In case you've been in a coma the last couple of weeks, the GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition launches today, bearing Nvidia's latest Pascal architecture. That, apparently, was the cue for Nvidia's board partners to unveil their own versions of the new GeForce front-runner. Everyone from Asus to Zotac has announced a non-reference GTX 1080.
Speaking of Zotac, that company is announcing the GTX 1080 AMP Edition and AMP Extreme to go alongside its announced, released, and sold-out Founders Edition card. Both cards have Zotac's customizable "Spectra" lighting, aluminum backplates, and require dual 8-pin power connectors. The regular AMP card wears an IceStorm dual-fan cooler, while the AMP Extreme is a bit larger, and has a triple-fan cooler.
EVGA will surely launch a number of GTX 1080s, but for now we have word of the GTX 1080 SuperClocked Gaming and the GTX 1080 FTW Edition. The SuperClocked card appears to pair the reference board with EVGA's ACX 3.0 cooler and only requires a single 8-pin plug. Meanwhile, the FTW edition is built on a custom PCB like the Zotac boards above, and draws power from two 8-pin connectors.
Asus ROG is announcing the Strix version of the GTX 1080 today, too. Like the rest of the Strix line, the ROG Strix GTX 1080 is focused on silent running. It makes use of the company's DirectCU III cooler and has a boost clock of 1936MHz, versus the 1733MHz of the reference card. Asus says the card does this while being "three times" quieter than the reference design. The ROG Strix GTX 1080 includes two four-pin chassis fan headers for Asus FanConnect, which allows the GPU to ramp up system fans in response to GPU activity, instead of just CPU activity. RGB lighting and an extra HDMI 2.0 port further distinguish the ROG offering from its peers.
MSI wins the variety award though, with four new GTX 1080s to show off. The Twin Frozr design will be familiar to most TR readers, though the Twin Frozr VI has a new fan design that MSI claims will improve cooling performance and noise output. In case black and red isn't your thing, MSI is also launching a GTX 1080 Armor edition with a black and white cooler. The most interesting of the new designs is the GTX 1080 Sea Hawk, which includes a closed-loop liquid cooler alongside a rear-exhaust radial fan. The Sea Hawk is the result of a collaboration with Corsair, and MSI says it will have "vastly increased" clock speeds. Curiously, MSI is also offering an Aero edition, which features the blower design from the Sea Hawk without the water cooler.
There are a number of smaller GPU vendors that we don't hear about much over here in the 'States, and they're all launching GTX 1080s, too. Inno3D is launching a GamingOC edition and an iChill edition, the latter of which is pictured above. Palit also announced two custom 1080s, the GameRock and Super JetStream, but didn't provide many details. Colorful is showing off the iGameGTX1080 X-TOP-8G, with a distinctive modular and customizable cooler design. Finally, Gainward is launching the GTX 1080 Phoenix Edition, which offers dual firmware chips, which should save the user from a bad flash.
Rumors are flying around about pricing and availability but there's not a lot of concrete information yet. EVGA's website briefly showed a price of $649.99 for the SuperClocked Gaming this morning, though it appears to be down at this time. Given that the Founders Edition GTX 1080s are already sold out everywhere, we expect it may yet be a bit yet before these cards hit the market. Look forward to hearing about it here when they do.