The STRIX Gaming GTX 1080 8GB is ASUS' latest and greates single GPU graphics card, which comes with a factory OC, that pushes really hard on the new Pascal GP-104 chip. In combination with the vendor's DirectCU III cooler this might be silent yet very powerful solution for gamers wanting to push UHD at high levels of detail. We're certainly curious to find out what this beast can do.


Presentation

ASUS was amongst the first Nvidia add-in-card (AIC) partners that have decided to introduce a custom GTX 1080 graphics card which is using NVIDIAs latest and greatest GP104-400-A1 Pascal chip. For this graphics card, ASUS makes use of a custom PCB along side another updated version of their DirectCU cooler. On the backside of the card, there is a good looking backplate. A quick glance at the specs also reveals that this card ships factory overclocked.

Browsing the specifications of this card we find 2560 CUDA cores, 160 TMUs and 64 ROPs. For comparison reasons, the GTX 980 featured 2048 CUDA cores, 128 TMUs and 64 ROPs. This means that, compared to the same model from the previous generation, there are significantly more CUDA cores, TMUs and ROPs. Looking at clock speeds we find a base clock set to 1'784 MHz and the boost clock is at 1'936 MHz, whereas the NVIDIA reference cards runs at 1607MHz/1733MHz, therefore there is a very solid 11.7% factory overclock on the GPU.



As we already mentioned, ASUS decided to use a significant factory-overclock on their new GTX 1080 STRIX. While the reference GTX 1080 is set to work at 1607 MHz for the base clock and 1733 MHz for the GPU boost clock, the GTX 1080 STRIX runs at 1'784 MHz base clock and 1'936 MHz boost clock.

When it comes to memory clock speeds we see the memory running at default clock speeds which is 1251 MHz and effective 10008 MHz. Combine this with a 256 Bit memory interface and you end up with a total of 320 Gigabyte of memory bandwidth.

Whereas the typical boost clock is set at 1'936 MHz, the maximum boost of 2'050 MHz was achieved quite easily and the GTX 1080 STRIX held that clock most of the load time due to the capable DirectCU III cooler as well as good TDP target (nVidia's Boost technology being power-based and not temperature-based on this card). At this point we also ran Furmark to see how high the card overclocks, when the GPU is under maximum load. This way we can determine a worst case scenario regarding maximum boost clock. With this card we see clocks speeds of 1'860 MHz at 0.862v.

Specifications

	ASUS GTX 1080 STRIX Gaming	ASUS GTX 1080 STRIX Gaming	GeForce GTX 980Ti
Chip	GP104-400-A1 Pascal	GP104-400-A1 Pascal	GM200-310-A1 Maxwell
Process	16 nm	16 nm	28 nm
Transistors	7.20 billion	7.20 billion	8.00 billion
GPU clock	1'784 MHz	1'607 MHz	1'000 MHz
GPU Boost clock	1'936 MHz	1'733 MHz	1'076 MHz
Memory	8'192 MB	8'192 MB	6'144 MB
Memory clock	1'251 (10'008) MHz	1'251 (10'008) MHz	1'750 (7'000) MHz
Memory interface	256 Bit	256 Bit	384 Bit
Memory bandwidth	320 GB/s	320 GB/s	336'600 MB/s
Shader Cores	2'560	2'560	2'816
TMUs	128	128	160
ROPs	64	64	96
TDP	180 Watt	180 Watt	250 Watt
PCB Type	Custom	Reference Design	Reference Design
Slots	2	2	2
Cooler	DirectCU III	NVIDIA Reference	NVIDIA Reference
Launch Price	$829	$699	$649

Page 1 - Presentation / Specifications	Page 11 - Doom OpenGL 4.5
Page 2 - The card	Page 12 - Far Cry Primal
Page 3 - Photo Gallery / Delivery	Page 13 - GTA V
Page 4 - Test Setup	Page 14 - Rainbow Six Siege
Page 5 - 3DMark Time Spy DX12	Page 15 - Total War Warhammer DX11 & DX12
Page 6 - 3DMark Fire Strike / Extreme / Ultra	Page 16 - XCOM 2
Page 7 - 3DMark VRMark	Page 17 - Power Consumption
Page 8 - SteamVR	Page 18 - Temperatures / Noise Levels
Page 9 - ArmA 3	Page 19 - Performance Index & Price
Page 10 - Ashes of Singularity DX11 & DX12	Page 20 - Conclusion