Gigabyte GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming

[The-Hoff]

My card arrives tomorrow but after reading up about it in more detail this evening I have read of mass QC problems like coil whine, fan catching on the frame and bent fins. I even heard there maybe a mass recall due to the production.
Surely this is has all been blown out of proportion, but for the price I paid, I will return my card if I get even a whiff of bent fins.
Has anyone received theirs yet?

 

[The-Hoff]

I returned 3 Gigabyte 780 WF editions for having a mix of all three of the faults you listed there so this isnt a new thing. All three had the fan catching on the casing fault and 2 had bent fins

Ah right, I guess it will be luck of the draw. I will give this card one chance tomorrow and fingers crossed it will be all okay. If it lets me down it won't be getting a second chance, instead I will jump to the Zotac Amp Extreme.

 

[The-Hoff]

Ouch, definitely looks like its been squashed in the packaging.

 

[The-Hoff]

This is an issue only with the samples shipped to media and those not sold in Europe. It was indeed a problem with the packaging.
The reason we only started selling this card this week is that we fixed it in our Netherlands warehouse and reworked the packaging for this not to happen.

Thanks for chipping in with this info. My card arrives today and what is normally a joyous occasion, I wasn't looking forward to receiving my shiney new gpu and I was automatically assuming I would be receiving a damaged one before I even saw it. My hopes are raised once more

 

[The-Hoff]

Just to let you guys know, I received my card. Initial bad luck as my fins were bent as in the above image. Maybe mine was not as severe as I was able to delicately open and straighten them with a credit card (not a knife as it will scratch), and they look as good as new. I can see what they did to try improve the packaging but it will not work. The fins are too exposed. They should have been under the shroud. I consider myself lucky and I had bent fins, many others may have worse bent fins. I can see many RMA's just over fins.

As for everything else, it looks great and my fans run free, so maybe the new packaging has resolved that side of it. I have not installed it yet so here's hoping "coil Whine" doesn't ruin the party


EDIT - Extra feedback after playing with the card for a couple of hours and I am so angry you would not believe. This card has 2 modes, gaming and OC. This card crashes using 3DMark on OC mode. This card will not go above 2000mhz without a driver crash - pathetic.
I have not even tried overclocking because it will not even reach its OWN factory overclock. These cards aren't binned, they are from the bottom of the pile with a fancy cooler put on top. I have a 2nd FE card and that hits over 2000mhz with the lowly reference cooler. This card is an absolute behemoth and it can't even come close to my FE.
I know it is all about the silicone lottery but if a beast of a card with a cooler like this cannot even reach its own preset overclock, then there are serious problems with Gigabytes testing. I hope you all have better luck with your cards but this incident with mine shows that it is down to luck whether it runs well and nothing to do with the fancy cooler....as I have just proved, its a very poor one.
My refund will be initiated first thing tomorrow.

Sorry if I sound like a sour puss, but this has seriously ruined my weekend!!!

 

[The-Hoff]

The 1080 xtreme has a fully supported boost mode up to 1873mhz with the OC switch on, I think beyond that you are on your own. Are you saying it crashes at 1873 boost or when you are applying your own OC ?

Personally, I would only expect a solid 2GHZ+ boost clock from any 1080 card without a water-block on it.

My 980ti xtreme waterforce is the best card i have ever owned, cant wait to get the same in 1080ti form.

The OC mode, which brings it to 1936mhz (advertised on the website spec, but the boost always goes slightly higher on most 1080's anyway), crashes when running 3Dmark. The "OC Mode" is clearly advertised on the specs of this card, and I haven't added any extra core clock.
Anyway, It boosts itself to just over 2000mhz then crashes. I would be miffed if I couldn't manually overclock 1mhz over the factory overclock, but the fact that it can't even hold its own OC mode, that is unnacceptable.

 

[The-Hoff]

Having tried several 1080's now, the picture is becoming very clear with the Pascal series. The aftermarket coolers themselves do very little (unless you are using a waterblock), it is down to the chip itself. If you have a bad one, then no air cooling you throw at it will save it. A binned chip is the only guarantee, and I can honestly say, my FE card has beaten all the aftermarket cards I have tried.

 

[The-Hoff]

My Premium Pack arrived (from elsewhere) yesterday, bent fins and fans hitting the X. At £750, it's disgusting. Calling BS on the official Gigabyte response above.

This thread gets better.

 

[The-Hoff]

Any pics of the damage fella?

Ah sorry bud I have already packed it all back up ready to go back. I wanted it out of my machine asap.

 

[The-Hoff]

I see the advertised speed now, I was reading from a review.

set the fan profile to 100% and using default clocks boost the voltage in 1% increments and tell us where you land to get it stable.

it might be that gigabyte need to tune the bios for a slightly higher voltage and fan profile.

having a crap clock out of the box does not necessarily mean a crap chip, it might just be a bit more leaky and need volts.

the xtreme should be able to beat out the FE once we see a custom bios. my 980ti xtreme is OK out of the box but only really sings once I slap a custom bios on it.

I tried cranking everything up (voltage in increments) and still crashed.

 

[The-Hoff]

It doesn't reach 2000 or it's not stable at 1936Mhz?
Please help me clarify this.

It is not stable at 1936mhz but it does jump higher slightly and hover around that mark but It freezes my computer. This is using the OC setting with no tweaking.

