The Greatest GPU of All Time: NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti & GTX 1080 2024 Revisit & History

[Music]

today we revisiting the GTX 1080 and the

greatest video card that Nvidia ever

made the GTX 1080

ti What was what was that not only did

the 1080 TI come out at a time when it

was just the TI and not the ti or the

tii taii or the super taii or the taii

super all of those came later it was

they innovate in different ways every

time it was also the greatest card that

Nvidia has ever made and we've regularly

said it's a mistake that they probably

won't make again this card is the goat

absolutely no questions about it and

it's actually why I still have a 1080ti

in my personal system at home it's

actually an SC2 icx model uh that I

liked when we reviewed it and now it's

retired from service and in my machine

so it's good enough that depending on

the games you play especially if you

don't play RT or something they can

still handle it and they're 7 years old

the 1080 TI is such a good car that we

have now Revisited it at least two or

three times maybe more I've lost count

and Google has gotten worse as a search

engine but we've Revisited it a lot and

it's worth doing again because now

there's the whole Super Series the 700 J

basically everything has launched for

this generation in theory anyway uh and

so we can take a complete look at where

it stands today and what your options

are uh and also for this revisit we have

a couple new types of charts just to try

and capture the most relevant things as

fast as possible for those of you who

might still be on one of these cards and

if you're not on one and you just want

to look back at something that was

impressive for its time maybe this will

give a new perspective as to why before

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link in the description below one of the

