The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 & GTX 1070 Founders Editions Review: Kicking Off the FinFET Generation
by Ryan Smith on July 20, 2016 8:45 AM ESTOverclocking
For our final evaluation of the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 Founders Edition cards, let’s take a look a overclocking.
Whenever I review an NVIDIA reference card, I feel it’s important to point out that while NVIDIA supports overclocking – why else would they include fine-grained controls like GPU Boost 3.0 – they have taken a hard stance against true overvolting. Overvolting is limited to NVIDIA’s built in overvoltage function, which isn’t so much a voltage control as it is the ability to unlock 1-2 more boost bins and their associated voltages. Meanwhile TDP controls are limited to whatever value NVIDIA believes is safe for that model card, which can vary depending on its GPU and its power delivery design.
For GTX 1080FE and its 5+1 power design, we have a 120% TDP limit, which translates to an absolute maximum TDP of 216W. As for GTX 1070FE and its 4+1 design, this is reduced to a 112% TDP limit, or 168W. Both cards can be “overvolted” to 1.093v, which represents 1 boost bin. As such the maximum clockspeed with NVIDIA’s stock programming is 1911MHz.
| GeForce GTX 1080FE Overclocking | ||||
| Stock | Overclocked | |||
| Core Clock | 1607MHz | 1807MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1734MHz | 1934MHz | ||
| Max Boost Clock | 1898MHz | 2088MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 10Gbps | 11Gbps | ||
| Max Voltage | 1.062v | 1.093v | ||
| GeForce GTX 1070FE Overclocking | ||||
| Stock | Overclocked | |||
| Core Clock | 1506MHz | 1681MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1683MHz | 1858MHz | ||
| Max Boost Clock | 1898MHz | 2062MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 8Gbps | 8.8Gbps | ||
| Max Voltage | 1.062v | 1.093v | ||
Both cards ended up overclocking by similar amounts. We were able to take the GTX 1080FE another 200MHz (+12% boost) on the GPU, and another 1Gbps (+10%) on the memory clock. The GTX 1070 could be pushed another 175MHz (+10% boost) on the GPU, while memory could go another 800Mbps (+10%) to 8.8Gbps.
Both of these are respectable overclocks, but compared to Maxwell 2 where our reference cards could do 20-25%, these aren’t nearly as extreme. Given NVIDIA’s comments on the 16nm FinFET voltage/frequency curve being steeper than 28nm, this could be first-hand evidence of that. It also indicates that NVIDIA has pushed GP104 closer to its limit, though that could easily be a consequence of the curve.
Given that this is our first look at Pascal, before diving into overall performance, let’s first take a look at an overclocking breakdown. NVIDIA offers 4 knobs to adjust when overclocking: overvolting (unlocking additional boost bins), increasing the power/temperature limits, the memory clock, and the GPU clock. Though all 4 will be adjusted for a final overclock, it’s often helpful to see whether it’s GPU overclocking or memory overclocking that delivers the greater impact, especially as it can highlight where the performance bottlenecks are on a card.
To examine this, we’ve gone ahead and benchmarked the GTX 1080 4 times: once with overvolting and increased power/temp limits (to serve as a baseline), once with the memory overclocked added, once with GPU overclock added, and finally with both the GPU and memory overclocks added.
| GeForce GTX 1080 Overclocking Performance | ||||||
| Power/Temp Limit (+20%) | Core (+12%) | Memory (+10%) | Cumulative | |||
| Tomb Raider |
+3%
|
+4%
|
+1%
|
+10%
|
||
| Ashes |
+1%
|
+9%
|
+1%
|
+10%
|
||
| Crysis 3 |
+4%
|
+4%
|
+2%
|
+11%
|
||
| The Witcher 3 |
+2%
|
+6%
|
+3%
|
+10%
|
||
| Grand Theft Auto V |
+1%
|
+4%
|
+2%
|
+8%
|
||
Across all 5 games, the results are clear and consistent: GPU overclocking contributes more to performance than memory overclocking. To be sure, both contribute, but even after compensating for the fact that the GPU overclock was a bit greater than the memory overclock (12% vs 10%), we still end up with the GPU more clearly contributing. Though I am a bit surprised that increasing the power/temperature limit didn't have more of an effect.
Overall we’re looking at an 8%-10% increase in performance from overclocking. It’s enough to further stretch the GTX 1080FE and GTX 1070FE’s leads, but it won’t radically alter performance.
Finally, let’s see the cost of overclocking in terms of power, temperature, and noise. For the GTX 1080FE, the power cost at the wall proves to be rather significant. An 11% Crysis 3 performance increase translates into a 60W increase in power consumption at the wall, essentially moving GTX 1080FE into the neighborhood of NVIDIA’s 250W cards like the GTX 980 Ti. The noise cost is also not insignificant, as GTX 1080FE has to ramp up to 52.2dB(A), a 4.6dB(A) increase in noise. Meanwhile FurMark essentially confirms these findings, with a smaller power increase but a similar increase in noise.
