8 Pack reviews and overclocks the KFA2 1080 HOF.
The master of the white PCB GPU has for a long time been KFA2 / Galax.
In my eyes historically this manufacturer in the HOF line of products not only have the best white PCB cards but also regularly the best GPU of any
board partner period.
When I was asked to pull a card from our stock to review I jumped at the chance to see if there 1080 was a worthy addition to the HOF line.
On unboxing the card it looks truly stunning. It has a very substantial 3 fan cooler which is 3 slot sized. This 1080 HOF can be used in a maximum
of two way SLI configuration. The card comes with a full length back plate adding to the slick look of the product as well as ensuring no flexing of
the PCB. This PCB is huge offering twice the Power phases to GPU than the standard 1080 Founders Edition in its 10+1 phase design.
Here are some pics of this gorgeous looking offering in my test rig.
We have established from the pics above this card looks great and the general feel of the product is quality. So lets see how it performs in my
standard X99 review system.
Test System:
6950X 4.5
ASUS R5E10
16gb Team Xtreme mems 3200mhz
8Pack 2000w PSU
Stock Benchmarks.
Thermals.
Auto Fan
Turbo button pushed.
100% fan
Overclocked Performance.
Conclusions
Firstly looking at stock figures the HOF is producing some very impressive numbers in testing. The stock boost GPU clock is 2038mhz which is as
high as I have seen of any Pascal GPU straight out of the box beating the previous best ASUS Strix OC by 13mhz. Needless to say at these clock
speeds it also beat every card I tried before in pure out of the box performance across all the benchmarks. For those not wanting to OC this is the
best card period.
Now lets check the performance of that huge cooler. To do this I ran Heaven at 4K res with all the details including tessellation maxed out for one
hour and monitored the temps. With the fan profile at auto which was very quiet indeed and certainly inaudible over the AIO cooler fans on the
CPU the peak temp of the GPU was 60C. At this temp the frequency of the GPU remained locked at its full boost speed of 2038mhz. A very
impressive result. Even better thermal performance resulted in pressing the boost button on the IO. This is for benching only really as the fan
noise is much greater but temps are now even more impressive. After my one hour heaven run they now peaked at a crazy low 47C which is in
water cooling territory!!! In summary the cooler is looking great but cooling even better.
The 1080 HOF Overclocked to a very solid 2138mhz Core and 5580mhz mems. This produced a healthy gain in the bench marks. The HOF reached
these numbers with no voltage tweaking, no power limit changes and no fan profile adjustments. What I found impressive was not only these great
benching scores but the fact that the boost clock was completely stable so no power limit adjusting frequency during bench runs or games. With
this performance was consistent without any kind of custom bios or tweaking. I also found that these clocks where 100% game stable when I tried
several games over numerous sessions. So not just bench stable clocks but game stable too which you very rarely find on any GPU.
In short I would highly recommend the KFA2 / Galax 1080 HOF. It looks amazing, is built to the highest standard with solid PCB design and power
delivery. The cooler is quiet and very effective. Finally and most importantly the performance out of the box was the best of any 1080 I have seen
and the overclocked performance of a random sample also very good too with zero tweaking needed to ensure no power limiting or clock
fluctuations under load. This adds extra performance to your games while not adding any noise. The HOF is a truly a class leading 1080.
Buy your 1080 HOF here:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/kfa2...dr5x-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-089-kf.html
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18748417
Catanonia reviews the Inno3D iChill X4
I have been testing my Inno3D GTX 1080i iChill X4 card over the last few days and here are my thoughts.
The box only came with the card. No additional power adaptors or Graphic port cabling adaptors.
The only other things in the box were a Inno3D mouse mat and serial numbers for 3DMark and 3DMark VR which was nice.
The card maybe is not to every ones taste, but to me it looks like a beast and I love the design.
The LED's are not custom controlled and the iChill logo changes colour based on the temperature of the card. (Blue - Green - Orange - Pink - Red)
Out of the box with no overclocking, GPUz and Afterburner were reporting the card running at 1974Mhz GPU and 5200Mhz MEM under full load after 5 mins.
So far my maximum overclocking is disapppointing on the GPU, but with afterburner I have no voltage control, so maybe it could go higher.
I managed on air to get +50Mhz in the GPU and +350Mhz on the memory to give me 2025Mhz and 5555Mhz as reported in GPUZ after it settled.
This was stable and I left Valley running full load for an hour and I was amazed that the card hit a maximum of 71 degrees with 89% fan.
BUT at 89% fan, I could not hear it. My hearing is not brilliant, but I could not hear it unless I put my head next to the closed case.
Very impressed,
My system is a 5960 O/C to 4.5Ghz and 32GB RAM with a custom CPU water block. The card was on air. Ambient temperature was about 21 degrees.
Here is the 3DMark link, quite impressive scores with voltage locked at the moment.
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/12691133
Some images and screenies.
Over all for £589 I am extremely impressed and happy with the card.
I would recommend it for those wanting a quick out of the box card that is very cool and quiet under load.
