Conclusion

Conclusion

MSI has done a nice job with the new Lightning. I do kind of miss the yellow theme its predecessors had though, perhaps the customizable included stickers could have gotten a yellow version as well? The facts are simple though, it is big and bulky, but that does cool properly. Fact is also that thanks to Nvidia's limiters all 1080 Ti cards clock roughly the same. And that is where Nvidia makes it very difficult for the brands like MSI to really shine with a ginormous tweak. The new Lightning Z edition GTX 1080 Ti is a funky little dude with that really nice RGB implementation, and I like that though also understand it won't be everybody's cup of Darjeeling tea. The MSRP of 699 USD is for the the Founders Edition. MSI is selling this puppy for roughly $749. Compared to a reference card overall you are looking at an up-to 10% on average extra in performance and 15% when tweaked. And that means the product as tested today passes Titan X performance levels. 

 Aesthetics

The GTX 1080 Ti Lightning Z is a proper nice looking card. It has that nice dark and and lightning appeal to it from the PCB to both sides, the LED inclusion has been done subtly and can be configured in any manner you prefer with Mystic Light software, the choice is yours. We do remain skeptical about backplates, they potentially can trap heat and thus warm up the PCB. But the flip-side is that they can look better and can protect your PCB and components from damage and, well, they can look nice as they can have a certain aesthetic appeal. Combined with that LED logo and cooling block admittedly I have to admit, this is looking very tasteful. So in the end, on looks you certainly get that premium feel of detailed aesthetics and quality. All that combined with a nicely designed 14 phase GPU setup on a matte black PCB, well what's not to like, eh?

Cooling & Noise Levels

The reference design (Founders Edition) of the GTX 1080 Ti is set at an offset threshold of 80 degrees C and quite easily hits 84 Degrees C under load/stress. As such, the reference card, once that GPU gets warmer, will clock down on voltage and that dynamic turbo clock to try and keep the card at that temperature threshold. That's throttling and it's part of the design and falls within advertised turbo frequencies. The GTX 1080 Ti Lightning Z runs at only around the 65 Degrees C marker, and with the temperature threshold set at 80 Degrees C it has no need to throttle whatsoever. Please do note that you will need proper ventilation inside your chassis to achieve that number as the card oozes out warm air at the top side and cooler vents. Overall though the cooling design shaves off over 10 to 15 Degrees C over reference. As mentioned expect (moderate) sound pressure values in the 38~39 dBA range at max under load and warm circumstances. So you can hear a tiny bit of airflow. We did hear some coil noises/whine at high FPS, you likely will not hear it inside a closed chassis. Weirdly enough we seem to hear it with all 1080 Ti cards we have tested to date. There is one side note I need to make, in the 2-3 seconds the card moves from passive to active fans, these fans spin up and you can hear that. Some might find that annoying. I do expect to see a BIOS update from MSI to address this. No biggy, but it can be a hindrance to some.

Power Consumption

The GP102-350-A1 Pascal GPU is rated as having a 250 Watt TDP. This GTX 1080 Ti Lightning sits at almost 340 Watts depending on your game title and GPU load. This higher wattage has everything to do with the factory tweak. At this performance level you are looking at 450~500 Watts for our PC in total, that is still okay. We think a 600~650 Watt PSU would be sufficient and, if you go with 2-way SLI, an 800~900 Watt power supply is recommended. Remember, when purchasing a PSU aim to double up in Wattage as your PSU is most efficient when it is under 50% load. Here again keep in mind we measure peak power consumption, the average power consumption is a good notch lower depending on GPU utilization. Also, if you plan to overclock the CPU/memory and/or GPU with added voltage, please do purchase a power supply with enough reserve. People often underestimate it, but if you tweak all three aforementioned variables, you can easily add 200 Watts to your peak power consumption budget.

