MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio Review

Presentation, Design and Features

Note: Be mindful that estimating and highlights for video cards in light of a given illustrations chip can fluctuate, contingent upon the genuine card creator. AMD and Nvidia influence video "to reference cards" in light of their designs processors, which they some of the time convey for survey.
Outsider accomplices—MSI, Sapphire, Gigabyte, EVGA, Asus, and numerous others—make and offer cards that regularly cling intently to the plan of these reference loads up ("stock loads up"), and in addition variants with slight contrasts in port setup, timing, the sum and speed of locally available memory, and the cooling fans or warmth sinks introduced. Make certain the specs and ports/associations on any "accomplice" board you're taking a gander at coordinate what we've looked into before making any suspicions. Here, we're checking on one of MSI's forms of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, an overclocked, RGB-lit powerhouse rendition of the card with three fans and some other intriguing additions.

You can purchase a top of the line illustrations card, for example, the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64$799.00 at Amazon or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition$700.00 at Nvidia, which dispatch coordinate from the chip creator as well as game generally humble, institutionalized cooler plans. In any case, at that point there are top of the line—take note of the italics—illustrations cards, similar to the Aorus GTX 1080 Ti Edition$930.99 at Amazon, which have an indistinguishable inward silicon from the more essential reference-outline cards, yet have expound cooling setups that consider out-of-the-crate overclocking, and are frequently furnished nowadays with lavish backplates and RGB lighting.

Huge numbers of these overbuilt, overclocked, and boldly equipped cards cost generously more than their more unobtrusive partners, yet frequently convey just single-digit execution increases out of the case, contrasted with lesser or stock-timed renditions of cards with the same inner silicon. In any case, that doesn't prevent excited purchasers from grabbing them up for their additional feel, and maybe the expectation of doing further overclocking to edge outline rates significantly higher.

The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio unquestionably falls into the last classification of top of the line gaming cards, with its 75MHz lift clock knock over the standard Founders Edition adaptation of the card, a rainbow-like light bar running over its edge, and a triple risk of fans to keep your top of the line gaming rig running moderately cool and calm. It's additionally monstrous, at around 12.5 inches in length and 5 inches wide, so put forth beyond any doubt your defense is bounty large before taking a gander at this card. Furthermore, you'll require a touch of squirm room in your financial plan, also, as this $799 card is $100 more costly than the slightest expensive GeForce GTX 1080 Ti that we could discover in stock when we composed this, and $40 more costly than the already said Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Edition, itself far, a long way from a contracting violet GTX 1080 Ti.

In our testing, the MSI card outpaced that Aorus board pretty reliably, making it the speediest gaming-particular illustrations card we've tried to date. It's an effective entertainer for 4K gaming, or in the event that you have a lesser-determination screen with high invigorate rates. However, given its high cost, is it worth spending lavishly for the MSI card versus the many "lesser" GTX 1080 Ti alternatives that are about as intense?

A considerable measure of that choice will boil down to the amount you esteem the card's plan and highlights. We should dive in.

Plan and Features

We're not going to complete a profound plunge of what influences the silicon in this card to sing. For that, see our underlying audit of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition$700.00 at Nvidia. Here's a snappy outline that shows how the GTX 1080 Ti card as a class stacks up against the 2016 "Pascal"- based Nvidia Titan X (which depends on a similar chip) and the GeForce GTX 1080 it supplanted as the gamer's leader card...

The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio has an indistinguishable fundamental specs from the Founders Edition form of the GTX 1080 Ti, including the 11GB of 11,000 MHz memory. In any case, MSI wrenches up the center GPU clock rates to a best lift check of 1,657MHz in the out-of-the-case Gaming Mode.

Utilizing MSI's Gaming App utility, you can increase the clock speed to 1,683 MHz in the pre-designed OC Mode, or potentially drive things much further without anyone else. We did the greater part of our testing in the standard Gaming Mode, which is the card's out-of-the-case setting.

MSI Gaming App

Another bit of programming related with this card is MSI's Mystic Light. This product likewise gives you a chance to control the card's unmistakable RGB lighting bar, which we'll get to without further ado.