things that made the 1080 ti so good was

that it was typically about $100 more

than a GTX 1080 maybe 200 depending on

which price you're looking at that was

an ERA where Nvidia was experimenting

with having two launch prices because uh

we needed that in our lives they've

improved in that respect at least but

typically it was a $1 to $200 price jump

between the 1080 and the 1080 TI and

given the performance gap which we'll

look at in a moment between these two

for the first time against each other in

years actually we haven't tested them

both on the same charts in a while it

really made sense to go for the 1080ti

for people who could afford it the RTX

20 series launch though is really what

cemented the 1080ti in its place as the

greatest of all time the launch of the

RTX 2080 saw us telling everyone to just

buy a 1080ti instead that's because they

could still be had for believe it or not

around $700 at that time which made it

often 100 bucks cheaper than the average

2080 maybe 50 if $50 cheaper if you

bought one of the cheaper 2080s uh and

it was extremely competitive the MSI

Armor Series was a Bare Bones kind of

garbage tier cooler for the 1080ti as

far as that generation of coolers went

anyway but it was a an MSRP option at

700 box that we liked because you got a

good enough vrm you could strip the

cooler from it didn't feel like you were

throwing away a ton of cost in it uh and

then throw a hybrid cooler on it like a

CLC with a vrm fan that was really

popular for the era you suddenly had a

very budget conscious water cooled cold

enough to overclock 1080 TI and that's

another aspect of what made these cards

so damn good the power for V bios gave

you more Headroom to overclock than

you'll find on a lot of modern cards

today but the real reason the 20 series

set the 1080 TI up for such success was

because it launched with no namesake

feature it was called RTX there was no

RTX it was about 2 months before the

first RTX game launched uh I remember

talking about it in news segments where

we were like 55 days without RT title uh

and at the time that was when RT real

time RT was still kind of a a new thing

being marketed it hadn't proven itself

and there's no reason to review or buy a

product based on a promise and so when

the 1080 TI was matching or sometimes

exceeding a 2080 uh and it was often

cheaper it didn't make a lot of sense to

buy a 2080 and it would be years before

RT became really truly meaningfully

relevant in any atlarge way so the 1080

TI immediately if didn't already have it

gained legendary status with the launch

of the 20 series the pricing was a big

part of that where the 20 series saw the

2080 TI coming in at 1,200 bucks or

whatever it was plus or minus a little

bit uh and that just felt like such a

climb compared to this card that

whatever status it had not yet earned

the 1080 TI It earned with the 20 series

launch so uh this still even seven years

later and close to eight years later for

the 1080 non TI which is also worth

talking about can still handle a lot of

games it can still play at a reasonable

FPS in non-r traced scenarios you lack

some Modern features you don't have rt

Hardware there's kind of limited

natively supported upscaling options so

it has limitations and it's starting to

show age but depending on what you play

you might not even need to upgrade it

and if you're ready to upgrade at least

it is a massive jump from 7even years

ago that's some pretty damn good mileage

out of a video car some additional

history here the 1080 TI launched in

March of 2017 about a year after the

1080s launch in 2016 it was a powerful

onew punch for NVIDIA at the time its

newest competition from AMD for the

1080ti would have been the RX 580 which

launched in April of 2017 and that

itself was just a refresh of the 480

otherwise the 1080ti was up against an

aging generation of Fury cards Vega

wouldn't come out for another several

months after the 1080 TI's launch and

largely to disappointing reception and

this is part of what we're trying to do

today we've Revisited this card so many

times from a performance aspect today

it's about providing some extra

provenance and background especially for

people who hear about the 108ti you see

people say it was legendary it was the

goat not sure why we're trying to give

some of that context and I still

remember covering all of this as it was

happening because it was an exciting

time uh this was an ERA where AMD was

absolutely plagued and riddled with

driver problems we had multiple videos

on them back then I remember posting one

that was titled something along the

lines of like AMD sabotages itself again

or something like that and we talked

about drivers all the time for them so

Nvidia was in an overpowering position

uh and and these drivers at the time

were so riddled with bugs that if the

drivers had a door opening that door was

like opening the door to a roach

infested room where you just see them

all scatter Andy's drivers though have

gained substantially since then that era

is largely gone for Amy they fixed those

problems it's nothing like it used to be

so huge Improvement for from AMD side of

things and its modern generation of

cards is much more competitive than what

it was fighting with back then which

before Vega launched wasn't a lot at

least not a lot of brand new

architecture stuff uh and so at that

time AMD mostly chose to fight in the

mid-range Market they had $250 rx580s

which looking back was actually a pretty

damn good card and even at the time I

