, the performance uplift is 35%. Against AMD's fastest, the R9 Fury X, the increase is 40%. It's good to see that Gigabyte overclocked the memory chips too, but only by a relatively small amount. Other board partners go for more.

Gigabyte's cooler is a monster, using three slots and a unique, stacked fans approach. I've been a fan of triple-slot coolers for years - as long as they're properly engineered so that they provide benefits in the noise and temperature department over a dual-slot design. Gigabyte's thermal solution certainly delivers here if you can fit it into your case. Gaming temperature is around 71°C, which is sufficiently far away from NVIDIA's thermal limit of 82°C beyond which the card will reduce clocks to hold that temperature. In terms of gaming noise, the card works great, too. With 31 dBA, it is one of the quieter GTX 1080s on the market, even though triple-slot cards from Palit and Zotac end up a little bit quieter. Gigabyte has also included the idle-fan-off feature we love so much since it provides a perfect noise-free experience during desktop work, Internet browsing, and even light gaming. Gigabyte's RGB illumination works great and comes with full software control with to adjust it to your liking.

A unique feature of the AORUS Xtreme is the block of copper that sits on the back of the card, where the GPU is located on the front. The idea is that heat will migrate through the PCB and be soaked up by the copper that will dissipate it to the air surrounding it. Unfortunately, this really doesn't work. I tested with both the block on and off and got exactly the same GPU temperatures. The thick thermal pad that is used to attach the copper certainly doesn't help, and its tiny surface area (where it can give off heat to the air) is just too small. Radiative healing plays no role with computer hardware because the temperature delta between hot and cold (your room) is too small.

Power efficiency of "Pascal" is amazing, with huge improvements over the "Maxwell" architecture that is already highly efficient in the first place. However, it looks as though Gigabyte traded a lot of efficiency for more performance in their board design. Overall efficiency compared to the reference design is down by 30%, which puts it at the lower end of the efficiency spectrum for Pascal cards, though it is still much better than anything AMD has. Even with the higher power output, the card is cool and quiet, so no problems here.

Unlike the reference design, which only uses a single 8-pin power connector for the sake of convenience, the AORUS GTX 1080 Xtreme comes with two 8-pin power connectors, which kinda sounds like overkill. It seems as though Gigabyte didn't fully increase the board power limit in BIOS to make proper use of this capability. Our Furmark testing suggests a board power limit of around 230 W, which is in line with what I would expect from a single 8-pin card, not a dual 8-pin. Zotac, for example, allows for 300 W here, so it's not some kind of NVIDIA limitation.

Overclocking potential of the card is similar to what we've seen on other GTX 1080 cards, maybe a little bit higher. Most cards reach around 2100 MHz GPU clock and a maximum memory frequency of around 1400 MHz. This means that the out-of-the-box overclock eats into the manual OC headroom should you choose to do so. This is a reality on all custom design GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 cards. The manufacturer will basically do some overclocking for you, providing some convenience and peace of mind by the way of a warranty, which is a refreshing four-years long if you choose to register the card with Gigabyte.

With a price of $680, the Gigabyte AORUS GTX 1080 Xtreme is one of the more expensive GTX 1080 cards on the market today since the cheapest GTX 1080 can be found for $580, which makes it $100 cheaper. Other high-end GTX 1080s, like the Palit GameRock, EVGA FTW2, MSI Gaming Z, ASUS STRIX, and Zotac AMP! Extreme, come at similar pricing, so it's not just Gigabyte that's asking for a premium. Without looking at price, the Gigabyte AORUS GTX 1080 Xtreme is definitely a great GTX 1080. Still, I'm not fully convinced of whether its extra cost is worth it for the majority of gamers.