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- The GTX 1080 Ti’s raw performance is still impressive and highly competitive even at 1440p.
- The lack of mesh shaders, DLSS, and Ray Tracing makes it a less attractive option for the future.
- The RX 6700 XT and RTX 3060 are much better options for a budget of around $150-$200.
Games are becoming more and more demanding each day, and there aren’t a lot of budget GPUs out there that actually offer great performance for the price. In times like these, I decided to revisit and test one of the greatest GPUs of all time, the GTX 1080 Ti.
I’ll be testing this fan-favorite graphics card to see how much juice it has left after 7 years of its launch and whether it’s still a viable option to consider.
The RAW Horsepower
The GTX 1080 Ti, being so old, is still kicking as it features some great specifications. The most notable is its 11 GB of GDDR5X memory coupled with a 352-bit bus. The card was launched for $699, but the performance it offered justified such a high price. Today, you can get it for anywhere around $100.
Its rasterized performance is still commendable when I saw it competing with modern graphics cards such as the RX 6700 XT, RTX 3060, and RTX 4060. Considering how old the GTX 1080 Ti is, the excellent performance it exhibited in gaming benchmarks is impressive. Starting with 1080p, I tested all four cards in 5 different games including Rainbow Six Siege, Baldur’s Gate 3, Total War: Warhammer, Robocop, and Fortnite.
Even though, it comes in 4th place on average in my testing, it’s still a solid performance as it doesn’t miss out by a big margin. Similarly, it’s the same story when the resolution is cranked up to 1440p, the GTX 1080 Ti again comes in 4th place and stays just 2 frames behind the RTX 3060 on average.
Such Power Comes At A Cost
As it’s based on Pascal architecture, the GTX 1080 Ti comes with some limitations that may become a problem for many to go with this graphics card in 2024. New technologies are emerging and actively being used in game development that make some specific features compulsory for the graphics card to possess to play the game properly. The first one is mesh shaders, this is relatively new, and we have only seen it in Alan Wake 2 as of now.
The cards without mesh shaders were struggling to even maintain 30 FPS as compared to their counterparts having mesh shaders. Even though the game got patched to resolve this issue, it won’t be long until this becomes a common practice in games. Besides this, the GTX 1080 Ti also falls short of Ray Tracing and Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling tech.
Although ray tracing isn’t a big issue, especially around the RTX 3060 performance level, the DLSS is kind of a big thing because AMD’s FSR isn’t as good in image quality. However, the card can be used with native resolution for a good while, as it still has the power to run games without relying on upscaling tech.
Excessive Power Draw
In this day and age, we have a lot of powerful options that are also power efficient at the same time. As this GTX 1080 Ti is 7 years old, it eats quite a lot more power than its current competition. The card alone was consuming almost 300W of power during Rainbow Six Siege at 1080p resolution. The rest of the three cards stay well under the 200W bracket, exhibiting their efficient nature.
There’s a way to deal with this, after I undervolted the graphics card, I witnessed a huge decrease in power consumption from almost 300W to under 200W as well as the temperature levels. Which is impressive and should be the default way to use it.
Better Alternatives are Available
While the card still performs great and has no problem running games even at 1440p resolution, cards like the RX 6700 XT, RTX 3060, and even RX 6600 XT seem to be the better alternatives in my eyes. Those cards are very recent and carry all the newer tech that modern games benefit from. So, within the budget of around $150-$200, these graphics cards should be considered. In case, the GTX 1080 Ti is the only option in front of you, it’s a no-brainer if you can compromise the DLSS and a few other stuff.
A Card That Needs A Modern Comeback
It’s safe to say that GTX 1080 Ti has aged like a fine wine, and still refuses to die for good, as it’s still shining on the rasterized performance side. It would be pleasant to see if Nvidia again comes up with a card like this. Sure, the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 are way more powerful, but they come at a much higher price and still can’t produce an impact as great as the GTX 1080 Ti.
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[Reviews Specialist]
Usman Saleem brings 8+ years of comprehensive PC hardware expertise to the table. His journey in the tech world has involved in-depth tech analysis and insightful PC hardware reviews, perfecting over 6+ years of dedicated work. Usman’s commitment to staying authentic and relevant in the field is underscored by many professional certifications, including a recent one in Google IT Support Specialization.
- 8+ years of specialized PC hardware coverage
- 6+ years of in-depth PC hardware analysis and reviews
- Lead PC hardware expert across multiple tech journalism platforms
- Certified in Google IT Support Specialization
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