Nvidia GTX1080 Ti Founders Edition Review

[Warchild]

When you compare what you can get with £700 outside of the PC industry it's not great value. Within the market it's true, but I still don't think that is a good enough reason, from a consumer level, to lie down and accept these absurd prices.

Spot on. In todays Market it is very good value considering price v performance. However when you look at face value, £700 for ONE gpu. The price is ridiculous.

That being said, I find the price of the 1050,1060,1070 and AMD equivalent also over priced. Inflation will increase prices yes. But not to the values they are at right now. It's at the point now where 1 gpu costs the price of almost all other components in a pc, excluding case.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

Freesync or G Sync monitors should not even be taken into consideration when debating the bang for buck of a graphics card.

NVidia are also not responsible for the exchange rate.

The funny part about all this is a lot of people were expecting NVidia to price the 1080 Ti at around £850, if this had happened the cards still would have sold but people would be saying that £700 would have been a more fair price.

People always want something for nothing !!!

I disagree. Freesync and Gsync are excellent technologies and are important factors to take into account when upgrading. They reflect two key ideologies from each respective company and impact the final price of an upgrade. Many that are on 1080p monitors will be upgrading to 1440p soon. Considering it's hard to find 1440p/144Hz monitors without either Freesync or Gsync, picking one and pairing it with the right graphics card is something I see a lot doing. I did that back in Autumn 2015. I wanted a 1440p monitor but I didn't want to pay the high price for Gsync. The 980ti was better value than the Fury X, but Gsync was overpriced and was implemented on poorly made monitors from ASUS and Acer. When you put that alongside the higher priced 980ti, Nvidia became prohibitively expensive and not collectively good value. Since I really wanted to support AMD, the compromise became a Fury (non X) and a cheaper Freesync monitor. I theorised that if the quality of the Freesync monitor was as poor as the Gsync equivalent at least I would be paying £150 less for the same thing. Fortunately I have only two dead pixels in my monitor and they are almost invisible to anyone but the keen observer.

While you may not be directing your second point at me specifically, I can confidently say that I would not consider £700 to be good value if they charged £850 for the 1080ti. That is purely speculative and rather senseless to be honest.

I buy and sell second-hand guitar parts online every now and then. In Ireland especially I see a lot of people trying to low ball the sellers. To prevent this from detrimentally affecting the bottom line, I often see folks charging above the market value. So when someone sees the price and offers lower than it, they feel like they're getting a deal when in fact they are paying the market value. For instance, if a guitar pedal was normally sold for €120, the seller might ask for €140. Then when someone inevitably low balls the seller by offering €120, it's actually at the market value. It's this ridiculous cycle of stupidity. These idiots think they're getting a good deal because they got €20 off the price. No, they got exactly what the seller wanted. It's just they have some delusion about value. They like to pat themselves on the back for successfully tricking themselves into thinking they did good and acted mindfully. They're deluding themselves.

I don't do that. I ask for the market value and any low ballers get denied. I don't want to play games with people or give in to the delusions of grandeur they have. This isn't willy measuring.

There really is no need to bother with G-sync. Adaptive Vsync to me is just as good. I really worried about getting a Freesync only monitor but my worry was pointless.

As for people expecting Nvidia to charge £850? erm yes, they were being sarcastic. I think you will find that a whole ton of people have been priced out, so hey, may as well have a laugh.

If I said to you that flour was becoming increasingly hard to come by so I am going to have to charge £50 for a loaf of bread would you actually think it was cheap if I dropped the price to £40?

Of course not.

I note you are the only person on this forum trying to explain away Nvidia's massive gouging. Must be nice to be you.

I know a lot of people who would heavily disagree with you there. I have only tried Freesync and Vsync and I did not like Vsync very much. It served its purpose for a while, but it's by no means a final fix. Freesync is almost exactly what I need. Nothing more, nothing less. If Nvidia supported it then I would most definitely consider an Nvidia product if Vega did not fit my criteria.

 

[Kaapstad]

When you compare what you can get with £700 outside of the PC industry it's not great value. Within the market it's true, but I still don't think that is a good enough reason, from a consumer level, to lie down and accept these absurd prices.

You can only compare one graphics card with another and on that basis the 1080 Ti does well.

If you start comparing a graphics card to something completely different then everyone has a different value for different things.

 

[Dicehunter]

Freesync or G Sync monitors should not even be taken into consideration when debating the bang for buck of a graphics card.

NVidia are also not responsible for the exchange rate.

The funny part about all this is a lot of people were expecting NVidia to price the 1080 Ti at around £850, if this had happened the cards still would have sold but people would be saying that £700 would have been a more fair price.

People always want something for nothing !!!