Trying manually it holds 2000mhz for 2 seconds before crashing with fans and voltage tested on every incremental setting up to max.

After much testing I am getting 1900mhz stable but no more. The OC Mode is unusable for me.

My Gigabyte FE card flies to 1970mhz and passes all the 3dmark tests.
Something is clearly wrong with my Xtreme. Maybe it is isolated, who knows.

 

[The-Hoff]

Wow that is quite poor! Both my FE solid at 2100mhz. One runs fine at 2139mhz.

But not even able to hold 1936mhz is quite shocking. I'd be tempted to return it if it can't even hold its own boost clock.

It has been returned already. The card is faulty, as it is not achieving the speed it should. I had always assumed that all cards are tested to run at whatever clock speed they are designed to run at. Obviously not.

 

[The-Hoff]

It may be apparent that I'm not somebody who really makes videos, so sorry for the sketchy quality- took this purely to illustrate the problem... I now have an EVGA FTW coming tomorrow. Loved my Xtreme 980Ti but feel massively let down by Gigabyte this time around between the time it took to get it in stock only for this problem to be a thing...

That is bad. I read that someone took a nail file to the plastic X and sanded it down till it stopped catching, and someone else bent the frame away to stop it catching. Crazy!!!
By the way does your card pass the 3Dmark stress test on "OC mode"?

 

[The-Hoff]

Really hope that all these problems get sorted when the standard edition finally gets shipped...

Not unless they overhaul the packaging and even design their cards so that the fins are totally protected.

 

[The-Hoff]

Well I have finally got over the horror of my Xtreme gaming purchase and bought the Gainward GLH card and I absolutely love it. No bent fins, no coil whine and it is super quiet. I cranked up the boost clock to 1960mhz which boosted over 2100mhz during benching and it completed several passes of 3Dmarks stress tests with 70% voltage and 100% fan at 65 degrees max, power limit and temp max too.
I could have pushed it further but I am more than happy with what I am seeing and I will just run it at the stock OC in my games, something I couldn't do with the Xtreme.

It just shows that some of the underdog cards can show the big boys a thing or two.

 

[The-Hoff]

I just got mine and sadly coil whine concert here too. My whole system is almost inaudible until you run Heaven and then the Xtreme starts to hiss like a stabbed rattlesnake. Strangely on FSX at max sliders it isn't so bad. Wouldn't mind if it cost 400 but at over 700 with bent fins and drivers that crash on the splash screen... Fortunately no fans hitting the 'x'. The unique selling point for me was the advertised military grade components, but how does that tally with the racket I'm hearing, I wonder...

Bent fins on yours too? Can you bench without crashing on OC mode?

 

[The-Hoff]

Yes fins are bent on the bottom right but nothing a few minutes with a jewellers screwdriver can't fix. Bigger plate not haning loose like on someone's yt unboxing.

You mean the 'dumb' (one button) OC mode in the app? That seems to work OK on a few minutes of Heaven 4. At what point does it crash for you? FWIW I just did a clean wipe of everything a few days ago including bios, so if it did crash there would only be a few possible culprits and crucially the Gigabyte app would be the only thing doing or running any OC (even my CPU is back to stock).

Whether I did the "dumb" one button OC mode or matched it manually It crashed my drivers after 5 minutes of the 3Dmark stress test.
If I attempted to run it anywhere near the 2000mhz mark (most FE cards do this easily) then my card would last 2 seconds.
This card is a big pile of.......you guess the word.

 

[The-Hoff]

Sorry repeat post

 

[The-Hoff]

I ran 5 minutes of Firestrike and then Firestrike extreme, no crashes. 3DMark was reporting 45-ish FPS on extreme while Nvidia single digits (and it looked like a slide show so 1:0 to Nvidia). MSI afterburner showing nowhere near 2Ghz whereas Gigabyte app 2060Mhz.

If you give me your exact oc settings per the Gigabyte app, benchmark name/length and monitoring app, I'll post the results and we'll know better if it's your card specifically or the Xtreme in general.

I don't have the card now, it went back yesterday. The Gigabyte settings were just a click of the OC mode which was 1936mhz I think. I used the normal Firestrike Stress Test (not Ultra or Extreme) I cannot remember what it boosted to in Firestrike, I know it was nearer 2000mhz. I presume you would be seeing similar results.

If I manually set 1936mhz in MSI Afterburner, and run the same test it fared no better and crashed.
Bare in mind, I tried 100% fan and even worked up the voltage all the way to 100% but It still crashed. To get 1936mhz stable you shouldn't really have to touch anything apart from the clock boost.
After much tinkering I managed to get 1900mhz stable and no more. I wasn't paying top dollar for that.

 

[The-Hoff]

maybe its possible that OC mode is boost higher than 2050 as my Xtreme OC mode in Xtreme software boost it to 2080 . it show 1936MHz in software but in actual game its 2080 .

It still shouldn't crash with the kind of cooler that is on the Xtreme. That card is a tank.
I have now bought the Gainward GLH card and that hits 2100mhz and it is a fraction of the size of the Xtreme and no coil whine and super quiet.
Something is seriously wrong with the Xtreme cards if it can't use its own OC mode. I have tried 5 GTX's 1080's now and so far, the Xtreme is the worst.