AORUS Announces GTX 1080 11Gbps and GTX 1060 9Gbps Video Cards

Two days ago, details about ASUS and MSI‘s faster memory refreshes of the GTX 1080 and GTX 1060 have surfaced online. Now Gigabyte has made their AORUS branded GTX 1080 11Gbps and GTX 1060 9Gbps video cards official by announcing their specifications and providing some photos. The faster memory versions of the GTX 1080 and the GTX 1060 is expected to arrive around the middle of April to take away some attention from AMD’s own set of RX 580 and RX 570 refreshed Polaris GPUs.

AORUS is Gigabyte’s premium gaming brand and has more features than their usual offering under the Gigabyte Gaming banner. For the AORUS GTX 1080 11Gbps, Gigabyte provides a similar design to the flagship GTX 1080 Ti and offers two versions with 11Gbps memory: AORUS GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Edition 8G 11Gbps and AORUS GeForce GTX 1080 8G 11Gbps . The Xtreme Edition comes with a longer 4-year warranty via the AORUS care program (requires online registration).

The shroud design is also slightly different with the non-Xtreme Edition having a lighter color shroud while the Xtreme Edition has a darker middle area with three stripes. Both GTX 1080 11Gbps versions have RGB LED capability and controllable via Gigabyte’s RGB Fusion application and both have backplates as well as a triple slot design. The shroud on the Xtreme edition appears to be made of metal however compared to the regular GTX 1080. Both video cards have three DisplayPorts 1.4, one HDMI 2.0b and one DVI-D ports in the rear IO. Two additional HDMI ports are available on the PCB header which the user can also use natively (dubbed VR-link).

In terms of base and boost clocks, the regular GTX 1080 8G 11Gbps starts at 1708 MHz and boosts to 1847MHz but also has an alternate OC mode where it starts at 1733MHz and can boost up to 1873MHz. The GTX 1080 Xtreme Edition 8G 11Gbps on the other hand starts even higher at 1759MHz and can boost up to 1898 MHz in gaming mode, while having a 1784MHz base clock that boosts up to 1936MHz in OC mode.

As for the GTX 1060 9Gbps video card, it has not showed up on Gigabyte’s official website yet at the time of this writing, but VideoCardz.com has dug up some details on it. The faster memory GTX 1060 6GB 9Gbps offering is equipped with three fans for extra cooling. It also supports RGB fusion control and comes out of the box factory overclocked with a base clock of 1632MHz (+8.4% bump from stock) and a boost clock of 1860MHz (+8.9% faster than reference). This GTX 1060 is the 6GB version and will compete head-to-head with the AMD Radeon RX 580 once it comes out.