Out of curiosity when are you going to invest in G-Sync/Freesync ? Really is an awesome tech

On a side note I have the rest of the day off and F5 at the ready when 6PM hits on OCUK ^_^

There really is no need to bother with G-sync. Adaptive Vsync to me is just as good. I really worried about getting a Freesync only monitor but my worry was pointless.

I REALLY wish I could not tell the difference in Adaptive V-Sync and G-Sync as it would save me some coin, Alas I can so only a G-Sync display will do for me ^_^

 

[Warchild]

Out of curiosity when are you going to invest in G-Sync/Freesync ? Really is an awesome tech

On a side note I have the rest of the day off and F5 at the ready when 6PM hits on OCUK ^_^



I REALLY wish I could not tell the difference in Adaptive V-Sync and G-Sync as it would save me some coin, Alas I can so only a G-Sync display will do for me ^_^

Mainly because there is a clear difference

 

[AlienALX]

Mainly because there is a clear difference

There probably is, but I doubt you will ever get Nvidia to admit to what it actually is, given it's on a custom PIC. One that obviously can't be read, or we would have seen fake Gsync modules for sale in the far east

I play games at 70hz, meaning I am "limited" to 70 FPS. That may be why Dice can tell the difference? I don't know.

What I do know is that it is not worth paying £100+ extra for a Gsync monitor. Bearing in mind of course that my experiences with it were only up to 60 FPS any way.

Nvidia made loads of noise about Adaptive Vsync. Then all of a sudden they develop Gsync and they have not mentioned it since. Funny that !

 

[SPS]

You can only compare one graphics card with another and on that basis the 1080 Ti does well.

If you start comparing a graphics card to something completely different then everyone has a different value for different things.

I don't agree. I compare like this on daily basis with everything I buy to some extent.

Out of curiosity when are you going to invest in G-Sync/Freesync ? Really is an awesome tech

On a side note I have the rest of the day off and F5 at the ready when 6PM hits on OCUK ^_^

If you have enough GPU grunt, GSync/VSync becomes useless.

 

[AlienALX]

At last count my bicycle cost me around £600. That was with parts literally coming in from every corner of the world. No doubt it will be useful for far longer than a GPU too.

I wouldn't mind if GPUs were not so disposable. But they are. Totally disposable. They don't even hold any value for being what they were (a £1000 GPU for example). They are superseded by cheaper models offering the same performance or better and become completely worthless.

All within the space of about 18 months.

Some guy in a mag I read said once that if you took a Titan X over to your family and said "Hey this cost a thousand pounds" they would look at you rather funny.

These uber elite GPUs are fine. If you have the money (and people clearly do, or they are finding it) then fine. But it's pushed the price of every other GPU up too. Nvidia can't make a product stack from £100-£400 for example, and then charge £1200 for the top tier card.

There have always been stupid expensive GPUs. 8800 Ultra, hell, even the 5950 Ultra. However, there were always cards that performed just like those for much less cash (8800 GTX, FX 5800). These days? it's all just gotten silly. And the stupid part is that I could do with an upgrade but my only two options are £500 and £700.

So yeah, these cards cost too much. GTX 680 and 670 were far, far cheaper than this. And the 670 could be clocked to perform like a stock 680 too, for less than £300.

 

[Dicehunter]

At last count my bicycle cost me around £600. That was with parts literally coming in from every corner of the world. No doubt it will be useful for far longer than a GPU too.

I wouldn't mind if GPUs were not so disposable. But they are. Totally disposable. They don't even hold any value for being what they were (a £1000 GPU for example). They are superseded by cheaper models offering the same performance or better and become completely worthless.

All within the space of about 18 months.

Some guy in a mag I read said once that if you took a Titan X over to your family and said "Hey this cost a thousand pounds" they would look at you rather funny.

These uber elite GPUs are fine. If you have the money (and people clearly do, or they are finding it) then fine. But it's pushed the price of every other GPU up too. Nvidia can't make a product stack from £100-£400 for example, and then charge £1200 for the top tier card.

There have always been stupid expensive GPUs. 8800 Ultra, hell, even the 5950 Ultra. However, there were always cards that performed just like those for much less cash (8800 GTX, FX 5800). These days? it's all just gotten silly. And the stupid part is that I could do with an upgrade but my only two options are £500 and £700.

So yeah, these cards cost too much. GTX 680 and 670 were far, far cheaper than this. And the 670 could be clocked to perform like a stock 680 too, for less than £300.

Loved my 680, Cost roughly £399 if memory serves.

Performed like a beast, It was the standard Nvidia reference cooler but I loved it ^_^

 

[AlienALX]

Yup but hardly any one bought the 680s because custom 670s were £100+ less. Which is affordable (I know I ended up with two )

So it's not just high end GPUs that have become more expensive. That's fine, and it's a market certainly worth catering to.

