MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X PLUS Review

MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X+

Today we will be looking at GeForce GTX 1080 11 Gbps Edition from MSI, codenamed GAMING X PLUS.

Rather than giving it a new name, NVIDIA decided to put a “11 Gbps GDDR5X” sticker on the packaging. Some manufacturers, like MSI, decided to give them a special name and that’s how GAMING X became GAMING X PLUS (or GAMING X+).

The card is identical in design to old GAMING X with some cosmetic changes. The first one is a new backplate, or rather a backplate with new logo. The other changes are more practical. This SKU carries new memory chips rated at 11 Gbps. There are in total 8 modules, each hosting 1 GB of frame buffer. Another ‘upgrade’ is the GPU itself. New cards are receiving a new variant codenamed GP104-410, which to my knowledge is almost identical to GP104-400. NVIDIA has not shared any details for this particular GPU variant.

The GTX 1080 GAMING X PLUS has Twin Frozr VI cooler with two large fans. The shroud has translucent fins illuminated by red LEDs. The MSI logo situated on the side has full RGB support and can be modified through MSI GAMING APP.

The card has two power connectors (6+8-pin), both are required for card to operational.

The backplate has three logos: GAMING PLUS, MSI and MSI Dragon logo. It gets hot under load, and warm when card is idle. Actual temperatures will depend if you choose to use Zero Frozr technology. You will find a thermal comparison of both scenarios later in this review.

The GP104 graphics processor has 2560 CUDA cores, 128 TMUs and 64 ROPs. It is currently positioned in high-end segment.

MSI Gaming APP features

The companion tool called GAMING APP is here to give you control over your card. Here you can choose the light animation, colors (for MSI logo), on-screen display support, eye-rest function and my personal favorite: Zero Frozr function. What’s Zero Frozr? This feature will turn the fans off when the card is not under heavy use, making it noiseless. But let me be clear, this feature is not for everyone. If you prefer better temperatures I suggest you turn it off. A thermal comparison with this function enabled and disabled is provided later in this review, to give you a better idea how it affects the temperature of the card.

Silent / Gaming / OC Modes

As always there are three modes to choose from with GAMING APP. Silent mode is essentially a ‘reference experience’, although it has slightly higher boost clock. Gaming and OC modes are almost identical since the actual difference in clocks under load is minimal.

Card ships with Gaming Mode out of the box. In our tests we are using OC Mode.