of course comes performance we spoke of earlier . Performance on its own however isn ’ t enough as we already had that with the 900 series and of course the competing GPUs from AMD . Power efficiency again matters and we are now able to reach TDP figures which would prior to now , relegate the GPUs to mid-range offerings .
In four months , NVIDIA unleashed five SKUs and essentially four distinct GPUs . After an eternity spent at the 2nm node , we finally have a new power friendly node and the GPUs to match . More than just being a new GeForce family , the GTX 1000 series has redefined not only what is possible on desktop parts , but perhaps more importantly what mobile products are able to offer . For the first time , it is possible to have a true desktop replacement in a notebook , and that ’ s purely because of we have near identical configurations for the first time for mobile and desktop parts .
That however is for another editorial piece . What we are interested in is the mainstream GeForce desktop GPUs as these are what we had been waiting for . They arrived alright and they did
EDITOR ’ S CHOICE AWARD
so with a bang . It isn ’ t often that a successive generation of GPUs offers such comprehensive performance gains , yes with the Pascal family of GPUs we got just that . One would have never imagined it at the time of the GTX 980 TI , but the GTX 1070 as you may have seen from the graphs is faster , while consuming over 100Watts less for example .
That kind of progress speaks volumes for NVIDIA ’ s R & D and of course the TSMC 16nm node . With this power efficiency , we have gained unprecedented GPU clock speeds as well . The 900 series ushered in relatively high clocks with the extreme overclocking crowd able to reach over 2GHz under via LN2 cooling on some parts . This time , we have those same clocks speeds attainable via simple air coolers that ship with the GPUs . That is another testament to just how much work the minds at NVIDIA have put into the Pascal family to allow this . With the increased clock speeds
This is a double edged sword though and for all the gains that have been made technologically , they do present some challenges for the more extreme or enthusiast user . In fact , these changes present challenges for NVIDIA ’ s partners as well in some way . That however we will get into later on in this editorial piece . For now , we are looking at a trio of three graphics cards from GIGABYTE . The new G1 GAMING line of GPUs which if the previous series is anything to go by , should be offering some of the highest levels of performance available to end users . As always , it ’ s a matter of designing a customised PCB based on the Founder ’ s Edition design . Configuring a custom BIOS / Firmware profile and finally wrapping it up in as capable a cooling heatsink complex as possible within the price bracket . I say this , because as you may know already , GIGABYTE has a more premium line of GPUs under the XG family . These feature different PCBs and of course coolers . The Factory clock speeds are often higher as well and in general present a more refined version of what the G1 line up presents . As we saw a number of issues ago with the GTX 980 TI Xtreme Gaming card , it was the pinnacle of gaming GPUs ( I ’ m not sure what a gaming or enthusiast GPU is anymore ) and remains quite potent event today .
The heavy lifting where GPUs are concerned is obviously done by NVIDIA and for that reason alone it is worth specifying the base configurations for each of the three GPUs covered in this editorial . If you look to table 1 , it will give you a brief overview of what each GPU has to offer . Table 2 is lists the GIGABYTE G1 range of GPUs and how they are configured . Of course the main and perhaps only differences are clock speeds and pricing , but it is more than that really . Despite that GTX 1080 Founders Edition cards curiously perform better than the partner offerings , one would still be hard pressed to recommend the Founders Edition GTX 1080 for example over
Issue 39 | 2016 The OverClocker 15