 

[Dicehunter]

Yup but hardly any one bought the 680s because custom 670s were £100+ less. Which is affordable (I know I ended up with two )

So it's not just high end GPUs that have become more expensive. That's fine, and it's a market certainly worth catering to.

R&D has become a hell of a lot more expensive with chips like GP102 hence the price increase, January 2012 Nvidia's R&D was 266 million dollars, It's gone up a fair amount since then as of January 2017 it's at 394 million dollars so they need to recoup their costs somehow.

I don't like high prices either but it's the way it is when things get faster and faster and a hell of a lot more complicated.

 

[AlienALX]

R&D has become a hell of a lot more expensive with chips like GP102 hence the price increase, January 2012 Nvidia's R&D was 266 million dollars, It's gone up a fair amount since then as of January 2017 it's at 394 million dollars so they need to recoup their costs somehow.

I don't like high prices either but it's the way it is when things get faster and faster and a hell of a lot more complicated.

Sorry man I'm not buying it. They priced the 980ti at what they thought Fury X was going to launch at (and were right) so yeah, not having any of it.

 

[Dicehunter]

Sorry man I'm not buying it. They priced the 980ti at what they thought Fury X was going to launch at (and were right) so yeah, not having any of it.

Well you don't really have to buy it, It's just fact, When R&D goes up, So does the cost to the customer ^_^

 

[AlienALX]

Well you don't really have to buy it, It's just fact, When R&D goes up, So does the cost to the customer ^_^

OK so when they shrink Maxwell into Pascal and R&D is cheap the cards should be cheap right, following your logic?

Come on now dude.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

At last count my bicycle cost me around £600. That was with parts literally coming in from every corner of the world. No doubt it will be useful for far longer than a GPU too.

I wouldn't mind if GPUs were not so disposable. But they are. Totally disposable. They don't even hold any value for being what they were (a £1000 GPU for example). They are superseded by cheaper models offering the same performance or better and become completely worthless.

All within the space of about 18 months.

Some guy in a mag I read said once that if you took a Titan X over to your family and said "Hey this cost a thousand pounds" they would look at you rather funny.

These uber elite GPUs are fine. If you have the money (and people clearly do, or they are finding it) then fine. But it's pushed the price of every other GPU up too. Nvidia can't make a product stack from £100-£400 for example, and then charge £1200 for the top tier card.

There have always been stupid expensive GPUs. 8800 Ultra, hell, even the 5950 Ultra. However, there were always cards that performed just like those for much less cash (8800 GTX, FX 5800). These days? it's all just gotten silly. And the stupid part is that I could do with an upgrade but my only two options are £500 and £700.

So yeah, these cards cost too much. GTX 680 and 670 were far, far cheaper than this. And the 670 could be clocked to perform like a stock 680 too, for less than £300.

And you could find a R9 290 for ~£300 that overclocked to match a 290X that is now significantly more powerful than the 780ti, a GPU that cost upwards of £550. I feel like if I'm going to invest a good deal of money into a graphics card every two years, I'd rather invest it into AMD. I just hope they don't pull a Fiji again with Vega.

OK so when they shrink Maxwell into Pascal and R&D is cheap the cards should be cheap right, following your logic?

Come on now dude.

While I find it hard to believe that Pascal cost that much to develop since it appears to be little more than Maxwell shrunk down, that obviously does not tell the whole story. While I am of the opinion the 1080ti and the 1080 and the 1070 could all be quite cheaper, there is no way I can prove it as I'm not an Nvidia engineer who has access to all the R&D and production funds. Also people are paying for it and there is no one to tell them they shouldn't other than a few grumpy grouches on OC3D and the faint whisper of a star on the horizon.

 

[AlienALX]

To be honest I think Vega will either come along too late, be the same as my Titan X (predicted 1070 performance) or will cost £500 or more which I'm just not comfortable paying.

Whilst no one can prove outright that Nvidia just shrunk Maxwell Adored did to an article based on it. He also down clocked the 1080 and put it up against the 980, near on identical performance. Then he clocked the 980ti to 1500mhz and down clocked the 1080, 980ti was a clear winner.

Sooo, it can be assumed with a reasonable level of comfort that Pascal is indeed Paxwell. Or Maxscal.

It wouldn't be so bad if they dropped down the prices of the 1080 and 1070 to a reasonable level. As it stands? they are asking me for £500 for a card that's quite old now and not even top tier (the 1080). Which is a bit of a kick in the nuts. Had they reduced it to £400 or less? yeah, that would have been acceptable.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

To be honest I think Vega will either come along too late, be the same as my Titan X (predicted 1070 performance) or will cost £500 or more which I'm just not comfortable paying.