Outwardly, this is an appealing card that looks preferred to our eyes over the contending Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Edition, however it likewise costs more. Gone are the silver-metal points and thin blower cooler that Nvidia conveys to the table with its Founders Edition cards. This thing is particularly its own monster—and a major brute at that. You can see it here by the Founders Edition form of the GTX 1080 Ti, approaching like Andre the Giant.

Its lighting perspectives are the card's most striking element, difficult to miss on the off chance that you introduce the card in a windowed case. Red lights enlighten the cooler and the edge of the card. Be that as it may, it's the L-molded programmable RGB strip that keeps running along the edge that genuinely emerges—particularly if it's running a moving rainbow of hues.

Both the bar that keeps running over the edge of the card's backplate and the MSI logo that is cut into the backplate get the RGB treatment here. You can pick between a few lighting impacts, and your decision of a strong shading, should you bashful far from the range of rainbow choices.

What's more, for those minutes when you don't need your designs card to communicate its reality by radiating photons out the side of your case window, the Mystic Light programming likewise gives you a chance to kill all the card's LEDs decently effectively. All things considered, if lights don't make a difference much to you, there are altogether more affordable models of the GTX 1080 Ti that will perform about also, however illuminate a mess less.

At 12.5 inches in length and 5 inches wide, the MSI Gaming X Trio is really an inch longer than the Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti we tried before in 2017, however its cooler is somewhat more slender than the one found on the Aorus card. In any case, you'll require no less than three exhaust extension spaces for both of these GTX 1080 Ti cards. Furthermore, on the off chance that you intend to utilize the metal fortification bar that boats in the case with the MSI Gaming X Trio, as we did underneath, you'll require four extra spaces.

The bar mounts in a vacant space three openings beneath the primary space involved by this double opening card. Moored by means of screws to the opening, much the same as you would mount an illustrations card, its point is to help the designs card above it. The bar accompanies some elastic cushions on its best edge, to pad the region where the card above it interacts with the bar. As much as we can value giving a major card like this some additional help, the bar feels shaky when introduced, and it doesn't keep the MSI Gaming X Trio immovably set up. Since the main place the bar gets tied down to your PC suspension for help is at the back opening region, how much help it can supply to your illustrations card is at any rate incompletely controlled by how inflexible the metal is at the back of your case.

To put it plainly, the help bar is a decent thought in principle, and it unquestionably supplies some extra help. Be that as it may, we wouldn't feel good moving our test framework around a considerable measure with this card and the help bar introduced. What's more, we unquestionably wouldn't have any desire to transport a framework with this setup introduced, bar or no bar. Also, with all the stylish comforts MSI incorporated with the Gaming X Trio, staying the plain dark metal ban underneath takes away from the general look of your fabricate. All that stated, given the tremendous contrasts in the event that sizes and introductions, we're not precisely beyond any doubt what else MSI could do to think of a superior all inclusive help bar for a designs card.

As said before, you'll locate a decent brushed-metal backplate on the card, with the mandatory MSI winged serpent logo. We do like the triple-tone dark outline here more than the splendidly painted plans we've seen on some other costly designs cards.

On the other side, Gaming X triple-fan Trio's "Tri-Frozr" cooler commands, together with 3 "Torx 2.0" fans that the organization says have more extreme sharp edges for creating "22 percent more pneumatic force," alongside twofold metal balls in the fan engines for calmer task. While a lot of that is difficult to confirm without a disengaged wind burrow and exact instruments, we can state that the MSI Gaming X Trio was shockingly calm while testing.

Just when we kicked the card into OC Mode for our last tests did we truly see the fan clamor begin to increase.

Ports

Nvidia expelled the huge DVI connector from its Founders Edition plan of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. It was done, at any rate to some degree, to enhance cooling. The card's fan blower-style cooler pushes the vast majority of its freshen up the rear edge of the device card, and a single DVI port would obstruct that stream, in any event to a degree. That is not an issue with this current card's outside plan, so MSI brought the DVI connector back, and swapped out one of alternate ports, too.

The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio brandishes a double connection DVI-D connector, two DisplayPort 1.4 connectors, with a couple of 2.0 ports HDMI. Nvidia's Edition Founders card, by correlation, has 3 DisplayPorts and one solitary HDMI.

