Gadgetory

high-end graphics cards these days are expensive really expensive that has to be said high-end PC hardwoods in generals expensive there's obviously a market for this stuff and we're seeing it on all levels from extreme keyboards cases power suppliers and insanely over-the-top GPUs and CPUs the GeForce GTX 1080 for example that launched back in May of 2016 at $600 u.s. or $700 for the founders edition version and I have to admit I thought that was pretty good value at the time they spent board partner versions we're going to come in around 50 dollars cheaper than the gtx 980ti of the previous generation while offering around 30% more performance however we knew bigger and better things were on the way and eventually we did get the gtx 980ti and ignoring the silly over-the-top tight next stuff the 1080i is now the best option for gamers with deep pockets priced at $700 us the 1080i pushed to the 1080 down to $500 and even with the release of AMD's RX vega series Nvidia hasn't been forced into price cuts as much as I really like my Radeon rx Vega 64 liquid-cooled graphics card at $800 it just can't compete with the gtx 980ti with 1080 TI cards stepping in at around 750 dollars right now they offer vastly superior performance in most titles what I really like about the Vega 64 liquid-cooled graphics card is that all in one liquid cooler there's no fans on the card itself all the heat generated by the graphics card is transferred via liquid to a 120 millimeter radiator and it's expelled outside of the case it's an effective solution that not only keeps the card cool but also lowers case temperatures while reducing the overall operating volume the GTX 1080 Ti is a much more power efficient graphics card and with a big heat sink and a trio fans it can be kept a relatively cool while remaining very quiet that said the air-cool models are massively heavy and they do still dump huge amount of heat into the case and then your case and case fans not have to deal with that heat and some of the core components or the critical components on the PCB still do get quite hot from all the heat that the GPU generates that isn't as efficiently removed as it could be this can be - for those building high-end gaming rigs in smaller cases the easiest solution of course is to get something with an all-in-one liquid cooler and thankfully there are a few good options I've been eyeing off the EVGA gtx 1080i for the win three hybrid gaming quite a mouthful and the msi gtx 1080 TI seahawk ex a little less of a mouthful both do look great but they do have fans on the cards and that's something I wanted to avoid and right now they do appear to be hideously expensive then I recently stumbled across the easy to say gigabyte Oris GT X 1080 TI water force Extreme Edition no the short name there cool thing about this card though is there is only a single fan it's a 120 millimeter fan and it's on the radiator so no fans on the card itself admittedly though the card is a bit expensive at $880 us but it is cheaper than the versions just mentioned from EVGA and MSI at least as we speak the 1080 TI waterfalls looks to have everything I'm after but when dishing out this kind of cash you really want to know just how good a product is so then today we're taking a closer look to see just what gigabyte has on offer here right away I have to admit this product doesn't look and feel as premium as you might expect the card is wrapped in a plastic shroud which looks okay but it certainly makes the model feel much cheaper than it really is and I would have much preferred an aluminium housing here this is something I was expecting and hoping to find admittedly the plastic does serve the purpose quite well but as I said it just looks and feels a bit cheap in my opinion there's also a clear Xavier section of the car which shows off the liquid cooling block the pretty bland affair but of course somehow GB lighting has been in better here to liven things up the back side of the card features a full-length backplate which looks good but again if the copper insert is the version you'd find on the lower end cards and not the same as other extreme edition models so that was a bit surprising meanwhile around at the io end we find a dual link DVI output along with two HDMI 2.0 B outputs and a trio of DisplayPort 1.4 outputs so the card is very rich in terms of connectivity and around at the option of the car we also find a HDMI output for VR link so that's kind of neat as well then of course hanging off the card we have a one and 20 millimeter radiator with a 120 millimeter fan connected the fan is powered by the graphics card so there's no need to plug any additional cords in here meanwhile connecting the radiator to the block and pump on the graphics card are a pair of braided fep tubes that span about 360 millimeters long now if we remove the cooler from the cart we find a 265 millimeter long PCB that measures about a hundred and twenty millimeters tall at its tallest gigabyte says that the cart is built for extreme overclocking and on board we find a 12 + 2 phase power design this is the same configuration that we found on the impressive Oris GTX 1082 I extreme edition the air-cooled model of course in fact it's the exact same PCB design though there are a few minor component changes here and there the key change of course though here is the cooler whereas the air-cooled model features a 970 gram cooler hanging off it the water force Extreme Edition only has 418 grams worth of cooler strapped onto the PCB the cooler itself is of a very elegant design and takes care of everything including the GPU gddr5 X memory and of course the vrm naturally though the GPU does take priority here and it is cooled directly via the copper block then attached to the block is a copper base which covers the 11 memory chips and then finally attached to that is a large aluminium nickel plated section which covers the vrm so it will be very interesting to see how cool this card runs out of the box the card comes clocked at a base speed of 1600 and 7 megahertz which allows for a boost clock of at least 1721 megahertz there is also an OC mode which can be enabled at the click of a button and this boosts the base to sixteen hundred and thirty-two megahertz resulting in a boost clock speed of at least seventeen hundred and forty six megahertz this means out of the box the card comes with a 9 percent factory overclock so that's not bad