Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080: Unrivaled Gaming Card Introduces ‘Ansel’; Check Out The Killer Specs Too [Video]

The GTX 1080 is Nvidia's new top-of-the-line graphics card. Along with its killer Specs, it introduces us to Ansel.

The GTX 1080 is built on Nvidia's new Pascal architecture claimed by the company as its most advanced gaming card ever created. The graphics card is touted to deliver new gaming technologies and breakthrough VR experiences that flaunt up to 3x the performance of older generation graphics cards.

ANSEL

Ansel is an in-game 3D camera. Gone are the days when you can take screenshots in 2D. The new feature in GTX 1080 will let you pause a game, roam around with a floating camera. Ansel will let you apply several filter and effects to your screenshots using easy-to-use tools. The system can support up to 4.5-gigapixel images, according to PCWorld.

Hardware and The Tech

Nvidia GeFoce GTX 1080 uses Nvidia's new Pascal architecture employing a 16nm process instead of 28nm from their previous architecture used in Maxwell. The smaller architecture allowed it to accommodate more transistors on a same-sized silicon used in previous architectures.

The increased transistors give better performance with a much smaller impact on power reducing heat and noise. Employing a larger piece of silicon gave it an increase in the number of CUDA cores. In GTX 1080, you get 2,560 of them. And an increased clock speed of 1,607MHz

The GTX 1080 uses 8 GB GDDR5X memory that clocks in at 10,000MHz and touted to have 43 percent more memory bandwidth than the GTX 980, according to Trusted Reviews. The GTX 1080 has a single DVI Port, a single HDMI port, and three DisplayPort slots. The 2.0b HDMI port can deliver 4K content at 60Hz.

The GTX 1080 is said to be almost too powerful that it blows the refresh rate of most monitors. Simply put, the monitors can't keep up with the fast cycle it renders images on the screen causing artifacts. Enabling V-sync fixes the problem but adds high latency putting the serious gamer at a slight disadvantage.

This is remedied by enabling Fast Sync option in the GTX 1080 that solves both problems by separating the display and render stages.

The GTX 1080 will also support gaming and video in HDR since the unit is capable of decoding HEVC video. The GTX 1080 has an addition to its overclocking method in the GPU Boost 3.0.