The Card

Gigabyte's card looks big and menacing, but also a bit plasticky, despite the cooler's frame consisting of several metal pieces. On the back, you will find a metal backplate with the AORUS logo. Dimensions of the card are 29.0 cm x 14.0 cm.


You will find adjustable RGB lighting on the Gigabyte GTX 1080 Ti AORUS Xtreme.


Installation requires three slots in your system. This is a full triple-slot design, unlike other board partners which use 2.5 slots to keep some spacing for airflow in SLI configurations.


Display connectivity options include a DVI port, two HDMI ports, and three DisplayPorts. An additional HDMI port is available on the other side of the card, not far from the power connectors. It's nice to see that the DVI port has been brought back, which was missing on the GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition.

Gigabyte uses an automatic switch chip to achieve this functionality. Either the DVI port or the two HDMI ports can be active. All remaining outputs, which includes one HDMI port, are always enabled. Switching requires a system restart because a different VBIOS has to be loaded, which happens automatically when a connected monitor is detected during reboot.

Unlike previous-generation NVIDIA cards, the DVI port no longer includes the analog signal, so you'll have to use an active adapter. NVIDIA also updated DisplayPort to be 1.2 certified and 1.3/1.4 ready, which enables support for 4K at 120 Hz and 5K @ 60 Hz, or 8K @ 60 Hz with two cables.

The GPU also comes with an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 2.0b compatible, which supports HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies. The GPU's video-encoding unit has been updated to support HEVC at 10-bit and 12-bit.


With Pascal, NVIDIA made some changes to how SLI works. In a nutshell, for 4K at 60 Hz and above, NVIDIA recommends new high-bandwidth SLI bridges it dubbed "SLI HB." These bridges occupy both SLI fingers. Traditional triple- and quad-SLI setups are gone as well. Only certain benchmarks can run more than the dual-SLI setup to which all games are limited.


When installed inside the case, there is a little bit of sagging on the right side of the card, near the power connectors. It is nothing alarming, though.


Pictured above are the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back).