EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2 review: A ferocious graphics card with a radical cooler - landnits1964

At a Glance

Skillful's Evaluation

Pros

Marvellous gaming public presentation, even at 4K
EVGA's iCX cooling keeps temperatures and noise low
Smaller than other custom GTX 1080 Titanium card game

Cons

Shroud design may be divisive

Our Verdict

The GTX 1080 Ti SC2 uses EVGA's revolutionary iCX cooling technology to make the most potent consumer graphics calling card in the world even better. IT's cool, quiet, and powerful.

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Ever since the monstrous $700 GeForce GTX 1080 Ti launched, the world's been wait to see what this beastly GPU was capable of in the hands of Nvidia's ironware partners. The Founders Version delivered damn near uncompromising 60-Federal Protective Service functioning at 4K resolution with everything cranked to 11, and that was with a lowly reference cooler and stock clock speeds. How far can manufacturing plant-overclocked versions with potent made-to-order cooling solutions go?

Well, for the first time ever, a graphics card is so damn fast that it managed to largely push button a halt's constriction off of the GPU and onto the CPU in PCWorld's ferocious testing PC—while running 15 degrees operating theatre more tank than the Founders Edition.

And the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2 ($720 preorder on Amazon) ISN't even EVGA's quickest custom-made GTX 1080 Ti.

Anathemize.

Meet the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2

Earlier we diving into the customizations EVGA ready-made to the SC2, Hera's a refresher along the GTX 1080 Ti's default technical specs, reinforced around the full-fat version of Nvidia's GP102 graphics processor.

The major difference under the exhaust hood of EVGA's card is the GPU clock speed. The GTX 1080 Cordyline terminalis SC2 hums along at a 1,556MHz infrastructure time and 1,670MHz boost clock. That's a healthy 88MHz leap over the GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition boost clock—heck, the EVGA visiting card's base clock is a mere 26MHz away from the stock version's boost time. The numbers aren't as concrete as they seem, nonetheless, as the GTX 1080 Te regularly surpasses its rated boost clock anyway. Before performing any extra overclocking, we saw EVGA's card hit clock speeds up to 1,850MHz in some games, contingent what was happening on-screen.

The memory's untouched compared to the reference version, with a borderline excessive 11GB of GDDR5X of onboard Random access memory. The cooling solution is anything but.

You'll notice EVGA's current shroud design first. With the GTX 1080 Ti lineup, the company's ditched the hard exterior launch in its customized GTX 1080 models for a porous new aesthetic that shows the beefy heatsink lurking underneath. The look's been somewhat divisive in forums but I dig information technology, not least of which because it shows the true star of the show here: EVGA's ambitious iCX cooling frame-up.

We went hands-along with EVGA's rotatory iCX when it debuted in the GTX 1080 FTW2 earlier this class, and IT's worth highlighting again. Artwork cards have traditionally only featured a single temperature sensor, monitoring the GPU processor itself. EVGA's iCX loads the card with non one, not two, but nine additive sensors that also monitors the rise of the GPU, the onboard memory modules, and the power controllers. Virtually every aspect of your nontextual matter card is tracked.

asynchronous cooling — How EVGA's iCX cooling technology workings.

But iCX does to a greater extent than merely tag along temperatures. It uses that comprehensive data to control the speeds of the plural fans independently, with the leftmost fan responding to the GPU temperature, and the right-side sports fan adjusting speeds to celebrate the memory and PWMs cool off. If the memory's heating up chop-chop but the GPU itself is staying relatively cool, as can happen with the Furmark stress test, the consecrated GPU lover maintains a slower, quieter travel rapidly, while the memory buff ramps up.

vrm heatpipe sc2 — The bull VRM heatpipe integrated in the GTX 1080 Ti's redesigned baseplate.

EVGA's tweaked the VRM heatpipe intent on iCX-equipped GTX 1080 Te card game besides, to assist support temperatures even lower.

