Couldn’t have had better timing. After messing around with budget cards for some time I got fed up with it and went the Nuclear option. Went on newegg and picked up an EVGA 1080 ti SC Black Series. Coughed up almost $800 for a back ordered card that should be here in a couple weeks. Could have gotten one sooner but it would have cost an extra $200 and the frugal side of me won the internal argument.

 

After two days the back ordered cards have gone up $100 and the in stock cards have jumped from a little over $900 to over $1,300.

 

Sweet Jesus

Hope the back order doesn't turn into a "not available". These companies seem to have little concern for how much of your time they waste.

 

Used to be that a model number was a model number, with little difference in the cards other than minor differences in clock speed or amount of memory, which you would not even notice any difference in performance with normal use. Since they've come out with the 1080's they seem to have begun a new policy of a wide range of performance, and price.

 

I hope you get it and it's everything and more that you expect. Congrats, S!

A lot of the differences in the cards seems to come from the cooling hardware and minor details in architecture. Either way it’s from EVGA and they are extremely reputable with NVidia cards. I just hope I don’t damage anything in installation. I may have to order a liquid cooling system for my processor since my heat sink is about the size of a kitchen sink.

Barton,

 

It was tough coughing up the money for my EVGA 1080 ti FTW3, but the performance is amazing.

 

S!

Congrats on the new vid card Barton. 

A lot of the differences in the cards seems to come from the cooling hardware and minor details in architecture. Either way it’s from EVGA and they are extremely reputable with NVidia cards. I just hope I don’t damage anything in installation. I may have to order a liquid cooling system for my processor since my heat sink is about the size of a kitchen sink.

 

Even the liquid coolers can be tricky depending on your case architecture and where you want to mount it....top, back, and in some cases now, front.

 

Many cases don't have much room at the top; they can for sure mount fans by themselves, but when you add a radiator with coolers mounted on it, it can become an issue because of heat sinks for voltage regulators mounted at the top of the MB.  The long coolers with 2 fans can be especially problematic.  On some cases it's possible to mount the radiator on top of the case, with the fans inside; but if they're not designed that way, with a way for the hoses to go through, it's not possible without custom modifications.

 

If you're not overclocking your CPU, the single fan units will provide all the cooling you'll ever need.  They make 120 mm units of course, but some also have a 140 mm option now; and some of the radiators are thicker, providing more cooling than the standard thickness ones.  You can even get fancy and use fans on both sides of the single radiator, one pushing and one pulling.  In any case, you can usually avoid space issues more easily with the single type, since you can pick which area at the top of the case to use, or mount in on the back, or even on the front, usually at the top of the front.

 

Even if your current CPU air cooler doesn't interfere with your new GPU, it's a nice upgrade, either for now or the future.

 

S! 

Thanks for the advice, Luft!

Wednesday. Estimated date of delivery. May have to take Thursday off

Kameraden,

 

I'd suggest doing a fresh install using DDU when you switch cards, those old driver files really pile up when you use GeForce to manage them.

 

S!

Kameraden,

 

My card is a EVGA 1080 ti ftw3 and testing last night with Barton has only confused the hell out of me. Results are all over the board right now and I think it might be related to the new clouds.

 

Before the v3 release of BoX I had this card and drivers tuned tight, now each flight seems like a different set of results. More to come as last night I just ran out of steam working on these settings.

 

Barton, Razwald what do you think?

 

S!