think pretty much everyone recognized it

as the best mid-range option in a lot of

cases and that market is kind of dead

today which is sad we maybe took it for

granted at the time where we had the

1080 TI at the top end as an inarguable

best and we had things like the rx580

keeping that affordable class alive in a

way that today you don't really get that

type of competition until you go up to

400 bucks or so maybe 500 uh where you

really start to see the market get

interesting so it was a a much different

time for the market and gpus and the

prices were a lot different let's let's

go over that quickly though so we have

some price data with inflation

adjustment the GTX 1080ti was often $700

like with the armor card and it ran up

to 800 pretty frequently there were more

expensive cards as always but these two

price points cover the vast majority of

relevant options today a $700 purchase

of the 1080ti would be equivalent to

spending $88.75 according to US

inflation data an $800 purchase would be

equivalent to

$1,006 if you look at gpus available

right now that $880 adjusted price would

be an RTX 47 TI super from Nvidia or an

rx700 XTX from AMD flanking each end the

$1,000 inflation adjusted 1080ti price

if you bought it that higher end back

then would be an RTX 480 sup MSRP if you

can find one at MSRP or again a 7900 XTX

back to the inflation table the GTX 1080

was $600 to $700 commonly and again

remember that Nvidia made this all very

messy with its e price and at the time

we're kind of ignoring that aspect

that'd be a 766 to 894 pricing inflation

adjusted today equivalent would again

include the 4070 TI super from Nvidia or

the 7900 XT up to maybe the 7900 XTX

from AMD what's Wild is the used price

of the 1080 TI in a quick look around

they seem to have sold listings on eBay

for 150 to 200 bucks or so and sometimes

cheaper if you buy one with a broken fan

which is an easy fix that makes a used

1080ti a better option than nvidia's

modern $ 150 to $200 video cards or

sometimes even it's $300 card if you're

willing to sacrifice RT so in a way

Nvidia own Masterpiece remains kind of a

thorn in its side to the extent that at

a launch event Jensen went on stage and

he said something about to all my Pascal

gamer friends it is safe to upgrade now

and that was because of cards like this

and the 1070 The 1060 was fairly

competitive too now the 3080 did really

well to reset the whole pricing stack

following the 2080 it felt like a breath

of fresh air it was lined up to be

another 1080 TI in terms of its

reception but the rug got pulled out

from under it because of the immediate

boom where it was no longer available

and when it was available they were

scaled and way overpriced so that kind

of killed the momentum on the 3080 but

it was kind of lining up still though

nothing has quite touched the 1080ti so

let's get into some numbers we'll start

with reestablishing our bearings for how

the 1080 and the 1080t I compared to

each other today this factors in the

latest drivers for each the Windows

updates that are the latest and

modernized changes to the BIOS firmware

things like that the OS as well such as

rebar Hardware accelerated GPU

scheduling here's the chart this shows

percent improvement from a 1080 to a

1080 TI in the various games we test in

2024 it's remarkably consistent from

game to game in this era even across

resolutions that's a big difference from

what we see with cards today where

Nvidia in particular plays with memory

bandwidth in ways that create less

predictable or at least less linear

scaling across the resolutions the GTX

1080 TI is generally about 35% faster

than the 1080 and average FPS for

today's benchmarks if you had waited

until the 1080ti launched and spent

about $100 more max maybe around $200

more than the 1080 then that money

stretched out pretty well and could have

been a deciding factor in stretching the

card out for maybe one more generation

as a side note it's rare that we see

something like 38% uplift within a

single vendor stack for a hundred bucks

today it doesn't really happen anymore

and the few times it does happen they're

pretty rare uh broadly speaking looking

at the consistency of improvement of

those numbers for the price at the time

again something like a 100 bucks maybe

150 sometimes it just it seems like it

will never happen again and like it was

almost a mistake okay on to the next

table since we've recapped the 1080 ti

so much again we're experimenting with

some different charts this is a

different one

uh we're using a simple table that

Recaps several games we've tested in one

shot but what it does is uh in the First

Column it's going to show you the most

immediate trailing card so the one

that's the most comparable to the 1080

TI but right behind it the other column

shows you the most immediate advantaged

card ahead of it the middle is something

roughly equal now all three of those

together because it's immediate

immediate and then roughly equal you end

up with basically what is the equivalent

today that's what this table will answer

and serves to help you get a a sort of

quick snapshot of your minimum threshold

you want to clear to actually get a

meaningful upgrade ideally you go a

little bit beyond that too this also

helps you figure out a baseline so this

part's important where going forward if

we or other reviewers drop the 108ti

from charts but you want to know where

it falls you look at this list of

equivalents and then in the future if

you know it's roughly equivalent to card

X and the 108ti is not on someone's

