MSI Geforce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X 11G
Which one to pick?
PRICE $ 1239 www.msi.com.au In
the last issue of PC PowerPlay, we revealed Nvidia’s latest flagship consumer product, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. Offering performance boosts of up to 35% over the existing GeForce GTX 1080, we pronounced it the world’s fastest gaming GPU. A month later and we’re now being flooded with samples from Nvidia partners who are releasing their own heavily customised versions of this product. The first to cross our testbench is MSI’s new Gaming X 11G – at $170 more expensive than the cheapest GTX 1080 Ti Founder’s Edition cards on the market, what do you get for the extra price?
Once again we see MSI using its new Torx 2.0 fan system, which delivers up to 20% better airflow than its prior fan design. There are two of these whoppers on the card, attached to the massive Twin Frozr VI cooler. This is based around a series of 8mm copper heat pipes, which run through the large nickel-plated copper base plate. This heatsink doesn’t just cover the GPU though; it also takes care of the memory and PWM components.
The entire card uses a slightly larger PCB than standard 1080 Tis, while the power has also been upped; the usual 8-pin plus 6-pin design is now replaced by twin 8-pin connectors. This pipes power to a ten-phase power system, which isn’t quite as impressive as the 12+2 phase power system of the similarly priced Aorus GeForce GTX 1080Ti, but it has allowed MSI to give this card a decent factory overclock. There are three different modes that the card can be operated in. Stock 1080 Ti cards have a Boost Clock of 1582MHz, Base Clock of 1481MHz and Memory Speed of 11Gbps.
When running in silent gaming mode, the speeds run basically identical to stock, with a tiny 1MHz decrease in the Base Clock. Heading up to Gaming mode sees the Boost clock jump to 1657MHz while the Base Clock increases to 1544MHz. Finally we have OC mode, also known as screaming-fan mode, where the Boost Clock increases to 1683MHz and the Base jumps to 1569MHz. The memory speed is also increased in this mode, though only marginally, up to 11125MHz (the default is 11016MHz). Again, this is an impressive leap over default performance, but falls short of the 1746MHz Boost clock on the Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. In real world scenarios the performance is basically impossible to notice, but considering
heading up to Gaming mode sees the Boost clock jump to 1657MHz
the Aorus card is basically the same price, the MSI comes off as a very close second. We should also point out that in-game, even the cheapest GTX 1080 Tis often hit Boost speeds in excess of 1700MHz.
Having said that, either card will deliver scorching performance; they just have potential for slightly better overclocks than your vanilla GeForce. There’s also MSI’s exceptional Military Class 4 durability testing, which will give potential buyers better piece of mind that their product will last for the long haul. BENNETT RING
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