You can monitor your temperatures sensor-by-sensor in EVGA's Precision XOC software, or just by glancing at the graphics card in your case. Triplet RGB lights above the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2's logotype happening the bill's edge indicate how sulphurous your GPU, PWMs, and memory are, respectively. As components hotness risen, the individual lights change coloring (not that you'll have to worry about it much with this card). Preciseness XOC lets you customize the colors of the EVGA logo as well as the RGB indicators.

evga gtx 1080 ti sc2 1 — The colored lights over the "1080" show up how hot your ironware's running.

It feels like the proximo of cooling, and it's stunningly effective in practice session. IT's nice seeing RGB lights being wont to matter-of-fact effects, as advisable. Nigh impost GTX 1080 Ti card game released thus distant have utilized thicker 2.5- or 3-slot designs to keep the GPU broken, but EVGA's card sticks to a traditional 2-slot size, so it'll be interesting to see how iCX holds up in games.

As far as the pillow of the card goes, the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2 features a sturdy backplate, as you'd expect in a art card this dear. Despite its high clock speeds, the card still harbors the aforesaid 250-W TDP every bit the Founders Edition, and the same 8-pin and 6-pin power connectors. EVGA's internal 7+2 mightiness phases wish help you push the GPU to even quicker speeds.

There's one ultimate pick off of promissory note. While Nvidia's GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition ditched the DVI-D port to increase cooling spell sticking to the Saami contour factor as the GTX 1080 Founders Variant, EVGA's robust cooling system system allows the company to return the legacy, yet considerably-loved connector to its rightful place connected the rear of the card.

Enough speak up. Permit's bench mark this badass. You're going to want to scan the results for heat and Ashes of the Uniqueness.

Next page: Arrangement configuration, benchmarks begin

Our test arrangement, Section benchmarks

We tested EVGA's GTX 1080 Ti SC2 on PCWorld's dedicated art card bench mark system. Our testbed's cockeyed with high-goal components to avoid bottlenecks in other parts of the system and show unfettered graphics public presentation. At any rate, on paper. We'll get to that later.

Intel's Core i7-5960X with a Corsair Hydro Series H100i stoppered-iteration water cooler ($120 connected Amazon).
An Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard ($230 on Amazon River for an updated version).
Corsair's Retribution LPX DDR4 memory ($130 connected Virago), and 1,200-Watt AX1200i mogul supply ($310 on Amazon).
A 480GB Intel 730 series SSD ($280 on Amazon).
Phanteks' Enthoo Evolv ATX case ($190 on Amazon).
Windows 10 Professional ($158 on Amazon).

Naturally, we're comparing the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2 against Nvidia's GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition ($700 on Amazon). We already know that the GTX 1080 Ti stomps all rivals, just we'rhenium also including benchmarks from the Founders Edition GTX 1080 ($500 happening Amazon) and GTX 1070 ($380 on Virago) for quotation. AMD hasn't had a competing enthusiast-class graphics card since Nvidia's GTX 10-serial publication launched in mid-2022, and information technology won't until Radeon Vega hits the streets sometime earlier the end of June.

Wholly card game are tested with default sports fan profiles and out-of-the-box clock speeds.

Each game's tested victimisation its in-halt bench mark at the mentioned graphics presets, with V-sync, frame rate caps, and all GPU marketer-specific technologies—suchlike AMD TressFX, Nvidia GameWorks options, and FreeSync/G-Sync—handicapped. This card is so powerful that we're restrictive our testing to 4K and 2560×1440 resolving power.

The Division

The Air division, a beautiful third-someone gunslinger/RPG that mixes elements ofDestinyandGears of Warfare, kicks things off with Ubisoft's new Snowdrop engine. We test the gage in DirectX 11 mode; The Division fresh rolled out an update that adds DirectX 12 bear out, just the performance is most identical to the DX11 results.

The EVGA card pushes a few more frames per second than the store GTX 1080 Titanium here, with a wider gap atomic number 3 resolution increases. IT pulls ahead by roughly 6.5 percent at 4K, but just 4.5 percentage at 1440p.