Gaming Performance

From 1080P to Ultra HD the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti shows some serious numbers. But here's a paradox - the more difficult things get - the better the product will perform. E.g. Ultra HD is its true domain. Much like fine wine that ages well, that means this GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will last you a long time with future more GPU intensive games. This much performance and 11 GB of GDDR5X graphics memory helps you out in Ultra HD, DSR, VR and hefty complex anti-aliasing modes. That, and of course the latest gaming titles. I consider this to be a very viable single GPU solution that allows you to game properly in Ultra HD with some very nice eye candy enabled with a single GPU. Drivers wise we can't complain at all, we did not stumble into any issues. Performance wise, really there's not one game that won't run seriously well at the very best image quality settings. Gaming you must do with a nice Ultra HD monitor of course, or at least a 2560x1440 screen. Now, we can discuss the advantages of that 11 GB frame-buffer, but hey, you can draw your own conclusions there as performance isn't limited. And with 11 GB of it, you won't run out of graphics memory for years to come, right? So in that respect the card is rather future proof.

Overclocking

This card has a nice factory tweak applied for you already. It is roughly your maximum with maybe ~75 MHz room left on that GPU base clock frequency. As such, at default this card hovers in that familiar ~2,050 MHz range. So there is no real need to overclock per se as hey, this tweak is covered by your warranty as well. If you do want to tweak, you'll get a bit more out of the base clock and roughly 1.2 GHz on the memory. You can also allow the board power limiter to go up towards 116%. All these factors combined (power limiter/GPU clock/MEM clock) offer a notch more performance. Especially the memory tweak helps as the GP102 GPUs is a bit memory deprived. The LN2 BIOS mode is nice to fiddle around with, but your power consumption goes up too hard to be something attractive. Nice is the quad-voltage support, though we doubt that would be a decisive factor for anyone to purchase the card. 

Concluding

MSI offers a terrific card with the new Lightning Z, and we sure missed the Lightning series ! It is properly built and oozes quality. Granted, it's a big dude alright. Tweaking performance is good, yet remains limited to whatever Nvidia dictates - and that is the reality and micro-managed margin we look at these days. The size and weight you do need to factor in though, some dislike three slot designs and that weight, well you need to secure the card properly as that's a lot of pressure on any PCI Express slot. Your stress gaming temperature will sit at a nice low  ~65 Degrees C threshold, which is excellent considering what GPU lies under the hood! In my previous 1080 Ti review I have not recommended cards like these for 1080p gaming. I am revising that claim a bit as there are people that want 144 FPS on their 144 Hz monitor of course. Next to that, 1080p rendering with DSR enabled also can have its benefits, and this card would be perfect for that. Broadly speaking though, at 2560x1440 the card really kicks in and at this resolution the 1080 Ti actually makes a lot of sense as it has heaps of power and memory hence it is going to last you a long time. Really, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is that Wolf Titan X in disguise. Nvidia had to do something to it and decided to ditch 1 GB of memory, bringing that VRAM number to a weird 11 GB. This means slightly fewer ROPs and a rather unusual 352-bit memory bus as well. But then they do use faster DDR5X memory and slightly faster than Titan X clock frequencies. So the performance drop is immediately annihilated and in fact the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is as fast or sometimes even faster compared to the Titan X (Pascal). You've seen the numbers, for Ultra HD gamers and even 2560x1440 gamers this product works out well, really well. Overall we are impressed by the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, very much so. In closing, we feel the MSI Lightning Z edition GTX 1080 Ti is a truly lovely enthusiast class product. But so is the Gaming X version and realistically performance wise you are not going to see much of a difference. The card is very silent (aside from the fan spinning up) and also remains cool. You have seen the thermal images, these show good proper results as the card throughout all locations remains at relatively proper temps. If you can pick it up for the right price then we can wholeheartedly recommend it. The heart of this beast is a GP102 GPU and it is one of the fastest graphics cards your money can get you as hey, this dawg is up-to 40% faster than the GTX 1080 and can be up-to twice as fast as one GTX 1070. It is good the see the lightning back in action. We like it very much, as long as that final MSRP remains reasonable.

 - H

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