With the imminent release of the Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti, the company has made a considerable price reduction in its most powerful consumer model to date, the GTX 1080. With a base price, it becomes a very attractive solution for those who want to play 4K by rolling the 60 fps in many current titles.
It has taken advantage of this reduction to analyze one of the most complete versions, the iChill GeForce GTX 1080 X4, of the assembler Inno3D. You already have the review of the Nvidia GTX 1080 you need to finish convincing you of what high-end graphics to buy for your PC Gaming.
This is the Inno3D GTX 1080
Within the wide range of models assembled by third-party manufacturers, the iChill GeForce GTX 1080 X4 is one of the most complete options for those who aspire to squeeze their equipment to the maximum.
The highlight of this version of the GTX 1080 from Nvidia is found in the cooling elements. They have been taken care of to the maximum and in the version X4, the Pascal GP104-400-A1 chip counts on the protection of a metal plate that gives consistency in the whole length of the PCB to him while cooling.
We also find a 123-piece heatsink, several copper heatpipes even in the area of memory modules, and up to four fans. Three main 92 mm and a fourth 50 mm element are autogested depending on the GPU load. In case we want to use an SLI configuration, this iChill chart is prepared with specific air intakes to facilitate cooling.
With the same price as the Founders Edition, Inno3D’s GTX 1080 brings one of the most complete cooling systems from different manufacturers, making it suitable for extreme overclocking enthusiasts
At the visual level is an imposing card, heavy and large. When mounting, bear in mind that up to 3 slots will be disabled. The iChill logo is illuminated and alternates between green, blue and red depending on whether the GPU is light or high, respectively.
In the connectivity section, we have a DVI-D port, an HDMI 2.0 and three DisplayPort 1.4. For power supply, you will need to have a 6-pin and 8-pin connector on hand.
iChill GeForce E GTX 1080 X4 Specifications
| MANUFACTURING | 16 nm |
| CHIP | GP104 architecture Pascal |
| CUDA CORES | 2560 |
| BASE / ACCELERATED FREQUENCY | 1759/1898 MHz |
| MEMORY | 8GB |
| MEMORY TYPE | GDDR5X |
| FREQUENCY | 10.4 Gbps |
| MEMORY INTERFACE | 256 bit |
| BANDWIDTH | 322.8 Gbps |
| TDP | 230 W |
| VR READY | Yes |
| SLI READY | Yes |
| G-SYNC | Yes |
| MICROSOFT DIRECTX | 12 |
| BUS | PCIe 3.0 |
| MAX. SCREEN RESOLUTION | 7680 x 4320 at 60 Hz |
| CONNECTIVITY | DisplayPort 1.42, HDMI 2.0b, DL-DVI |
| OPENGL | 4.5 |
Test Equipment
For the performance tests of the GTX 1080 graphics card, we have had our usual test equipment, an ASUS G11 desktop PC. Its base equipment consists of the Intel Core i7 6700 (Skylake) processor at 3.4 Ghz accompanied by 16 GB of RAM DDR4 2133 Mhz of Kingston and a MDA SSD 256 GB of Samsung.
All components, including the graphical test card, are updated to the latest drivers available at the time of testing. The operating system used for testing is Windows 10.
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Synthetic tests, noise and temperature in operation
The first moments with the Nvidia GTX 1080 after installation run between synthetic tests with the usual software in our tests with hardware components. We have tested with PCMark8 in their tests Creative and Home, as well as with 3DMark and Cinebench.
In the first tests, in PCMark8 Home and Creative, the GeForce GTX 1080 takes 4849 and 8087 points respectively, while in the OpenCL Cinebench test reaches 102.25 fps.
Playing already in the league of high-end cards, at the consumption level, the iChill GTX 1080, with a TDP higher than 200 W, has met that consumption and measuring the difference between the standby mode and the game mode with Load of 95%, we have marked an average of 193 W consumption, very interesting data for this type of card at the level of efficiency.
Although at the level of overclocking we have not been surprised, yes in the control of the temperature even with loads of 99% the iChill GTX 1080 X4 demonstrates the reason of its personalization
In operation, the GTX 1080 of the iChill series is very quiet even with loads of more than 70%. And thanks to its complete cooling system, temperatures are controlled at all times.
In the rest state the temperature is 40 degrees Celsius (the ambient temperature is around 17º) and when we demand the maximum, with a load higher than 95% in The Division, for example, the maximum temperature we have measured Has been 71 degrees, a very good figure.
Overclocking with the iChill GTX 1080 X4
Opting for custom editions instead of the Founders Edition is usually associated with the desire to squeeze the possibilities of the basic chip to the maximum through overclocking, both at memory and GPU frequency. A higher TDP and a more complete cooling system help to think about it.
In our test we have chosen to check how far this version of the GTX 1080 allowed us to squeeze its standard numbers without compromising the card or the equipment, thinking more about a consumer level overclocking to achieve a few extra fps in games that The more we want to improve.
For this we have used the MSI Afterburner software and the Unigine Heaven benchmark. With trial-error in small steps in both memory frequency and GPU core, we have stopped our tests after checking failures in both the benchmark software and the game The Division that we use for comparative.
Finally, we have overclocked +80 in GPU and +220 in memory until reaching 1968 GHz of turbo (+ 4%) for the core of the GPU. We also raised the maximum consumption to 110, although in that case as in the voltage, we prefer to leave it as standard. In the following graph you can see how the media fps improve in the game The Division at both 1080p and 1440p in Ultra mode and using the benchmark test that includes the game.
Performance of the GTX 1080 with 1080p games
We have chosen different titles, both with a couple of years and more recent releases for PC. In cases where it has been possible we have differentiated between the execution of the title with DX11 and with DX12, as there are already considerable differences with the new generations of Pascal and AMD RX.
The games we tested are full versions, configured to 1080p resolution and Ultra profiles or as high as possible. The measurements of fps that we indicate are the means realized after 5 sessions of 10 minutes of game with each title.
To highlight the improvement over the previous generation of the GTX 1080 under DirectX 12, which exceeds 80% in the two titles tested (84% in the case of Rise of Tomb Raider and 90% in Ashes of Singularity), when Under DirectX 11 those improvements are 65% and 58% respectively.
GTX 1080 vs GTX 980 to 1080p
Buying a GTX 1080 to upgrade the corresponding high end of the previous generation is a possibility that many will be valuing. It is in the test that we have focused on this second part of our comparative.
The improvement is on average almost 50% between having a GTX 1080 or the GTX 980, with improvements that reach even 70% in games like Metro Last Light according to our tests.
DirectX 11 vs DirectX 12
If we compare the performance of an already upgraded title to DX12 using the GTX 980 or the GTX 1080, the differences are very favorable for the new graphics under Pascal, which achieves improvements of almost 10% in fps in both Rise of Tomb Raider and in Ashes of Singularity.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 in 4K game
If you are thinking of investing money with a new GTX 1080 now that have reduced its price facing the output of the next GTX 1080 Ti, the game 4K (3840×2160) is likely to be among your interests. To complete the test of this iChill GeForce GTX 1080 X4 we have passed our tests measuring fps in the same conditions in all the games and later taking out a mean.
With the exception of the game The Witcher, the remaining titles managed to improve the average fps by more than 60% with the GTX 1080 compared to the GTX 980, leaving most of them above 50 fps in 4k game. This has happened with the maximum values. If we lower them to high we are talking about game 4K above 60 fps without problems.
Starting from this base, it is the turn of the GTX 1080 Ti, a model that promises to improve above 30% the performance of the current GTX 1080 without the price shoot for it. We will tell you soon.