Feast your eyes on the first image of a reference NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, compared side by side with the PCB of the company’s flagship (still) TITAN X Pascal. As you can see, the GTX 1080 Ti is based on the same PCB as the TITAN X Pascal, since the two cards are based on the same “GP102” chip (albeit with different core configurations). To begin with, the GTX 1080 Ti features 11 memory chips, compared to 12 on the TITAN X Pascal, on account of its narrower 352-bit GDDR5X memory interface. It makes up for the narrower memory bus with faster 11 Gbps memory chips, than the 10 Gbps chips found on the TITAN X Pascal.
The main difference between the GTX 1080 Ti and TITAN X Pascal, however, is NVIDIA bolstering the VRM with a 2x dual-FET design. NVIDIA basically placed an additional set of MOSFETs and capacitors along all the blank traces of the reference PCB. This approach lowers the load on each individual MOSFET, in turn lowering VRM temperatures. It probably also enables a higher power-limit. NVIDIA also updated the reference design cooling solution with a new vapor-chamber base-plate. The cooler also exhausts through the entire width of the second slot in the card’s I/O shield. This meant sacrificing the DVI connector. The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti goes on sale later this month, priced at US $699.