One final thing to remember in case you're thinking about this card is its energy connector prerequisites. You'll require a couple of an eight-stick PCI Express connectors from your energy supply to get this card running, despite the fact that the organization includes a six-stick to-eight-stick connector in the crate to help on that front. By examination, the Founders Edition GTX 1080 Ti requires one eight-stick, and one six-stick. So make sure you have those power leads accessible, and that your energy supply can deal with the power draw of this card. MSI prescribes a 600-watt control supply at the very least.

Execution Testing and Conclusion

As we've said in our other late card audits, things are in motion nowadays with regards to testing cards, on account of two advances attempting to pick up footing.

The first of these is DirectX 12 (DX12), which has in fact been around since 2015. There are as yet couple of certifiable benchmarks for Microsoft's most recent gaming-centered API. Be that as it may, DX12 will probably be the standard illustrations API later on, and this card was intended to keep going for a couple of years, if not longer. So it's critical to know whether a card can deal with DX12 a long time before purchasing. We tried this GeForce GTX 1080 Ti with the most up to date DX12-proficient diversions we had available, including Hitman (the 2016 version) and Rise of the Tomb Raider, and additionally Futuremark's 3DMark DX12 benchmark, Time Spy. We tried a heap of recreations utilizing DirectX 11, as well, since that API will probably still be in wide use for no less than a couple of more years.

The other point is virtual reality (VR) bolster. A couple of VR-centered benchmarks are rising, including VRMark. Be that as it may, we haven't had an opportunity to test the majority of our current cards for their VR capacities yet, so for the time being it's additionally critical to remember the necessities from the earpiece makers, HTC on account of its new HTC Vive$499.00 at Oculus and Amazon with its Oculus Rift$400.00 at Amazon. Right now, benchmark VR bolster for those earpiece begins with AMD RX Radeon 479 $350.99 at Amazon (or the more up to date RX 580) and the GeForce Nvidia GTX 1060$300 at Nvidia. Since the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is a whole lot more capable than both of those cards, it ought to have no issues dealing with VR titles accessible today, and for the following couple of years in any event.

Thus on to the benchmarks. We built up in our audit of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition$700.00 at Nvidia prior in 2017 that the GTX Nvidia 1080 Ti is the most capable standard illustrations chip accessible today for PC gamers. And keeping in mind that AMD's best end AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 has gone onto the scene from that point forward, it contends with the GTX 1080 (non-Ti) and the more current Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition, not Nvidia's best end GTX 1080 Ti card. So the GP102 silicon sitting under this present card's cooling metal should put it at or close to the highest point of our execution outlines as a matter of course. As noted before, we speculate the primary rivalry to this card in our diagrams will be both the standard Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition$699.00 at Nvidia, a card that offers for $699 coordinate from Nvidia, and the Aorus GTX 1080 Ti Edition$929.99 at Amazon, an overclocked rendition of a similar card with an extensive cooler and LED lighting that sold for $769 when we composed this. That makes the MSI card we're taking a gander at here the most costly designs card we've taken a gander at since the $1,200 Nvidia Pascal Titan X late in 2016. Note however, when we composed this that the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio came with a free duplicate of Destiny 2 with buy. On the off chance that that diversion intrigues you, make certain to check the insights about dates and areas of accessibility before purchasing.

We ran every one of our tests underneath—for the MSI Gaming X Trio, and in addition alternate cards—at their out-of-the-container settings. After we complete our essential benchmarks, we'll investigate what sort of additional execution (assuming any), changing from the standard Gaming Mode to the OC Mode will get you with MSI's triple-fan GTX 1080 Ti.

3DMark Fire Strike Ultra

We began off our testing with Futuremark's 2013 rendition of 3DMark, particularly the suite's Fire Strike Ultra subtest. Fire Strike is an engineered test intended to gauge general gaming execution. Ultra is intended to mimic the worries of diversion illustrations rendering at 4K.

As we expected, the MSI card arrived at the best here. Be that as it may, it was scarcely in front of the Aorus GTX 1080 Ti. What's more, the stock GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition was only 4.1 percent behind the $100-pricier MSI card.

The Aorus card really pulled ahead here, however that card and the MSI Gaming X Trio are only 0.2 percent separated, adequately tied. Again the two overclocked GTX 1080 Tis are around 4 percent in front of the more affordable Founders Edition form.

How about we begin our amusement testing with some more seasoned recreations. Here, we started up the 2013 reboot of the exemplary title Tomb Raider, testing at the most astounding point of interest preset ("Ultimate") and three resolutions.

