MSI GTX1080 GAMING X 8G - Performance and Overclocking Review
MSI GTX1080 GAMING X 8G - Performance and Overclocking Review
2016-06-08
what's up guys Jays $0.02 here and I
know you guys have been waiting a little
while for this one I apologize for delay
but stick to the end of the video and
you'll understand why it took so long to
get this video out but just before
Computex started msi sent me the very
first sample of the msi 1080 gaming x 8g
they threw a lot of new features in the
Twin Frozr 6 design to try and keep
things as cool as possible 2 custom PCB
extra power phases and all that stuff so
we're going to see exactly how well it
performs right after the break I'm get
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one of these guys all right so here it
is right here it is a fully custom PCB
which I know a lot of people have been
waiting for ever since the GTX 1080 was
announced last May well I say last maybe
that was over a month ago when we
actually had the Nvidia conference so
this is MSI's variant here of the gaming
card they actually have two versions of
the gaming card the gaming X in the
gaming Z the gaming Z is one tier above
this one but we are taking a look at the
gaming X it's got the new twin frozer 6
design double ball bearing fans on here
making them extremely quiet and really
making them hopefully have a light long
life keeping your card as cool as
possible a huge heatsink running the
almost the entire length of the card it
actually stops a little bit short which
is kind of different normally they run
past the length of the card but we've
got heat sinks all over the place we've
got active cooling for the vrm we've got
8 heat pipes on this thing one of the
things they change with this design was
the heat pipes and what a lot of
companies have done is they'll take a
round heat pipe and they'll mill the
bottom of it flat
that way it can mate against a flat
material like the baseplate touching the
GPU die to transfer the heat into the
heat pipes but what they've done on this
one here is instead of it being a round
pipe all the way through the round pipe
transitions to a square pipe giving you
more contact in more surface area on the
actual heat plate giving you better heat
dissipation typically to get it
perfectly flat so that the entire
surface area of the pipe or at least the
one hemisphere of the pipe is touching
it would mean that it they have to file
all the way through and then it breaks
open but with the square design you get
more surface area touching the die
giving you even better cooling results
so that's something worth keeping in
mind especially with all the discussion
about is the 1080 running to hot
definitely temperatures are kept in
check with this guy you'll see it in the
video or you saw it in the previous
video but it's got a whole new power
delivery system it's got 10 phase power
delivery 8-pin plus 6 pin on here which
a lot of people were complaining about
they're only being an 8 pin on the
founder's card and it gives you 270 watt
TDP limit at 100% and if you bump it up
to the 107 % TDP limit you get 290 watts
worth of GPU power quite a bit more than
the reference design so with all of that
in mind one of the things were going to
be testing in this video is how well
does it overclock now because I'm going
to do all that this video might be a
little bit longer than normal I
apologize for that if it is but I don't
want to cut out important information
for the sake of making a video a little
bit shorter and easier to watch any
video I'm in is going to be hard to
watch so just get some popcorn buckle in
and get ready to cringe because that's
the way we do things around here
but I want to get as much information
out as I possibly can connectors on the
back of the same as reference we've got
three DisplayPort one HDMI and our dual
link DVI and of course guys we have a
backplate I mean you know that they
would go without putting a backplate on
a card at this level because pricing
right now it's a little bit of a mystery
they haven't listed pricing yet it's not
available really any retailers but while
searching the internet I found one post
where someone said they found it in u.s.
