Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080 Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Price

Annoyingly, it’s difficult to pinpoint GTX 1080 prices with confidence because they seem to rise quite sharply and change at a rapid pace. In the UK, retailers are set to increase graphics card prices due to Sterling devaluation and they’ve probably already done this to a degree. However, once the stock for the next quarter is paid for, it will be at the new Sterling level which if it remains the same, is around 1.30 to the USD. If you’re unaware, many UK technology retailers purchase stock in USD and this is why you might experience sharp price rises. Not only that, the GTX 1080 is incredibly popular and vendors are aware they can charge more than the Founders Edition for enhanced clocks and better cooling hardware.

At the time of writing, the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080 is available from Overclockers UK for £679.99 including free shipping. This is cheaper than the ASUS STRIX GAMING OC which retails for an eye-watering £749.99. Saying that, it’s more expensive than the Inno3D GTX 1080 iChill X3 which I absolutely adored and costs £659.99. Clearly, the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080 is competitively priced and this will make it an attractive proposition for those who require NVIDIA’s flagship today.

Overview

In direct contrast to the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti, the company has adopted a new colour scheme inspired by the XTREME GAMING brand. Unlike many of their competitors, Gigabyte decided to dismiss the overdone red and black theme and include orange accents on their latest G1 Gaming graphics card. This compliments the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080’s neutral black design extremely well and results in a very elegant appearance. The orange streaks add some colour to the product without it being too ostentatious. Not only that, the RGB lighting has been implemented in a subtle manner and seems classier than rival products. On the other hand, I would like to see more transitional effects to ensure those who enjoy flashier designs can enable them without any problems.

As expected, the graphics card utilises premium components such as an 8+2 power delivery, dense aluminium heatsink and 3 copper composite heatpipes. Additionally, Gigabyte’s custom fans offer 23% extra airflow compared to traditional fans and feature high-angled blades. Also, they turn off completely during idle usage scenarios and operate independently based on thermal loads. This means when the temperatures increase slightly, only one of the fans will switch on when needed. Of course, during demanding games, all three fans start spinning to maintain good thermals. Speaking of thermals, the graphics card’s tried-and-tested Windforce 3X cooling system is sublime although the noise output is louder than I’d like. Thankfully, the temperatures remain extremely low and there’s enough headroom to create a custom fan profile and find a better balance between noise and temperatures.

By default, the graphics card opts for a decent factory overclock which is particularly the case when selecting the OC profile. Saying that, it’s slower than the Inno3D GTX 1080 iChill X3 while being more expensive according to the current market prices.  On the sample I received, there is loads of overclocking headroom which allowed me to increase the base clock by 143MHz. This is a much larger boost than I’ve managed on any of the other GTX 1080 cards and allowed the GPU to score very highly once overclocked. The maximum recorded boost clock increased by a staggering 152MHz and wasn’t far from the magical 2100MHz figure. Ideally, I would have liked the memory to overclock further but it’s still a decent improvement at 10650MHz over the stock figure.

The Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080’s performance before overclocking is admirable and competes pretty well against the ASUS STRIX GAMING GTX 1080 and Inno3D GTX 1080 iChill X3. Granted the lower-end factory overclock made it fall behind by a few frames in certain games but it’s not enough to diminish the user-experience. In some cases, the difference was so small that it falls within a margin of error. Whatever the case, it’s clear that the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080 can uphold a fluid frame-rate even when paired with a 4K display.

Pros

• Beautiful aesthetic design
• Cheaper than some AIB GTX 1080 models
• Exceptional performance
• Great cooling apparatus
• Reliable power delivery
• Study backplate
• Superb overclocking headroom
• UK warranty base

Cons

• Not the quietest GTX 1080 on the market
• RGB lighting customization is a bit basic

“The Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080 offers fantastic performance, low temperatures and has loads of overclocking headroom. Additionally, the sophisticated appearance and competitive price make it one of the best custom variants of the GTX 1080 you can buy.”

Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080 Graphics Card Review

Thank you Gigabyte for providing us with this review sample.