Reason Pack: KFA2 / Galax GTX 1080 Ti EXOC in review

In contrast to the ex-factory very high overclocked EVGA GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 Gaming, KFA2 / Galax is a deliberate use of reason and mediocrity, so that two fans on this rather slim dual slot card should be enough. In general, the... The board is a good old acquaintance and comes directly from Nvidia. This in turn confirms that it is simply an unchanged reference design. This certainly has upfront and night parts, but saves costs first. We're going to be no... Cooling concept and implementation The back of the board is conspicuously inconspicuous and shows the dark traces of the glued-on thermal pads between the backplate and the board. Which would have made us look elegant at the cooling. Tue... Benchmarks in 2560 x 1440 pixels We have deliberately dispensed with Full HD (1920 x 1080p) as the KFA2 / Galax GTX 1080 Ti EXOC runs into the CPU limit even in the highest settings. In WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels), on the other hand, the actual work begins... Benchmarks in 3840 x 2160 pixels The KFA2 / Galax GTX 1080 Ti EXOC is in this high resolution, depending on the game, between 2 and approx. 4 percent faster than a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition or TitanX (Pascal). Overall, many titles ... When it is up to the power supply, we first need to know that the card with the factory settings with the 250 watts of the reference card has been set a very restrained Power Target, but this could be manually raised to just under 300 watts,... In fact achievable clock rates The actual achievable clock is subject to some influences. Even if GPU quality plays a bigger role here - unfortunately it cannot be influenced as the only element. And so it is in the end well möglic... Fan control and curves The difference in gaming in open and closed construction is clearly visible, which should of course also be measurable and audible. The start-up impulses are somewhat uncoordinated and you miss a little clearer... Summary There must be absolutely no shortcoming if a graphics card is not one of the fastest within its product category of factory overclocked cards with the same graphics chip. For the Founders Edition it still has...

When it is all about power consumption, we first need to know that the card with the factory settings with the 250 watts of the reference card has been set a very restrained Power Target, which could be manually raised to almost 300 watts, which is also possible for this cooling solution. Sufficient. This factory power target of 250 watts is of course fully exploited in gaming and stress testing. In the end, however, the increase in the afterburner to the maximum shows only a plentiful 287 watts instead of the possible almost 300 watts, since the card then already hard-hitting in your self-imposed temperature target at approx. 80°C.

The chip on the test pattern is a more bender average, but still good enough to reach 1772 MHz at 0.975 V in the warmed-up state. With good luck and OC you can still reach 1847 MHz with 1.012 V – but unfortunately there is not much more with this card, which indicates bad luck in the GPU lottery. But that's life, because you can't always just be lucky with the pickled silicon.

More about the gaming loop

Now let's look at the curve for the power consumption separately according to the individual supply rails (rails) in a higher resolution over the period of two minutes. Despite our intelligent low-pass filter, some spikes remain visible, which can then go up to almost 300 watts. On average, however, the map is quite exactly at the level of the set power target of 250 watts.

For this purpose, the curves of the currents look identically hectic:

Torture test in detail

Since the load is more constant, the peaks are almost completely eliminated. We see very nicely where Boost is already starting to brutally throttle the power consumption and the card stays at the average even just below the value from the gaming loop.

Again, analogously, only the view of the flowing currents:

Utilization of the motherboard slot

This point has been repeatedly demanded by readers since the launch of the Radeon RX 480 (also for Nvidia cards), so we will now include this point in every test. With the card tested today, however, the concern is unfounded, because the slot is used with a maximum of 4.4 amps rather moderately, which is approx. 80% of the maximum possible current.