Here, the MSI Gaming X Trio has a built up lead over everything else, including the other two GTX 1080 Ti cards in our graphs. Be that as it may, the Aorus and MSI cards are inside a couple of edges for each second (fps) at the best determination (4K).

Next, we revealed the extremely requesting certifiable gaming benchmark test incorporated with the more seasoned title Sleeping Dogs…

Things look better here for the MSI card, especially at 1080p, where it pulled 20fps in front of the Aorus card. Once more, however, just a couple of fps isolated the Aorus and MSI cards at 4K. In any case, the MSI card managed to tick up over 60fps.

Bioshock Infinite

The famous title Bioshock Infinite isn't excessively requesting, yet it's a prevalent one with stellar great looks. In its implicit benchmark program, we set the designs level to the most elevated preset (Ultra+DDOF)…

For reasons unknown, the MSI Gaming X Trio card here left everything else, hitting almost 300fps at 1080p, and pulling more than 30fps in front of the Aorus card at 4K. We don't know why the MSI card did as such well here, however this title is likewise mature enough that each card here effectively conveys smooth casing rates.

Long ways Primal

Next, we moved to a later diversion, discharged in 2016. Ubisoft's most recent open-world first-individual chasing amusement is a standout amongst the most requesting titles we utilize, on account of its rich foliage, point by point shadows, and generally unimaginable situations.

Things were back to our pretty much decided pattern on this test. The MSI Gaming X Trio was again ahead of the pack, yet again the Aorus card stuck close at all three resolutions.

Ascent of the Tomb Raider

Lara Croft rises by and by in the mid 2016 emphasis of Square Enix's long-running activity establishment. As our saint attempts to unfurl an antiquated riddle (and uncover the key to everlasting status) in front of the old and dangerous Order of Trinity, she gallivants through a huge number of complex barometrical situations, from parched tombs to the cold Siberian wild. A dynamic climate framework, and the complexities of Lara's breeze tousled hair, add to the amusement's visual many-sided quality.

Once more, we see the pattern here of the MSI card edging only a leader of the contending Aorus, with the Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition additionally back, yet not precisely left behind.

The most up to date diversion in the Hitman establishment discovers Agent 47 starting over, and setting out on a voyage of self-disclosure as an educator at a school for underprivileged kids. Simply joking, obviously; he slaughters heaps of individuals in this one, much the same as the rest. It offers dazzling designs in both DX11 and DX12 assortments, however.

We utilized the DX12 setting here, in light of the fact that in case you're spending this much on a card, you will need to play on the most recent settings, regardless of whether DX11 and DX12 appear to be identical on this benchmark.

Once more, the MSI Gaming X Trio was a couple of fps in front of the Aorus Edition card at 4K, however at bring down resolutions, the MSI card pulled encourage ahead. The genuine story here, however, is how much better the two overclocked 1080 Ti cards did at 1080p over the stock-timed Founders Edition elective. All things considered, all are well over 100fps at that determination. We don't know our eyes could differentiate in the vicinity of 156fps—at any rate not without some sort of bionic expansion.

This is the initial 3DMark test utilizing DirectX 12, so it ought to hypothetically demonstrate how cards stack up utilizing this juvenile API. As per the designers, "With its unadulterated DirectX 12 motor, developed starting from the earliest stage bolster new highlights like offbeat register, unequivocal multi-connector, and multi-threading, Time Spy is a perfect benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 execution of the most recent illustrations cards."

On this engineered DX12 test, the MSI Gaming X Trio figured out how to pull about 9 percent in front of the standard Founders Edition adaptation of the 1080 Ti, and right around 5 percent in front of the Aorus GTX 1080 Ti. Great show.

Futuremark VRMark

From the producer of 3DMark comes its first VR benchmark. No headset is required to run the trial, on the off chance that you'd get a kick out of the chance to test your own particular apparatus before bouncing into a VR-headset speculation.

VR has high equipment necessities, so this test is intended to indicate general capacity for VR. We ran the Orange Room subtest for current amusement execution, instead without bounds looking Blue Room test that no illustrations card can pass yet.