Whilst no one can prove outright that Nvidia just shrunk Maxwell Adored did to an article based on it. He also down clocked the 1080 and put it up against the 980, near on identical performance. Then he clocked the 980ti to 1500mhz and down clocked the 1080, 980ti was a clear winner.

Sooo, it can be assumed with a reasonable level of comfort that Pascal is indeed Paxwell. Or Maxscal.

It wouldn't be so bad if they dropped down the prices of the 1080 and 1070 to a reasonable level. As it stands? they are asking me for £500 for a card that's quite old now and not even top tier (the 1080). Which is a bit of a kick in the nuts. Had they reduced it to £400 or less? yeah, that would have been acceptable.

Yeah, that was a good video. I remember watching it a while back. But it still doesn't prove how much that process of increasing Maxwell clock speeds cost. While such a simple topology shouldn't theoretically cost that much, at the end of the day we are all here uninformed n00bs with bold theories.

If Vega can't at least surpass a GTX 1080, I'd be very, very disappointed. If the Doom benchmark we saw is indicative of early and immature performance we already know it is possible to beat a 1080 (but likely match it in games like GTA V).

 

[Warchild]

There probably is, but I doubt you will ever get Nvidia to admit to what it actually is, given it's on a custom PIC. One that obviously can't be read, or we would have seen fake Gsync modules for sale in the far east

I play games at 70hz, meaning I am "limited" to 70 FPS. That may be why Dice can tell the difference? I don't know.

What I do know is that it is not worth paying £100+ extra for a Gsync monitor. Bearing in mind of course that my experiences with it were only up to 60 FPS any way.

Nvidia made loads of noise about Adaptive Vsync. Then all of a sudden they develop Gsync and they have not mentioned it since. Funny that !

Of course they won't admit it. You need only mention the good ol' memgate scandal. Even then they personally dont see an issue.

That being said, as much as I love Gsync, I think its disgusting at the premium we pay for proprietary tech which is not really game changing to the point its evolved the way we play in anyway at all.

 

[NeverBackDown]

R&D has become a hell of a lot more expensive with chips like GP102 hence the price increase, January 2012 Nvidia's R&D was 266 million dollars, It's gone up a fair amount since then as of January 2017 it's at 394 million dollars so they need to recoup their costs somehow.

I don't like high prices either but it's the way it is when things get faster and faster and a hell of a lot more complicated.

No No.

Price went up because they can.

They claim they spent $2Bill on R&D. Yet not all of it went to the GPU, how can you tell? Because Pascal is maxwell on a new process node that inherently allows the GPU(or cpu or whatever) to clock MUCH higher due to the much more advanced clock gating design over Planar nodes which also reduces voltage required to run at the same clocks, so they got there power savings from that. So really it barely changed. What they added was VR technologies and improved memory compression and Async capabilities(albeit barely). Which they have been doing for years(well less so for async). Most of the R&D went to the software drivers.

And to address your last point.
No prices don't always go higher. In fact, before it would always get cheaper for better performance even when getting more complex. It was never get more expensive unless it truly was something magical. And again, this is not really much more complicated in the grand scheme of things, like I said, it's maxwell on a new node. It's not even a new architecture. AMD did the same thing with much much less spent on R&D and it has the same performance as a 1060 Pascal. Vega will likely match or outperform a 1080 and I can bet you they spent less on R&D as well. So again, don't believe that R&D crap.

 

[Dragon_Orb]

I think sometimes you have to look at other factors for pricing issues. Product life-cycle, economic strength and political climate, to name a few. The fact is they've always been horribly expensive, it's not a new thing. With my own personal experience the Nvidia cards are only as expensive now as they were 16 years ago, maybe a fraction more so but after 16 years inflation that's not surprising.

When I bought my first high level graphics card, a GeForce 3 in 2001, they were fairly new out and cost about AU$1000. When I purchased the GTX 680's they were at the end of their product life-cycle just before the 700 series came out and they cost about AU$600 each on clearance. I look at the GTX 1080 price and before the 1080ti announcement they were around the AU$900-1000 mark (air cooled), now they vary between AU$750-$1000 for the various air cooled models.

In the 16 years since I purchased the GeForce 3 for about AU$1000 the price of the top new Nvidia cards still seems to be not far off that figure, around the AU$1000-$1100 when they're new out. So I think you can't always point the finger at Nvidia and totally blame them for pricing.

Yes, Nvidia have some say in determining price points for local markets but they don't have control over all the factors that go into determining that price point.

For reference AU$1000 is equivalent to £619 (approx). Just to give an idea on how markets can change, on 29 June 2001, £619 would've exchanged to about AU$1541. Exchange rates from the Reserve Bank of Australia.

So while you may not like it, I think there's more to it than just Nvidia charging too many £'s for the cards than compared to previous years.