chart you look for card X and you go

okay it's probably probably around here

it's not perfect but it's good enough to

kind of keep it in keep it fresh with

knowing where it lands here it is the

most immediately behind modern

architecture GPU is generally the 6600

6600 XT or nvidia's 60 class cards like

the RTX 3060 and 4060 Intel Arc also

makes a few appearances and this tells

you that if you wanted to upgrade you

would need to buy at least better than

these cards in a modern lineup to get

any meaningful Improvement at all and

ideally you'd go a couple steps up from

them to ensure it actually is Meaningful

and not just basically a side grade with

Ray tracing capabilities the closest of

any generation we've recently tested is

variable here we see that the 2070 super

makes an appearance a few times and the

7600 But it really depends on the game

tested the 2080 also makes an appearance

in that column for the most immediately

advantaged modern generation card the

1080ti is commonly beaten most

immediately by the same cards as were

immediately behind it this makes sense

because when a card is plus or minus a

few percentage points it'll swing either

direction depending on the game the 4060

appears the most here if you're not

buying at least a 4070 or a 6700 XT as a

replacement generally speaking we don't

think it'd be worth buying a new card if

you can do it it's maybe more sensible

to save up a little longer if possible

and buy something another click or two

up let's look at this another way

instead of looking at the immediate

flank since that largely comes out to be

the same set of cards sort of across the

stack we're going to look at the most

likely upgrades for a quick snapshot and

for this we're looking at similar

pricing inflation adjusted so in other

words someone who wants to spend a

similar amount of money in value back

then today what might you get for uplift

that's what we're looking at and we have

some others that are a little bit lower

in price we're going to go through as

well that are maybe more similar to like

to like back then uh and we'll talk

about more that with the 1080 also this

also helps you understand what the

difference between $150 or $300 extra

might get you

uh if you're upgrad you're buying a new

card today what's that Gap look like if

you spend a little more here it is

against a bunch of games the 10ed ti

itself is not shown that's because it's

the left Axis or the Baseline we're

looking at percent improvement over

Baseline and average FPS this is one of

those scenarios where anything would be

an upgrade generally speaking you can

expect somewhere around a 120 to 150%

uplift or so with a 4070 TI super just

looking across this Suite of games the

4080 super roughly speaking would be

around 170 to 190% uplift the XT is

around 140 to 160% for uplift with the

XTX at 190 to 210% or so just broadly

speaking each of these has several

breakouts including the 7900 XTX in

particular spiking upwards of 300%

Improvement in Starfield at that point

percentages don't really feel like they

mean anything anymore so suffice to say

it's an entirely different experience

you should basically be choosing between

the modern cards that you're considering

rather than necessarily comparing them

to the 1080ti because all of these are

going to be massive changes in the

experience but it's still fun to look

back and get a feel for it this way the

next recap is for the GTX 1080 non TI

for this one we're comparing against the

470 super the 470 TI super the RX 7900

GRE that just got a global launch and

the RX 7900 XT the 470 super is the same

price that the 1080 launched when

ignoring inflation or it would be the

equivalent of $470 at launch like back

then the 700 GRE as a similar price

today or including inflation would be

about $431 back at launch and that gives

us two cards priced similarly with

inflation and two priced below here's

the chart the 1080ti doesn't appear here

since we've already shown a summary

chart for that but as a reminder that

generally be around 35% uplift from the

1080 for the rest you can get increases

in average FPS in the multiples even

with something at an equal price today

when ignoring inflation in other words

even if your buying power hasn't kept up

with inflation you can at least get a 2

to 3x increase in many scenarios with

the 470 super the 470 TI super is better

enough that it may help pull you forward

another year than the 470 super though

that depends so much on how much you're

willing to lower the graphic settings

what games come out that it's hard to

really make estimates like that but uh

you're paying for that theoretical

longevity the 7900 GRE also provides

significant uplift while being cheaper

than $600 and is one of the more

relevant cards at this price point right

now the 700xt is just in a completely

different class of rasterization

performance altogether uh it blows these

away the biggest difference though would

be in R tracing where you're going from

basically not compatible to compatible

on any of these modern devices now we're

about to get into the individual game

test just to give some foundational data

with more charts but uh rate tracing

kind of remains the key Point here that

doesn't get charts because the 1080 TI

does not natively or meaningfully

support rat racing uh realtime rat

racing with modern games so because of

that there's not really anything to test

it's your number is basically zero and

or unplayable enough to be zero if you

were to force it in some scenarios where

