NVIDIA announced the GTX 1080 with 11 Gbps memory chips during their GTX 1080 Ti launch event, and now, the first cards are showing up. Today, we are reviewing the MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X Plus. The "Plus" signifies the upgraded memory chips. Other than that there is really no visible difference compared to the Gaming X non-Plus. Out of the box, the card comes with a decent overclock, which, combined with the memory frequency improvements, results in an 11% performance uplift over the reference GTX 1080 with 10 Gbps memory. This makes the card 38% faster than the GTX 1070 reference and almost 50% faster than AMD's aging Radeon Fury X. The GTX 1080 Ti is still 20% faster. I wish MSI had overclocked these shiny new memory chips a bit, which would have provided even more extra performance. The chips can certainly take it as our manual overclocking tests show. It would have also been nice had NVIDIA included some extra shaders on this new SKU, which could have helped plug the performance hole between the GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti.

In terms of cooling, nothing has changed. The card still uses MSI's signature TwinFrozr IV thermal solution. Gaming temperature is around 67°C, which is incredibly low for a GTX 1080 and far away from NVIDIA's thermal limit of 82°C beyond which the card will reduce clocks to hold that temperature. Gaming noise is incredible too. With only 29 dBA, the card is the quietest GTX 1080 we have ever tested, together with the ZOTAC AMP! Extreme, though it uses a triple-slot cooler. MSI 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.

Power efficiency of Pascal is amazing, but the MSI Gaming X+ doesn't do so good here. We measured gaming power consumption at 219 W average, which is much higher than the 166 W we saw on the GTX 1080 reference. Some of that efficiency loss can be attributed to the higher clocks out of the box, and I suspect the faster memory chips draw some extra juice too. Still, the card is more efficient than any card AMD ever released, and since temperatures and noise levels are excellent, it's not a big deal in my opinion.

GPU overclocking potential is in the typical range of what we've seen from other GTX 1080s, so there's no magic happening here. The new memory chips overclock well and reach 1500 MHz (12 GHz), which is about 100 MHz higher than previous GTX 1080s, which could make the card attractive for manual overclocking, even though the differences are not huge.

Price-wise, the MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X Plus is expected to clock in at around $570, which is not a lot more than the $555 the Gaming X non-Plus is currently going for. However, the cheapest GTX 1080 is listed at $480 right now. Of course, it doesn't come with such an awesome cooler and also runs lower clocks, but for almost $100 less, you might want to consider such lower-priced cards. The MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X Plus is still an awesome board and will perform similar to the best GTX 1080s on the market, cards that not long ago cost you upwards of $750.