MSI was first to send us a GTX 1080 custom design, the MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X, which is the first card they will have available out of at least seven custom-designs. I have to say I'm thoroughly impressed by what MSI has done with the GTX 1080 as they have addressed all the shortcomings within their control.

Out of the box, the card comes overclocked to a base clock of 1708 MHz, versus the 1607 MHz on the reference design. This translates into an average clock of 1912 MHz versus the 1783 MHz on NVIDIA's reference design after Boost 3.0 is applied. While I'm sure this is not the highest out-of-the-box overclock we will see, it's a good amount, translating into 7% additional performance when averaged out over our benchmark suite. This makes the card 31% faster than the GTX 1070 reference and 45% faster than GTX 970 SLI! AMD's fastest, the Fury X, is out of the game, almost 50% slower. MSI has also overclocked their memory chips for a bit of extra performance.

Most people have without a doubt been waiting for custom designs to see if their coolers will offer better capabilities than the NVIDIA reference design heatsink, which looks good, but fails to keep the card from running at its full potential due to throttling beyond 82°C. MSI's new TwinFrozr heatsink scores full marks here. It keeps the card at around 72°C even during heavy gaming while its fans are much quieter than on the reference. MSI's fans are actually unbelievably quiet given the card's performance. You will not hear them when the card is installed in a case and running at full load. 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.

Just like on the reference design, power efficiency is amazing, with huge improvements over the Maxwell architecture that is already highly efficient in the first place. However, it looks as though MSI traded some efficiency for more performance, which isn't unreasonable. Compared to the reference design, we see about 35 W more power draw in gaming, which translates into around a 10% loss in performance per watt. I say no big deal, Pascal is so efficient the power is well spent, and a worst-case power draw of 254 W is still much lower than that of any other high-end card we've seen before; and the card is nearly silent anyway due to its excellent thermal solution and well-crafted fan profile.
Unlike the reference design, which only uses a single 8-pin power connector for the sake of convenience, the MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X requires the 8-pin and another 6-pin connector, which is reasonable since the card can draw upward of 225 W thanks to its higher board power limit, leaving more room for Boost to clock higher while reducing the possibility that the power limit will mess with your overclock.

Currently, the MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X retails at $719, which just isn't right. NVIDIA trumpeted its MSRP of $599 all across the web and now we see cards that are even more expensive than the $699 Founders Edition. Still, even at that price, no alternative exists to the GTX 1080 - the MSI Gaming X is still a much better price-to-performance option than the GTX 980 or 980 Ti. Only the GTX 1070 offers a much better deal, but at lower overall performance. MSI's GTX 1080 Gaming X is so good that I'd rather buy it than the 20 buck cheaper reference design that comes with a worse thermal solution, more noise, throttling, and no idle-fan-off feature.
MSI's GTX 1080 Gaming X has set the bar for custom GTX 1080 designs from other board vendors very high. More reviews will follow this week; the cards are already here, stay tuned.