dollars for 750 dollars but that it was
immediately taken off the website so I
have no idea what pricing is is why
you're not going to see a pricing sheet
or any sort of a chart
pricing on this because if what that
said was true then this card might cost
more than the founders edition which is
kind of a fear of mine where typically
custom cards are more expensive than
reference but with the weird weird price
modeling this time around of reference
being 700 MSRP being 600 are the custom
cards going to be in between 6 and 7 or
are they going to be more than 7 I don't
I don't know it'll be unfortunate I
think if they turn out being more than 7
but I guess we're going to have to wait
and find out I mean after all some of
the custom cards last time around with
Maxwell were upwards of $1,000 and I'm
not talking about Titan I'm talking my
custom 980ti designs but I think one
thing I find a little bit disappointing
is I was kind of hoping for a dual BIOS
card at the very least now this does
have built-in switchable settings in the
BIOS that you can control through the
MSI gaming app where you can do a silent
mode a gaming mode and then an
overclocking mode where it will just
change the fan profile and the max GPU
boost depending on which one you select
now being a gamer and an overclocker
enthusiast like I am I chose to let this
thing go up to the max boost with the
fan profile being a little bit more
aggressive than being on just the
standard gaming mode so with all that
said and all the b-roll out of the way
let's go ahead and jump into the
benchmarks and then jump right into the
overclocking
okay so let's talk about overclocking
obviously the 10:18 uses GPU boost 3.0
which gives us additional curve and
voltage that we can set to try and get
more efficient power use but do pubis
isn't necessarily going to give us
additional overclocking ability if you
will it just allows us to play with a
custom curve a voltage right here as you
can see where as the frequency ramps up
so does the voltage that way it doesn't
have to go all the way to max voltage
giving us a ton of heat and a ton of
inefficiency when we're not ramping all
the way up to our max clocks so that's
what GPU boost 3 is but it works a
little bit differently here now where as
you move the core clock here it also
moves that entire voltage slider so that
way everything stays the same that way
if you were to increase the the core
clock offset you're not increasing
higher voltage at lower frequencies
where you don't necessarily need it but
the curve does still stay the same now
you can move each unit one of these
individual points if you want but well
that's a whole different video about how
to use GPU boost 3.0 the point of this
video is to see how well is this card
overclocked so that doesn't really
matter right now because I want to take
full manual control over this so what I
did is I moved the core voltage all the
way to plus 100 power limits at 107 one
thing to note on that that's 107 percent
of 270 watt TDP which is up from the I
believe 170 could be wrong I'll annotate
it if I'm wrong but whatever the base T
V P is or max TDP is here for the
reference card excuse me founders card
whatever they're calling it this year
that's 107 percent of a higher number
which is why that total additional power
limit is less so even though at 100
we're allowing 270 watts which is about
a hundred watts more than founders we
can still increase it all the way to 290
watts which is 107 percent so we can
actually make the card pool quite a bit
of juice the core clock I'm only going
at plus 50 on this now I know that
sounds kind of weird but this
it actually ramped up past its max 1873
megahertz boost clock to nineteen
hundred and thirty six in my testing so
this is an offset of where GPU boost is
going to go so that's not added to the
base that added to the boost which is
why we only went with plus fifty and
I'll explain that in a minute I also
went plus two hundred and fifty on the
core or exit of the memory which is a
little bit disappointing because some of
the other cards we could actually get
more out of that but this is as far as I
could take the card this is good for
2025 megahertz before we start crashing
now I know that sounds a little bit
disappointing and I'll kind of show that
here right now but as we run the test
I spent a solid week and a half
playing around with overclocks on this
thing and even got MSI involved to make
sure that I wasn't somehow messing this
up where I was doing something wrong
when it came to the overclocks because I
expected a lot more core clock out of
this right now it's actually running at
2030 just dropped to 2025 it was at 2038
it dropped to 2025 and if I push this
any farther if I try and go any higher
on this it will crash in fact let me go
ahead and Emin straight that now 2088 on
the core a 100% load on the GPU 70% fan
speed 1.08 one volt the reason why I'm
calling out the volts it'll make sense
in a minute here and as you can see it
just crashed so we can't hit that
magical 20 100 megahertz number wait for
it and see its pausing now it's
completely food borrowing the the
drivers crashing and recovering and dry
crashing and recovering and I think
that's it I think it's done now hope
anyway free one stop the test it's
pretty obvious then we're not going to
get any farther so here's what we're
going to do I'm going to put in my
founders Carter we're going to compare
you guys saw that 2050 was a pretty much
the max that we can get out of this but
then it drops down to 2025 for whatever
reason I can't get it to stay at 2050 it
always comes back down so let's go ahead
and see how the founders card does to
compare remember no one has won eight
pin power power pin and it doesn't have
all the additional power phases all
right so the founders card is install
you can see it right there so we're
gonna do all of the same testing that we
just did with the msi card here it is
right there got a got to say that is one
hell of a sexy cooler though right
back late and all that stuff all right
I'm off track here so again I'm gonna
bump that voltage all the way up I'm
going to put the power limit all the way
to 120 percent and I'm going to start
here with a core clock of let's do 200
and a memory clock of 500 let's see what
happens here apply it and let's just see
what we boost up to here we're going to
open up heaven again it's all the same
okay so that boosted right up to twenty
eighty eight at 1.06 two volts 1.07 five
but it's staying at twenty eighty eight
and then the fan speed will be
