NVIDIA's GTX 1080 Ti delivers truly impressive performance that's even higher than with the GTX Titan X Pascal, which makes the GTX 1080 Ti the fastest graphics card in the world. When averaged over our bench suite at 4K resolution, the card ends up 35% faster than the GTX 1080 - more than what the difference between the GTX 980 Ti and GTX 980 was. NVIDIA also managed to conclusively beat the Titan X by about 5% due to including the same number of shaders and higher clocks on both memory and GPU. Today, we tested the Founders Edition, made by NVIDIA, which will be available in most markets starting next week. Custom board designs from the usual suspects will be available soon, too, starting in April. AMD's fastest, the Fury X, is 40% slower than the GTX 1080 Ti, and the RX 480 is more than half as slow. Last generation's flagship, the GTX 980 Ti is half as slow - doubling performance generation-to-generation is a truly impressive feat. When looking at framerates, we can see that the GTX 1080 Ti makes 60 FPS 4K gaming a reality in most titles. Only a few games require slightly reduced settings. Even though the Titan X has 12 GB VRAM, the 1 GB difference really is irrelevant. We barely have any titles today that use more than 6 GB VRAM, so 11 GB will have you covered for a long time going forward.

NVIDIA has stuck with their well-established Founders Edition design that has been left visually unchanged for many years. Don't get me wrong, the cooler looks amazing, but its thermal performance is the weakest point of the GTX 1080 Ti. In our testing, the card will run at around 84°C during games, which is the thermal limit of the card, so Boost 3.0 will drop clocks below what would be possible with a better cooler. This doesn't mean the clocks will go down all the way to base clock, which is the NVIDIA guaranteed minimum, but there is some additional headroom to be gained with better coolers, so stay tuned for what board partners will offer. The card's power limit is also set a bit low, losing a little bit of performance here too. Again, board partners will certainly address this.

While idle fan noise is very low, the card does not include the highly popular idle-fan-off feature. I think it's time NVIDIA adds this essential capability that's available on nearly every custom design graphics card on the market today. In gaming, the card is quite noisy, reaching almost 40 dBA with a heavy load, which is definitely noticeable. Some thermal improvements were found by removing the DVI port, which frees up some space in the second slot for additional airflow, but overall, the cooler is not good enough. It's good to see NVIDIA include a DP-to-DVI adapter on the package for the last few people stuck with a DVI monitor, though.

Power efficiency is high, just like on all other Pascal generation cards. Compared to Titan X, which is the most efficient graphics card we ever tested, we see slightly increased gaming power draw, which is offset by higher performance, though not by enough. This puts the GTX 1080 Ti between the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 in power efficiency - still almost twice as efficient as anything AMD has to offer - and this will be what AMD has to address for a successful VEGA launch.

NVIDIA's CEO shocked everyone during the live stream by announcing a price that matches that of the GTX 1080: $699. While it is certainly not cheap, NVIDIA has trained us well when it comes to accepting costly graphics cards for the high-end, where the company completely dominates the market. Before you start moaning now: Just two weeks ago, everybody was dreaming of a GTX 1080 for their rig - at more than $600. Today, the GTX 1080 Ti is available for $699, which is in the same ballpark - pricing is definitely not unreasonable. On top of that, GTX 1080 non-Ti pricing has been reduced substantially, which is a clever move to ensure GTX 1080 sales stay strong. AMD really has nothing to offer at this time if you want high performance, so it's only natural to expect a price premium. I also have serious doubts that AMD Vega will be able to beat the GTX 1080 Ti, especially when you consider what board partners will be able to achieve with the GTX 1080 Ti, using better coolers and an increased power limit.