So, what could happen when you have too much time in your hand and maybe an engineering team dedicated to take the GPU cooling solution game a level higher?
Well, Palit just had both things in their R&D department so they were able to come up with a new thermal solution for their Graphics Cards, the TurboJET4.
Reinvent the basic, hold on to the classic
The TurboJET4, which we’ll see on the GameRock GTX 1080Ti Premium that we’ll be checking out, is the newest innovation of Palit when it comes to cooling solutions. The TurboJET4 is a combination of four fans which are atop of each other. The upper and lower fans spin differently which Palit claims to help eliminate the air flow’s vortex effect, thus provides high-centralized air volume which helps in dissipating heat.
Palit has partnered this new fan setup with their 0-dB TECH, which lets the fans idle when the GPU is not under heavy load. The Honeycomb design bracket is not just for show, it helps in increasing the airflow of the whole package. Completing its thermal solution is a beefy heatsink that has a copper baseplate which is in direct contact with the GPU providing faster heat absorption and dissipation.
Being one of the top-line graphics solution in the market, the GameRock GTX 1080Ti Premium sports a black Backplate that has the GameRock name printed on it.
Power is always key
Along with the thermal solution is a power design that has 12-Phase plus 2 PWM power which provides much stable current to the GPU and memory chips. And as we all know, along with good cooling solution, stable power permits better overclocking. You don’t have to worry if something goes wrong when you’re overclocking the Palit GameRock GTX 1080Ti Premium, because of its Dual BIOS feature. So, in the event of a system failure due to overclocking or power interruption, it will still be functional. It also has DrMOS which was only seen in high-end CPUs before. DrMOS provides high current circuits and helps in lowering noise operation and heat generation.
This Graphics Card has HP
Yes, you’ve read that right! The GameRock GTX 1080Ti Premium has HP lighting indicators. Well, gamers know what HP means right? However, in the GameRock GTX 1080Ti, it doesn’t indicate the life of your graphics card. But instead, it tells you about its temperature. By default, when the temperature is just around under 50*C, its LED lights will be green; blue when it’s around 50*C to 80*C; yellow when it’s 80*C to 90*C; and red when its well above 90*.
Palit’s GTX 1080Ti GameRock Premium series is not left behind when it comes to lighting. Graphics cards under the GameRock series are equipped with RGB LED that can be configured to the liking of the user, they can choose from 16.8 million colors to suit their mood or the theme of their rig. The RGB lighting can be synced with the lighting effects of the motherboard through RGB SYNC.
The innards of the card
Based on Nvidia’s Pascal architecture, the GameRock GTX 1080Ti Premium brandishes 3584 CUDA Cores and 11GB of GDDR5X memory wired to a 352bit interface. Its GPU clocks depend on the mode that you’ll be opting for via Thunder Master; on Gaming Mode, the GPU base clock is at 1505MHz which boosts up to 1620MHz; on OC Mode, the GPU base clock is at 1518MHz and boosts up to 1632MHz; on Silence Mode, the GPU base clock runs at 1493MHz that boosts up to 1607MHz. But just like other graphic cards out there, you can always opt for the GPU clocks you want via manual overclocking, although if you are not knowledgeable with overclocking, then its better to leave it be.
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Test Bench Setup:
- Processor: Intel Core i3 7100 & Intel Core i7 7700K
- Motherboard: Aorus Z270X-Gaming 7
- Memory: 8GB 2800MHz DDR4 Corsair Vengeance LPX
- Graphics Card: Palit GTX 1080Ti GameRock Premium
- Power Supply: Corsair RM850i
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Tests and Setup
We partnered Palit’s GameRock GTX 1080Ti Premium with 2 processors from Intel, an i3 7100 and i7 7700K, we used these processors to know whether or not the GTX 1080Ti would be a good partner for builds equipped with lower tier processors. Bottlenecks will be present as we all know it, but my point here is that a higher tier graphics card doesn’t always need to be partnered with the same tier processor. And that one should always weigh his/her needs in choosing the right components for the build that he/she is working on. So, without further adieu, our test results for the Palit GameRock GTX 1080Ti Premium.