you can and so for ra tracing results

just look at our 7900 GRE review any

other recent review look at the RT chart

that gives you an idea but you're not

really choosing between how much better

is it than a 10ed ATI uh because it

might as well be infinitely better okay

we'll quickly run through some game

charts but because we've already covered

the major comparisons here there not a

lot more to talk about we'll make this

quick you can pause these if you want to

check out cards that we haven't

explicitly mentioned otherwise we'll

focus on the key highlights and Final

Fantasy 14 at 4K the 1080ti still

manages to hold the 62 FPS average so no

problems here that has it at 3060 TI

levels of performance and actually

surpassing the 2080 somewhat

embarrassingly for the touring card the

1080 FTW ran at about 76 600 levels of

performance flanked by the two available

models and this chart actually also

contains an overclock we ran for the

1080ti last year when we did a different

revisit and that data is still valid for

this game because the results for this

title don't change with our test

approach so that OC had it up at about

6700 XT average FPS surpassing the 4060

TI in DL 2 at 1080p the GTX 1080 sat

below the 6600 in our most recent round

of testing the 3060 also leads it

somewhat significantly the 108 TI has

done excellently to hang on here but in

some heavier modern games it's beginning

to fall to the bottom of the chart of

note even Intel's a750 is outdoing the

1080 TI in this one the RTX 380 is

another good reference point up about

151 FPS average to the 1080ti 74 or the

1080s 55 one last note you can see the

1% lows dipped down on the 1080

indicative of where some of the

generational improvements have been

invested over the years 1440p stretches

the scale to the point that the 1080 TI

now Falls below 60 FPS so if we choose

60 FPS as a somewhat arbitrary line of

scrimmage the first card that passes it

is the a770 on this chart with the 7600

XT and the 2080 close enough for

non-intel you might consider the 470 or

the 7800 XT as meaningfully improved

with the 1080ti but probably with less

staying power than you benefited from

the 1080ti and realistically the 4070 if

you're coming from at least just a

naming perspective feels like a a more

of a step aside or a step down even than

the original 10d DTI purchase but it's

still objectively better in Starfield at

1440p tested mostly because it helps us

avoid non GPU limitations higher up the

stack at say 1080p the GTX 1080s

performance had it about tied with an

Intel a750 GPU Intel struggles with

Starfield so it's not the best

comparison and so we can instead turn to

the 6600 and the RTX 3060 which both

post large gains over the GT TX 1080

despite neither being a recommended path

forward from this card this and the

1080ti alike would be hugely improved

upon by nearly anything in the chart

1440p is heavy with this game on these

cards they were capable 1440p players at

the time and even some 4K but games have

also gotten heavier in the years since

Pascal at 4K the Pascal cards really

just can't handle the game they're

clearly struggling their results are

less consistent as a result of this load

fortunately not much was lost because

it's Starfield but to get any meaningful

uplift might mean a jump to a 7800 XT uh

a used RTX 380 as a great option or the

4070 super in Rainbow Six Siege at 1080p

were served a reminder that both of

these cards can still be objectively

capable performers for the right title

this combination of resolution and game

still puts the goat 1080 TI into the

hundreds of FPS average approaching 300

actually with even its slower 1080

counterpart still surpassing 200 FPS

average if you're not playing the heavy

VI games at higher resolutions and if

you don't always need the max settings

then in an objective sense these are

still good enough and this is a great

reminder of that anyone ultra

competitive in a game like this might

notice a latency difference between the

1080 TI and the 470 super here but

generally speaking if you're not

noticing the performance of your 10

series card as being bad then there's no

shame in sticking with it to us it's a

sense of Pride that's actually why I

still have my 1080 TI in my home machine

at 1440p the GTX 1080 still holds 30 FPS

average in Rainbow Six Siege with the

1080 TI continuing to impress and earn

its goat title all 7 years later now

we're still seeing performance

equivalent to a 2070 super in this one

and besting the modern a750 noteworthy

entries on this one Remain the RTX 380

which would still give a huge upgrade

pathway while potentially running cheap

if you're willing to trust a used

listing the new RX 7900 GRE also johs

ahead for something at a balanced price

at 4K the Pascal cards both manage to

keep their frame rate above 60 FPS the

1080ti ftw3 held an impressive 83 here

tying it with the 2070 super and the

7600 XT and the 1080 FTW ran at 62 about

the same as the 6600 XT they're still

hanging in there another option we

haven't discussed is a potential used

3070 but it really have to be cheap

enough to be worthwhile other cards

probably feel a lot better to move to

than a 3070 if you're a current 1080 or

1080 TI owner uh If Only from the sort

of Psychological Association with the

naming it feels like a downgrade if you

can get a 6950 XT for 500 bucks or so

that's another one that people are

probably sleeping on these days Resident

Evil 4 at 1080p is up now another one of

the relatively new titles in the suite