I imagine 2038Mhz is what his particular sample boosted to out of the box using GPU Boost 3.0. The advertised boost clock versus the actual boost clock will almost always be different. Rarely below; usually above, at least in the case of Pascal with decent cooling.
Are these cards speedbinned? My card boosted out of the box to 2037mhz my zotac amp extreme boosted higher. This doesnt necessairily mean the amp extreme will overclock higher than my hof but I wouldn't know as I left them both at stock.
BUt here are some quick comparisons between this and the amp extreme. Under stock conditions the Zo will boost higher, run quieter have higher idle temps. Lower load noise and under full 100% fan under load runs ever so slightly cooler than the hof. I think the Zo is just plain ugly.
In valley testing the zo actually lowered the fan rpm. THe zo has a very very quirky fan control. But short of watercooling damn the card is quiet but not silent.
For me the Hof is better looking has lower idle temps still a pretty quiet graphics card but nowhere near the zo in noise levels in terms of idle or load.
Also I should mention that hof has two years warranty and the zo 5 years. In actual real gaming the performance between the two is identical. a few mhz here or there is not enough to select one card over the other.
Both cards have performance at the top of the 1080 air cooled chain. Maybe the Asus is another contender.
Both card I would consider unique in their styling but it very marmite based. I personally prefer the hof looks over the zotac.
Also becuase of the strange fan control of the Zo it revs up the fan every so often if left to it own devices. THis revving up every few seconds is irritating. there is no way to fix this and Zotac have had many complaints about it. At least give the end user the ability to change this. THe only way to bypass rather than a fix is to select the fan to manually spin at 30%+ this makes the card audible. A bios update by Zotac could make this very good card even better.
The hof has some unusal things going on with it as well. WHat with teh selfie looking gfx card support stick? The Zo is bigger and heavier and that doesn't need one. And maybe Mr 8 pack can explain what the button on back of the the hof 1080 does because all I am finding is it ramps up the fan to 100% I didn't notice any increase clock speed or anything. And if it is a 100% fan button then what the point as you can do that via software. Stop with the gimmicks and use the costs wasted on those and making the card even better. Maybe better warranty?
The Hof is big but the Zo is even bigger. So some careful planning is needed if it is to be used in a smallish case or running sli.