Since the dawn of mankind, PC gamers have been craving for new innovations and leaps in the graphics card department. For the past few years however, desktop computer hardware just hasn’t been, how shall we put it, breathtaking and impressive.
NVIDIA combines the best of processing efficiency and speed to create the GeForce GTX line, essentially giving us that technological and feature-heavy leap all PC gaming enthusiasts needed since forever. Depending on whether you want to go High or Ultra in your games setting without setting your computer on fire, the GTX line comes in either the 1070 or 1080 flavour. Of course, you’ll need to know why having either one matters in the short and long run.
We’re happy to oblige, with 5 key reasons.
#1: Its Pascal Architecture Is Peerless
“Pascal” isn’t just some fancy polymath term slap dashed onto some graphics card; it’s the name of the new GPU architecture NVIDIA created. This architecture uses a smaller manufacturing process containing a huge number of smaller transistors on its sexy silicon card. This means higher performance with a much smaller effect on power consumption, which also means less heat and weird noise.
This also means a LOT of CUDA cores (try 2560 of them) that make all this efficient graphics processing all the more faster without melting itself. It’s right now the most advanced of its kind, being able to support new DirectX 12 features and HDR and 4K gaming, with nary a stutter and bad rendering even in 1080.
It also has high-bandwidth GDDR5X which means all that data for your graphics gets processed quicker than anything at this point in time. It’s like a mini-chamber that pulls out extra RAM when your PC’s own memory bites off more than it can chew. There’s really no such thing as too much RAM in this demanding day and age, right?
#2: It Looks Damn Sexy On The Outside
Not many graphics cards can boast the look to match its performance: most of them look like the same old silicon-based cards with a few fancy fans and wires attached to them. Now the GTX 1080 and 1070? Boy, do they look sleek and futuristic.
If we were to tell you that it could transform into a Decepticon and shiv you by the neck, you wouldn’t be surprised. Heck, it looks like it could have come out from a Decepticon. Let’s have these ace pictures from the interwebs prove to you that sometimes style can always be on par with substance.
#3: It Does Hell Of A Lot For Its Price Tag
In a nutshell, the GTX 1080 card is a beast when it comes to performance. When you have a gaming-ready desktop PC that can run The Witcher 3, The Division, and Doom (2016 version) on High settings, you need something like NVIDIA’s finest to go beyond Ultra on 4K video. And we haven’t even touched on its highly overclocking potential. With a 1607MHz core clock, a 1733MHz boost clock, and 10,000MHz memory speed, the sky’s the limit unless there’s an output higher than 1080 right now.
The bonuses don’t stop at just how it performs. Integrated features like the Ansel app (named after the famous American photographer) let you pause the game anywhere for that beautiful screenshot (with pre-made filters for the Instagram generation) you want to take in your Mirror’s Edge Catalyst session and then show it off to your friends. Best of all, it lets you take these screenshots in ANY angle; just adjust the camera in any 360 degrees direction and snap away.
#4: VR Baby!
You need to have a high framerate and computational power to make your graphical VR experience a pleasant smooth-sailing one. Guess what? The GTX 1080 and 1070 can help you out immensely in that field.
There is no frame stuttering and hiccups when running VR titles on the highest setting possible while this metallic wonder is running in your rig. The experience is as seamless as humanly possible; it’s safe to say that both GTXs can have the “VR-Ready” label stamped onto them. Preferably not on its already-sexy chassis though; that’s like plastering your Maserati with Goodyear Tires logos.
#5: It Comes Bundled With The Highly-Anticipated Gears of War 4
Gears of War 4
Rev up your Lancers if you’re down for some cover-based shooter action. This R-rated third-person shooter juggernaut from Microsoft and The Coalition is available FREE if you buy the GeForce GTX 1080 and 1070. Find out more at the Redemption site here.
That’s a good thing: what better way to showcase the power of the new GTX line of cards than with a game heavily reliant on beautiful vistas, a robust and ever-evolving Unreal Engine 4 that showcases the best in graphics, and oodles of over-the-top gore and gibs made courtesy by guns with chainsaws attached to them? If beauty is defined by the chaos it brings, then Gears of War 4 is quite the looker indeed.
Watch some 4K footage of the game running on a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 right here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn4QIsbwkMY