Gadgetory

1080 time yeah 1080 time but this one's going to be good what's up guys Eber here with hurricane axe and so far we've looked at three gtx 1080s the founders edition the super competition from EVGA and the g1 gaming from gigabyte the custom cards performed a lot better than the founders edition and they were cheaper too but today we'll be taking a look at a flagship card from MSI yeah cable mod configurator allows you to select only the cables you need with your choice of mod flex leaving that is very flexible or mod mesh that is more vibrant then you choose your length and color combination custom cables just got more custom with the cable mod configurator to be specific MSI has multiple tiers of the GTX 1080 the gaming edgy gaming axe and the gaming Z that offers different clocks plus some extras this is MSI flagship card the gaming Z priced at 750 dollars what you're looking at is a GPU that sports one of the fastest frequencies we've come across on a GTX 1080 with a base clock of 1771 megahertz and a boost of 1911 megahertz eight gigabytes of gddr5 X memory and a memory speed of 10.1 gigahertz versus 10 not sure if this is going to help with performance but we'll see the moment I picked up this card I just felt one thing premium everything from the familiar red and black shroud to the gorgeous looking backplate to make things even better this card shouldn't have any problems fitting into most compact cases since it's only 11 inches in length but the wear of the width which is about 5 inches MSI's Twin Frozr 6 has made its way into the gaming series and it's incredible unlike the competition MSI decided to skip the direct contact heat pipes and instead use a high efficiency solid nickel plated copper base plate this was done since the GP 104 core is quite small and the HD T style bass would make proper contact with it the base plate is topped off by six squared off eight millimeter heat pipes which run upwards and are eventually spread at strategic locations throughout the heatsink this was engineered to optimize air flow through the addition of minute air deflectors which not only accelerates air movement but also allows for more in cooling hence why the GPU looks thinner the Turks fans feature double ball bearings for increased lifespan utilizing a patented mix of traditional blades and new dispersion blades what this does is allow the maximum amount of air to enter without requiring higher rpm levels and like the competition the gaming Z has the ability to shut off its two fans when in idle or low load situations for power this card requires six plus a pin power input which theoretically should provide an additional 75 watts of overclocking Headroom this is a great feature since we don't have to worry about limiting voltages and the chips usable power the backplate looks classic it doesn't provide any additional cooling to the core since it doesn't make any direct contact to it there's an led-backlit logo embedded into it and physically that's the only way to differentiate the gaming Z with the rest of the lineup the i/o hasn't changed that much you get the standard single DVI 3 DisplayPort 1.4 connectors and an HDMI 2.0 output there are three LED zones on the gaming z GPU this includes the grills around the rear fan the MSI logo on the side and as mentioned before the huge back plate logo these are RGB lit except for the grills if you want to take advantage of different lighting effects MSI's gaming app has you covered you're greeted with a very straightforward interface with a number of icons that indicate onboard features a basic clock speed indicator different performance mode selections and at the bottom you'll find MSI specific gaming peripherals you have installed the icons right up top have some interesting features starting with the IRS this opens a separate window and it will allow you to control your monitors color palette with just a click of a button as you can see there's even a custom mode where you can adjust the gamma brightness and contrast next up is LED control it's very simple and easy to understand you either sink all the zone with one led effect and style or set them individually switching to OSD here is where you can choose what you would like to see while gaming unfortunately it won't show up in dx12 games just yet but MSI is working on that as we speak you will also need an MSI motherboard for CPU related information given such an awesome heating design on this card the temperature results whereas really good whether that's overclocked gaming and silent attempts Howard around 70 degrees Celsius fan speeds over time were incredible in fact they were lower than gigabytes g1 gaming card that was a lot louder when tested the gaming Z was quieter despite its higher frequencies and considerably higher heat output frequencies were strong to the gaming Z is the definition of clock speed stability when you enable silent mode it lowers the fan speeds while adjusting clock speeds there's approximately 40 megahertz gap between the gaming and OC modes overall frame rates were superior ly consistent across the board why don't we take a look at some and yeah paying an extra hundred dollars over gigabytes g1 or EVGA superclocked ad does give you a significant boost in performance pretty much all of our 1440p tests were dominated by the gaming Z and it did not let any of the other cards touch below its tail the same story applies for 4k and while doing this the card was drinking a lot of power we have a new kid on the block taking the spot as the quietest running cars we've tested so far even when overclocked the gaming Z was noticeably quieter than EVGA superclocked an 80 and of course the g1 is nowhere even close to it we expected this from the beginning and were happy by the results well not really you see paying $750 for GT X 1080 that boasts one of the best coolers in the market and a six plus eight pin power input should technically give you great overclocking results not in this case though or sad to report the maximum achievable overclock we were able to pull was just a little over 2 gigahertz and this is disappointing because Nvidia should give board partners a free hand to design their own custom cards that enthusiasts would love to tweak around with and this card had the potential but unfortunately due to the power limit on the core it just completely silenced the ruling line within it but I want to leave you guys on a positive note this is the best GTX tennety that you can buy right now in fact the performance should be on par with in competing flagship offerings from a soos EVGA ZOTAC etc and you get a whole lot of features like RGB lighting great acoustic performance and a very simple complimentary app so would you consider paying $750 for the MSI GTX 1080 gaming Z keyboard warriors let the races begin and I'm looking forward to your response I meter with hurricane axe thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one