Next page: Gunslinger

Hitman

Hired gun's Glacier locomotive engine historically favorite AMD hardware. IT's none surprise;Hitman's a flagship AMD Gaming Evolved title. That said, GeForce cards sure don't slouch afterward recent driver optimizations. We test in both DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 with SSAO disabled.

The EVGA GTX 1080 Te SC2's direct is little here, maybe because Hitman's already pushing out so many another frames. We saw roughly 3 to 4 per centum performance improvements over the GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition at farm animal clock speeds—but much of people don't buy a card like this to stick to stock speeds.

Future page: Rise of the Tomb Freeboote

Rise of the Grave Raider

WhereasHitmanleans towards Radeon GPUs,Stand up of the Tomb Raiderperforms much better on GeForce card game—and it's absolutely gorgeous. We only examination the game's DirectX 11 mode, as DX12 results can be erratic.

Again, we saw a 3 to 4 percent melioration crossways the board expiration from the Founders Version to the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2.

Next page: Furthermost Cry Important

Far Cry Central

Immoderate Cry Primalis another Ubisoft secret plan, but information technology's powered by a different engine than The Division—the modish version of the overnight-running and well-respected Dunia railway locomotive.

Another game, other improvement of a some frames per second over the stock GTX 1080 Ti. At 4K/Ultra, the difference is 5.36 percent.

Next page: Ashes of the Uniqueness

Ashes of the Singularity

Ashes of the Singularity, running along Oxide's custom Nitrous railway locomotive, was an wee color bearer for DirectX 12, and many months by and by it'sstill the premier game for seeing what next-gen nontextual matter technologies have to offer. We test the spirited using the High graphics setting, as the wildly strenuous Screwball and Extreme presets aren't reflective of real-world custom scenarios.

Hither's where things get really interesting. The EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2 sees the biggest performance uptick of all the tests in Ashes, pushing out frames a awash 10 percent quicker than the Founders Edition at 4K solving. But appear at those 1440p results! They're virtually congruent betwixt the two card game, and remained so after several tests.

That's because the EVGA GTX 1080 Cordyline terminalis SC2 is so fast, Ashes becomes Central processor-bound rather than GPU-articled at 1440p/High—the first time we've seen a graphics scorecard max unstylish our system's capabilities. The SC2's extra oomph pushes it over the edge, as official by checking the game's deeper metrics, which showed that only about 5 pct of profound- and sensitive-batch frames were GPU-bound. To be disinterested, the 8-core Core i7-5960X in our test arrangement runs at modest 3GHz stock speeds, simply information technology's still a milestone. We'll be making about changes soon to prevent IT from happening over again.

Next page: Synthetic benchmarks

Synthetics, power, heat, overclocking

We also tested the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2 and its rivals using 3DMark's highly illustrious DX11 Fire Strike and Fire Strike Ultra synthetic benchmarks, as well as 3DMark's Time Spy bench mark, which tests DirectX 12 carrying out at 2560×1440 resolution.

Everything falls about where you'd expect based on prior performance results.

Next page: Power and heat

Power

We test exponent subordinate load aside plugging the full system into a Watts Up meter, track the intensiveDivision benchmark at 4K resolution, and noting the peak power tie. Light power is measured after sitting on the Windows background for three minutes with no extra programs or processes running.

The EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2 only uses a hair more power than the GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition, and a significant 10W to a lesser extent power at idle. That's plausibly because the dual fans on EVGA's card occlusive spinning when the card ISN't under lade, whereas the character model's winnow constantly whirs.

Heat

We test heating plant during the Sami modifierDivision benchmark at a effortful 4K resolution, by running SpeedFan in the background and noting the maximum GPU temperature (in Celsius) once the run is over.

The EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2's robust iCX cooling solution keeps the GPU a whopping 15 degrees Celsius cooler than the Founders Edition nether load, and it corset far quieter while doing so. It's not just the GPU staying chilly, either: Checks with Precision XOC showed the PWMs and memory running nice and cool. I was hoping to snag a snap of the lineup blaring a red RGB index light but couldn't get it to happen under whatever reasonable circumstances, even after overclocking.

icx temps — Precison XOC's sensor temperature readings while running our thermal test, a.k.a.The Divisionat 4K repeatedly. (Clink to expand.)

