GTX 1080 Sails Past GTX 980Ti in 3DMark

After weeks of leaks, we know pretty much all there is to know about the physical aspect of the GXT 1080 and 1070. We know the VRAM amounts, how the cooler shrouds will look like and even what the die looks like. The big gaping hole in our knowledge has been in performance, the most crucial aspect. This all changes today as leaked 3DMark Firestrike and 3DMark 11 scores for the GTX 1080 have been spotted.

As the first Pascal GeForce to launch, all eyes are on the GXT 1080 to see how it performs against the GTX 980Ti. First off, the clock speeds are insane, coming in at about 1.8Ghz boost with a base clock of around 1.6Ghz. Take this with a grain of salt as software still can’t fully recognize the card. The other big boost comes from the GDDR5X, with a 2500Mhz clock, well above regular GDDR5. This will offer more than enough bandwidth even over a 256bit bus.

Moving onto the benchmark graphics scores, the GTX 1080 manages 27683 in 3DMark 11, around 10% better than the top performing and overclocked GM200 models. In 3DMark Firestrike Extreme, the card scores 10102, around 15% better than the top GTX 980Ti overclocked results. Performance per clock has suffered though if the rumoured clock speeds hold true. This may be due to a quirk of Pascal or the immature drivers.

With a 10-15% bump over the overclocked GTX 980Ti, GTX 1080 won’t offer much to current top end users. For reference users though, the new Pascal card will offer a compelling upgrade. Of course, the bigger question is how well does Pascal handle DX12, something Maxwell currently isn’t too fond of. With only a slight bump over GM200, AMD has a good chance to score well with Polaris 10 as long as that card can overclock well.