The prologue!
A while back DR sent me a PM whether I would like to try a “monster” graphics card in my PC – now after giving it all of like 5 seconds thought,I instantly said “hell yeah”(well my head voice did),and a few weeks later I had a little surprise delivered to me.
A very shiny looking GTX1080 Founders Edition card.
The story begins
Now looking at the box - it comes across as quite understated and conservative looking - almost understated unlike some graphics card boxes in the past which seem to rather blingy and full of various icons and emblems professing how l33t they are.
Even the included bumpf seemed more of the same - it reminded me of some expensive watch,etc in terms of the little wallet it is included in.
Now I got to say looking at the review pictures of the GTX1080FE,I was not sure what to make of the angular design,but in person it is actually quite a nice looking card,and I would say it does feel very well constructed,especially compared to my last higher end cards in the form of the 8800GTS 512MB and HD5850 1GB which were mostly plastic fantastics.
Now at the time I had somewhat “slightly” weaker card,and I had recently upgraded my ancient 1680X1050 jobbie to a nice new qHD UP2516D. However,with over a doubling off resolution over my previous monitor,I still needed to run things at 1920X1080.
The prospect was I could actually run things at native resolution AND AT MAXIMUM DETAILS!!
Now,as some might realise I am a “slight” SFF PC fan,so my current box is as follows:
1.)Xeon E3 1230 V2/Core i7 3770
2.)ASRock B75 mini-ITX motherboard(had a better one but it died,and I had not much choice)
3.)16GB 1600MHZ DDR4
4.)Corsair SF 450 SF-X 450W PSU
5.)Sandisk 480GB SSD
6.)2X2TB 7200RPM HDDs
7.)Aluminium Cubitek Mini Cube case
Its not state of the art by stretch of the imagination,but the old box still does a good job.
Now some of you might thinking – CAT,have you lost your banonos?? A pinted sized 450W PSU powering a monster like the GTX1080 – are you honestly going to try and blow that poor card up – its barely even had a full life yet.
Well,no folks,you see the GTX1080 might be a higher end card,but it certainly does not need a higher end power supply as you will see as my review trundles forward at its somewhat moose like pace only limited by my 7MB/1MB superfast Sky BB connection.