With initial results vs the EVGA GTX980Ti SC+ lackluster and the rampant running wild with rumors of thermal throttling above stock clocks things weren’t looking too good for the valiant 1080.  But with the money already spent, there was no going back.  Time to hit the OC!

After playing around a bit with EVGA Precision X, this is where we landed:

• Power Target: 120%
• GPU Clock Offset: +225Mhz
• Mem Clock Offset: +500Mhz

This is a decent overclock.  For reference, with stock clocks the 1080 managed to average about 1750Mhz GPU clock and 5005Mhz Memory clock during extended benchmarking and gaming sessions with temps sitting around 75C.  With the +225Mhz offset, the results were impressive. A sustained low of 2025Mhz GPU clock, rock solid 5508Mhz Memory clock and temps never passing 80C.  That’s a nice 15% GPU, 10% memory OC with the reference cooler, complete stability, great temps and no noise.  This OC percentage matches what you get out of the factory OC on the 980Ti SC+, so the comparison is a good one.  So how did it impact performance?  Let’s take a look at Heaven first (note, OC results of 1 hour of continuous benchmarking showing in upper left):

28.7fps and a score of 722 at 4k Ultra on Heaven 4 is very good.  For comparison, 980Ti scores generally range around 23fps and a score of 580.  Doing the math we’re getting closer to a 25% boost in perf now.  So synthetics are nice, but did the OC fare as well in gaming?  Let’s see…

Wow! 46.6 is a nice result.  Once again we’re at a solid 25% gain.  So it looks like with similar OC’s, the 1080 represents a consistent gain of 25% (vs 15% OC vs stock clocks) over the 980Ti at lower power consumption and noise.  That’s actually a very good, if expensive, gain.  One more for the road…

Once again we see a 25% gain.  Also, perfect stability through an hour of Heaven, Fire Strike and Metro 2033 runs.

So the 1080 is a mixed bag without a doubt vs a nice factory over clocked 980Ti.  You need to overclock the 1080 itself to see gains that feel worth it, and it is undoubtedly bad “bang for the buck” (not unexpected jumping from last gens super premium card to this gens upper mid range), but the 108o absolutely does beat the 980Ti across the board under every circumstance and does it with lower heat, power and noise.  That’s a solid win.

OK… Now bring on the 1080Ti!