As for the GTX 1070FE, neither the increase in power consumption nor noise is quite as high as GTX 1080FE, though the performance uplift is also a bit smaller. The power penalty is just 21W at the wall for Crysis 3 and 38W for FurMark. This translates to a 2-3dB(A) increase in noise, topping out at 50.0dB for FurMark.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
200 Comments
View All Comments
TestKing123 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Sorry, too little too late. Waited this long, and the first review was Tomb Raider DX11?! Not 12?This review is both late AND rushed at the same time.
Mat3 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Testing Tomb Raider in DX11 is inexcusable.http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/231481-rise-of-t...
TheJian - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link
Furyx still loses to 980ti until 4K at which point the avg for both cards is under 30fps, and the mins are both below 20fps. IE, neither is playable. Even in AMD's case here we're looking at 7% gain (75.3 to 80.9). Looking at NV's new cards shows dx12 netting NV cards ~6% while AMD gets ~12% (time spy). This is pretty much a sneeze and will as noted here and elsewhere, it will depend on the game and how the gpu works. It won't be a blanket win for either side. Async won't be saving AMD, they'll have to actually make faster stuff. There is no point in even reporting victory at under 30fps...LOL.Also note in that link, while they are saying maxwell gained nothing, it's not exactly true. Only avg gained nothing (suggesting maybe limited by something else?), while min fps jumped pretty much exactly what AMD did. IE Nv 980ti min went from 56fps to 65fps. So while avg didn't jump, the min went way up giving a much smoother experience (amd gained 11fps on mins from 51 to 62). I'm more worried about mins than avgs. Tomb on AMD still loses by more than 10% so who cares? Sort of blows a hole in the theory that AMD will be faster in all dx12 stuff...LOL. Well maybe when you force the cards into territory nobody can play at (4k in Tomb Raiders case).
It would appear NV isn't spending much time yet on dx12, and they shouldn't. Even with 10-20% on windows 10 (I don't believe netmarketshare's numbers as they are a msft partner), most of those are NOT gamers. You can count dx12 games on ONE hand. Most of those OS's are either forced upgrades due to incorrect update settings (waking up to win10...LOL), or FREE on machine's under $200 etc. Even if 1/4 of them are dx12 capable gpus, that would be NV programming for 2.5%-5% of the PC market. Unlike AMD they were not forced to move on to dx12 due to lack of funding. AMD placed a bet that we'd move on, be forced by MSFT or get console help from xbox1 (didn't work, ps4 winning 2-1) so they could ignore dx11. Nvidia will move when needed, until then they're dominating where most of us are, which is 1080p or less, and DX11. It's comic when people point to AMD winning at 4k when it is usually a case where both sides can't hit 30fps even before maxing details. AMD management keeps aiming at stuff we are either not doing at all (4k less than 2%), or won't be doing for ages such as dx12 games being more than dx11 in your OS+your GPU being dx12 capable.
What is more important? Testing the use case that describes 99.9% of the current games (dx11 or below, win7/8/vista/xp/etc), or games that can be counted on ONE hand and run in an OS most of us hate. No hate isn't a strong word here when the OS has been FREE for a freaking year and still can't hit 20% even by a microsoft partner's likely BS numbers...LOL. Testing dx12 is a waste of time. I'd rather see 3-4 more dx11 games tested for a wider variety although I just read a dozen reviews to see 30+ games tested anyway.
ajlueke - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link
That would be fine if it was only dx12. Doesn't look like Nvidia is investing much time in Vulkan either, especially not on older hardware.http://www.pcgamer.com/doom-benchmarks-return-vulk...
Cygni - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Cool attention troll. Nobody cares what free reviews you choose to read or why.AndrewJacksonZA - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Typo on page 18: "The Test""Core i7-4960X hosed in an NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition" Hosed -> Housed
Michael Bay - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
I`d sure hose me a Core i7-4960X.AndrewJacksonZA - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
@Ryan & team: What was your reasoning for not including the new Doom in your 2016 GPU Bench game list? AFAIK it's the first indication of Vulkan performance for graphics cards.Thank you! :-)
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
We cooked up the list and locked in the games before Doom came out. It wasn't out until May 13th. GTX 1080 came out May 14th, by which point we had already started this article (and had published the preview).AndrewJacksonZA - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
OK, thank you. Any chance of adding it to the list please?I'm a Windows gamer, so my personal interest in the cross-platform Vulkan is pretty meh right now (only one title right now, hooray! /s) but there are probably going to be some devs are going to choose it over DX12 for that very reason, plus I'm sure that you have readers who are quite interested in it.