For our first test setup, we partnered the Palit GTX 1080Ti Premium with an Intel Core i3 7100 and 8GB of DDR4 memory running at 2800MHz. We wanted this first setup to be with a lower tier processor to know if its viable or if it’s okay to partner a GTX 1080Ti with a lower tier processor. We’ll compare the benchmarks results of this setup with the results of the second setup later on our update.
Synthetics
First off the benchmarks suite is Heaven Benchmark. This benchmark tool will give us an idea of how much fps we could squeeze out from this graphics card under intensive loads. This will also set our expectations with what temperature we should expect the card to be in under intensive work loads. The three modes of Palit GTX 1080Ti GameRock Premium were used. Each of the modes ran each of our synthetic benchmark tests a couple of times to be sure that the it was under heavy pressure, and this also helps us know how fast the card’s cooling solution could dissipate the heat it generated.
The scores above are well off the charts, but these are just numbers as some may say. However, these scores have given us the idea of what numbers to expect from the card on graphics intensive works with the same settings. On the temperature side, the TurboJet4 was able to maintain the temperature well around 65*C – 70*C. We opted for the default fan curve to be able to give the out of the box temperature handling performance of Palit’s TurboJet4, but users can always set their desired fan curves via the Thunder Master software.
Next off is 3DMARK Firestrike Ultra. This variant of Firestrike will help us determine if our setup would be able to run games and other GPU dependent software at 4K resolution. Also, due to the fact that this test requires a lot of work from the GPU, the temperature handling of Palit’s GTX 1080Ti GameRock Premium will also be put to the test. Again, these tests and all the other tests that follow are set on default fan curve.
With the scores it got on Fire Strike Ultra and Heaven Benchmark, we can deduce that our setup can and will manage 4K resolution and almost every resolutions under 4K. While running Fire Strike Ultra, the temperature was still maintained around the 65*C – 70*C mark and that’s a good thing, knowing that the fan curve was still on default values.
Game Tests, Cooling Solution, and Conclusion
Our Game tests consist of graphics intensive titles of this year and of the previous year. However, for this certain GPU, we’ll just be pitting it with some popular titles of this year and some of the still popular game titles from previous years. First off the gate is GTA V, which was released in September of 2013, we ran the game on 4k resolution and cranked up the settings to Ultra.
Tho, the fps shown on the screenshot above was just around 35fps, the game was playable and ran like a heated knife through butter. While gaming, the temperature was maintained around 70*C – 75*C on this test, but when the resolution was decreased to 1080P, the temperature was well around the 60*C – 70*C. This, along with the other benchmarks results show us that our Intel i3 7100 and GTX 1080Ti is viable enough to even run games with maxed out settings on 4K. But, if you want to achieve higher fps on 4K, dragging some settings down would be the right way to go. On the other hand, our i7 7700K and GTX 1080 Ti setup held 40fps on the same game with the same setting and resolution.
The cooling system of the Palit GTX 1080Ti GameRock Premium is a well thought and a well built system. No flimsy metal was used on the shroud, tho the metal part is just connected to a plastic cover. The Dual-Double fans were impressive in dissipating heat, it can easily go from 70*C to 35 *C – 45*C in just a couple of seconds, however, the default fan curve needs some tweaking to fully maintain the card’s temperature below 70*C.
What we think?
If you have a certain budget for a high-end PC, then going with top-tier components would be the right way to go. However, if you have limited budget but still wants to experience what a high-end graphics card could give, then lowering down some of your components would be the way to go. Here we showed you that even an Intel i3 7100 processor when partnered with a top-tier graphics card can give you an enjoyable game time even if you opt for 4K resolution.