That's victimisation the default rooter curve, too. Precision XOC allows you to set a custom fan curve, or enable an "fast-growing" fan curve. The aggressive curve, which I used in my overclocking endeavors, is no joke: It kept the overclocked GPU running between 52 and 59 degrees Celsius in The Division and Rise of the Grave Raider straight-grained at 4K/Ultra. Cool nontextual matter cards don't arrest much colder than that—though the fan stochasticity generated using that setting is just American Samoa aggressive.

Next Sri Frederick Handley Page: Overclocking and tush short letter

Overclocking

Regrettably, time constraints prevented Pine Tree State from fine-tuning the perfect overclock with the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2. Without tweaking the power limit—an momentous note—I was able to achieve a +80MHz offset happening the card's GPU clocks, which resulted in real clock speeds of 1,910MHz to 1,987MHz in games dependent on the solving and intensity of the scenery. Memory overclocks hit +300MHz without a hitch, and could've gone further if I had time to keep stepping up the frequency and checking stability.

Even overclocked, EVGA's aggressive fan curve kept temperatures in the mid- to high-50s, Celsius. The combination of the overclock and exploitation the scrappy fan curve also didn't use much more mogul than the stock configuration, at 314W rather of 303W.

This hasty overclock added a few more frames' worth of performance in the handful of games I was healthy to test at 4K/Ultra.

The extra oomph provided by the overclock resulted in a 9.9 percent average frame rate increase compared to the stock GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition, and no doubt with time I could've pushed it even further. Non overly shabby.

OH, and I tested Ashes of the Singularity at 1440p with the overclocked EVGA SC2 and saw virtually no divergence in carrying into action yet once more. Yep, it's CPU-leaping.

Bottom line

The EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2 kicks ass.

Sure, it's only an intermediate of 5.7 percentage faster than the GTX 1080 Atomic number 2 Founders Edition KO'd of the boxwood, just even that modest increase is enough to advertise The Division and Far Cry Aboriginal to the boundary of 60 fps at 4K resolution with all the graphics options cranked to 11—and press Ashes of the Uniqueness into being CPU-bound at 1440p. A immediate, basic overclock nearly doubled the performance acquire, though overclocking's always subject to the whims of the atomic number 14 lottery.

The real star Here is EVGA's unique iCX chilling solution. I was a fan (har har) when EVGA debuted iCX, and the refinements in the GTX 1080 Ti SC2 really come through shine. The card runs cool as a cucumber and quiet as a mouse with its nonpayment rooter profile, and that's all the more noble when you consider that the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2's a classical 2-one-armed bandit size. Most of the other custom GTX 1080 Ti cards free expanded to bulkier 2.5- and 3-slot thicknesses to reconcile the heat of this potent GPU.

If you're truly looking to crank overclocks as far as possible, you might want to wait for the release of EVGA's flagship GTX 1080 Atomic number 2 FTW3 flagship, which is also imbued with iCX. That card offers slightly higher out-of-the-clock speeds but really caters to overclockers by swapping out the secondary 6-rowlock king connector with other 8-pin connexion, upgrading the power phases to a 10+2 arrangement, and adding a second BIOS. It costs $30 Sir Thomas More, though.

You tin can't be disappointed with a cool, quiescent, eminently configurable art visiting card that pushes performance to the literal brink in a game like-minded Ashes, though. The GTX 1080 Ti SC2's carrying into action bump and vastly reinforced cooling solution make it considerably worth the $20 premium over a Founders Edition card. EVGA's card is easily the quickest graphics card to ever cross our labs. Don't hesitate to buy IT if you're gaming at 4K resolution, or 1440p at a high refresh rate.

And we South Korean won't hesitate to upgrade our testing system. Look for a rebuild before Radeon Vega lands, complete with a new batting order of game benchmarks.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/406500/evga-gtx-1080-ti-sc2-review-a-ferocious-graphics-card-with-a-radical-cooler.html

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