increasing here so what I'm going to do
here is I'm just going to go ahead and
go through all of my testing and we'll
see where it crashes and then we'll come
back and we'll compare the two I suppose
okay so I think I've got my numbers here
20 126 is what I'm up nope 2126 crash so
let's back it off just a little bit then
so close that 2100 numbers like a
unicorn I tell you okay I think we're
good now the cards been running forever
it sounds like a hair blower it's
running at 2088 megahertz
the voltage keeps dropping note goes all
the way from one point zero nine two
down to one point zero five Oh
regardless of where I set the voltage
curve so it won't let me even control
the voltage like I want it's even though
it gives you slider control I don't like
GPU boost 3.0 I'm saying it here
it takes away too much control I can't
wait for custom BIOS to be dropped for
these cards that way I can mix all that
crap and actually control it myself but
anyway 2088 megahertz is where we are
temperatures right now is at 69 C with
the fan of the hundred percent but as
you can see I'm getting 50 more
megahertz out of the reference card than
I was out of this guy right here so why
is that you might be asking yourself why
is that J well I'm going to tell you
right now now I think there might have
been a collective sigh heard around the
world right now after seeing those
overclocking results because a lot of
people gave Nvidia a bunch of
saying
why is there only one 8-pin power plug
on there that's stupid that's going to
limit the amount of overclocking you can
get because most people are used to
seeing two power plugs on the flagship
GPU this is kind of the first time we've
seen a flagship like this and it's quite
a few years only have one power plug
so obviously the board partners have
come out with their custom designs and
this one as we already showed has an
eight pin plus a 6 pin increase TDP to
270 watts one hundred and seven percent
gives us two hundred and ninety watts
which is well more than 100 watts more
than the founders Edition card is
allowed when it comes to total power and
we've got ten phases on here so why
didn't it go farther than the founders
or should I rephrase that
why did the founders go farther than
this one guys it comes down to the
silicon lottery it really does that's
just the luck of the draw when it comes
to how far something is going to
overclocked and no amount of power
adapters or power phases is going to
change that
of course those can have an influence on
how far this can go if you do things
like custom ln2 cooling unlock the
voltage and really start hacking things
being a consumer buying an out of the
card box or out of the box card like
this silicon lottery is going to have a
bigger impact on your total overclocking
ability than the amount of power phases
and plugs thrown onto a card but as you
just saw adding an extra power pin did
not increase the amount of overclocking
that you can get out of a 1080 or Pascal
GP 104 core it is always going to be the
silicon lottery that reigned supreme but
if you're not an overclocker and you
just want to buy a graphics card you
want to take it out of the box you want
to toss the box aside and you want to
just put the card in your system and
start gaming then as you guys saw this
thing ramped up to nineteen hundred and
thirty six megahertz and it did it at 73
degrees Celsius max with the fans
running 57 percent speed if you guys are
wondering when I'm referencing it was
also the video before this one where I
showed how this card performs in a case
versus an open-air test bench because of
the amount of debate going on about that
temperature testing on this was no
different when doing gaming it is a
phenomenal cooler double ball-bearing
design gets long lifespan to the fans
that makes them extremely quiet no
buzzing coil whine on this card was a
minimum it was there was some noticeable
coil winding games I got high
PS and like 1080p but in a closed case
like the s340 there was no noticeable
coil whine you've got RGB control of the
MSI logo as well as these red kind of
gills right here whatever will calm
these dragon fins right here scales do
you can't change the color but again
they're red so it's always going to have
kind of a reddish hue to it
and you still have the red shroud right
here so no matter what you change the
LED color to you're going to have the
red on the cooler but the heat pipe
design on this with the square pipes
touching the dye offering a massive
amount of cooling obviously keeps the
temperatures under check and keeps those
core clocks nice and high giving you the
best performance available now one of
the reasons why this video took so long
was because I was really worried that I
was somehow fouling up the overclock
testing and that's why the card wasn't
performing as well as my Founders
edition card and with Computex going on
there was a delay in communication with
MSI so it took a while to get responses
but once we did it turned out that the
official answer was if you want to get a
great overclocking experience then wait
for the MSI 1080 lightning Edition which
again is going to fall under the same
silicon lottery scenario but hopefully
they do a better job at bending those
then say you know a gaming card like
this they did say that this card was
built for gaming first overclocking
second so the extra power on here is
only going to guarantee that you get a
really good boosting experience on its
own and a I guess kind of a mediocre
experience unless you end up with a
serious silicon lottery winner
those were my results so take them for
what you will this is the part of the
video where I like to get you guys
involved sound off in the comments about
if you were surprised whether or not
this particular card that I have and my
sample didn't overclock as far as you
guys were hoping because I think the
amount of people that were mad at Nvidia
for only putting 1/8 pin power on their
GPU saying that it was going to limit
the overclocking well as you could see a
poor silicon lottery winner cannot be
really pushed any farther by adding more
power and more power phases it's really
going to be coming down to how far the
core itself decides it wants to go
whether or not it's going to be a lazy
pig just sitting there not
to move anyway guys there you go thanks
for watching sound off in the comments
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the next video thanks for watching guys
and as always I'll see you the next one
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