A VR-preparation thumbs-up is an inescapable result when testing these cards for their fundamental VR capacities, as every one of them on this outline are significantly more intense than the gauge suggestions for smooth VR. Any of them ought to convey great VR execution for a considerable length of time to come. So, the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio pulled almost 13 percent in front of the Founders Edition of a similar card, and around 11 percent in front of the Aorus show. Unusually, however, the lower-end GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 Ti cards scored generally the same as the pricier, by and large significantly more effective MSI card. Notwithstanding, every card here, spare maybe for the lower-end XFX Radeon RX 580 GTX XXX, is sufficiently effective to deal with VR gaming for quite a long time to come.

Testing With OC Mode

As we said before, we ran every one of our benchmarks for the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio in the standard Gaming Mode, which has an evaluated support clock of 1,657MHz. After our standard benchmark run, we utilized MSI's Gaming App to then change the card to the OC Mode, which publicizes a higher lift clock of 1,683MHz. In the wake of drawing in OC Mode and rebooting, we reran a portion of our tests.

With OC Mode empowered, we saw our 3DMark Ultra Graphics subscore bounce from 6,997 to 7,234, an expansion of 3.4 percent over the card's Gaming Mode, and a 6.8 percent expansion over what we saw from the standard GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition. We additionally increased 1fps at 4K in Rise of the Tomb Raider (from 67.6fps to 68.5fps), yet in Far Cry Primal, execution really dropped somewhat, from 60fps to 58fps. Execution was additionally somewhat bring down on two of the three resolutions in OC Mode on Tom Clancy's The Division when running the card in OC Mode.

In light of the above discoveries, in addition to some exceptionally observable graphical glitching amid the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark (especially at bring down resolutions), we presume the chip in the MSI card is being pushed going as far as possible in OC Mode. Obviously, you could invest a lot of energy with overclocking programming, (for example, MSI's Afterburner), deliberately tinkering with voltage upticks and designs and memory modifications. All things considered, on the off chance that you expect anything fundamentally speedier than this card, you ought to likely either put resources into a significantly pricier Pascal Titan X$1,799.95 at Amazon, or sit tight for the following enormous designs card headway to tag along. All things considered, signs are that AMD wouldn't press Nvidia with its cutting edge top of the line "Navi" chips soon (not expected land until the center of 2018, at the most punctual). So Nvidia has no genuine motivation to push out its cutting edge "Volta" design. Cards like this overclocked GTX 1080 Ti are probably going to remain the best you'll discover in the top of the line buyer gaming market for in any event the not so distant future.

Conclusion

Any of these deceived out, overclocked top of the line illustrations cards is hard to contend for from an esteem point of view. With a top of the line illustrations processor inside, estimating will begin quite high. Include extravagant custom cooling equipment and, just like the case with this card, a custom PCB, and valuing is just going to hop up from that point.

All things considered, while the $799 soliciting cost from the MSI GeForce GTX 180 Ti Gaming X Trio is high in a relative sense, the organization adds a considerable amount as far as the two feel and cooling equipment for that additional $100. Furthermore, the RGB light bar on the edge/backplate is both more uncommon and, we think, more alluring than simply slapping a couple of RGB LEDs some place inside the fan cover or behind the organization logo.

We certainly think this card is more alluring than the contending Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Edition, which offers for somewhat less. What's more, the Trio's...well, trio of fans kept it running sensibly calm amid our testing, however the card was discernibly louder when running with the OC Mode overclock preset locked in.

There's additionally the way that MSI's card performed better out of the container, without that OC Mode empowered, than some other card we've tried to date, put something aside for the substantially pricier Nvidia Titan X. (Which is to a great extent unessential from a simply gaming angle, now) If you are searching for this sort of execution and will pay for it, in addition to you like the card's feel, it's a fine choice. Simply recall that it's additionally decidedly monstrous, at well finished a foot long. So make certain your case has heaps of freedom.

Regardless we feel that most clients looking for a GTX 1080 Ti card are in an ideal situation settling on either a Founders Edition card ($700 from Nvidia, when in stock) or one of the lesser models, sold by MSI and numerous others, that were offering for about $710 and up when we composed this. These cards don't have the favor coolers or RGB lights of the more costly models, and they might be somewhat louder than MSI's overclocked GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio. Be that as it may, they ought to perform well inside 10 rate purposes of MSI's overclocked card, for near $100 less.