still if you like me prefer to apply your own overclock then let's see what can be found with a little tinkering the core was able to accept a frequency of sixteen hundred and eighty-seven megahertz while the gddr5 X memory was good for 1500 megahertz or a transfer speed of twelve gigabits per second of course due to the way that in videos GPU boost 3.0 works we know that the card can run faster than the suggested boost clock speeds have kept under the thermal and power targets in the case of the water force Extreme Edition this allowed the card to hold operating frequency you have 2.1 gigahertz after a 20-minute stress test which is certainly up there with the best result we've seen today for those wondering in its out-of-the-box configuration the cart operated around nineteen hundred and thirty six megahertz under full load and that's around seven percent higher than most of the air-cooled models we've tested before I jump to the benchmarks please note this won't be a detailed benchmark review in terms of framerate performance we really already know whether 1080 Ti is positioned will get a pretty good idea of how this Oris liquid cooled version stacks up in just a few games so then on to the benchmarks first up let's check out the battlefield one results here we see the water force looks very strong pushing 144 FPS on average at 1440p this minute was 5% faster than the Galaxy GT X 1080 t IE x OC and almost 30% faster than vega 64 liquid-cooled moving to 4k we were able to push over 60 fps at all times of the horas water force card and once our custom overclock was applied the minimum frame rate never dipped below 65 fps very impressive stuff next up we have Ghost Recon wildlands and healer liquid-cooled 1080 TI water force is again 5% faster than the air-cooled GT x 1080 Ti through custom overclocking we were able to squeeze out a few more frames that almost managed an average of 100 FPS using the very high quality settings jumping to 4k it was no longer possible to maintain over 60 fps at all times but even so the water force model did an exceptional job and did average 62 FPS once overclocked moving on we have Hal blade and this title plays really well at 1440p here the Auris water force average 96 FPS and pushed up to 99 FPS once overclocked again falling just short of 100 FPS this game like many is very demanding once we hit the 4k resolution here the water force averaged 50 fps and just 52 FPS once overclocked but still a very good result quake champions plays well on mid-range hardware but if you're chasing big frame rates at 1440p then the water force can certainly help you out here we comfortably saw an average of over 200 FPS while the minimum never dipped below 155 FPS even at the 4k resolution the Auris water force eats up quake champions and spits out an average of a hundred and eleven FPS out of the box that's pretty impressive stuff and this was an noteworthy bump over the air-cooled GTX ten ATT I finally we have player knowns battlegrounds and here the 1082 I delivers the ultimate experience frame rates were super smooth or at least they were for this title as the water force averaged 95 FPS out of the box even at 4k the game played quite well though the minimum frame rate was around 40 fps so it wasn't exactly an ideal scenario then when it came to power draw the Auris GTX 1080i water force was very good out of the box I've been drawing about the same amount of power as your more standard 1080 T Ives I have a clock total system consumption was increased by 9% which made the card less efficient but if you're chasing maximum performance well it's certainly worth the other draw the card still ran very cool and quiet as well the Auris GTX 1080i water force has already impressed us with very strong out-of-the-box performance and making the numbers just seen even more impressive is the fact that the card operates at just 50 degrees under full load for over an hour the very best air-cooled cards we've seen to date with massive 1 kilo heat sinks running around 65 degrees and most of you more typical 1080 T is due push over 70 degrees so a 50 degree low temp is most impressive indeed the car was also virtually silent at this temperature then once overclocked a 2.1 you get hurt to the temperature increase by just 5 degrees and even there the car was still virtually silent I've really only ever managed to achieve these kinds of temperatures on air-cooled cards when the fans are spinning at 100% and when you have three rather large fans spinning at that speed it does create quite a racket so a super impressive result for this gigabyte graphics card well I think it's fair to say I have a new favorite graphics card might not be the prettiest going around but that 2.1 gigahertz overclock was mighty and it wasn't all that difficult to achieve moreover the card runs incredibly cool and it does so while making virtually no noise at all in fact under load for an extended period of time it was still basically silent the only issues of course as is often the case with these extreme graphics cards is the price that's set at $880 us it's not outrageous for what you get base models are only 15% cheaper at 750 dollars while many of the more desirable coold versions they do solve for around another 20 or 30 dollars of course this water force version isn't going to provide around 15 percent more performance but it does enable extremely low operating temperatures the temperatures really are key here not just for the car but also for your entire system the water force dumps the vast majority that hit the car generates outside of the case whereas the air-cooled models dump almost all if not all of the heat inside the system so this means that the case fans can also operate at lower speeds with the water force installed effectively reducing the operating volume of the entire system helping to justify the price premium is gigabyte standard three year warranty and I'll even add on an additional year if you register for Oris care so that's pretty cool overall I really like the gigabyte or s GT X 1080 CI water force extreme edition which the name was a bit shorter and I also wish it featured an all-aluminium shroud here rather than the plastic design which feels a little on the cheap side I have to say but other than that I absolutely love the card runs cool quiet and overclock like a champ anyway let me know what you guys think I'm your host Steve catch again next time you