Well it seems that the 1080Ti might not have HBM2 after all with the major priority going to AMD securing HBM2 chips. Remains to be seen, but I think it would have GDDR5x instead for Nvidia to have an easier time with mass production.

Really all depends if the 1080Ti will get HBM2 or not.

You can't blow the card with vbios modding, as long as it's done with common sense. The voltages are hard-locked, not soft-capped which can be removed like on Maxwell. So either AIBs remove that hard-locked voltages with their custom cards or people do it themselves (remember the GTX680?).

Vbios modding will void warranty, but there's no way to check if one has flashed to a different vbios, then flashing back to stock, then months later the card dies unexpectedly. Besides, Gigabyte and MSI released several vbios revisions with Kepler and Maxwell, they encouraged people to flash their cards.

Finally, I wouldn't take Asus Strix cards as a benchmark of how OCing will be handled with all Pascal cards. Asus Strix cards had the lamest voltage locks historically. It's like Asus isn't even trying.

People need to understand a few things regarding 1080p vs 4k.

4k monitors/TVs aren't actually 4k in resolution, it's actually 3440x2160 instead of the actual 3840x2160. Stop being duped by Hollywood.

3440x2160 is an EXACT 4 times increament of resolution over 1920x1080. All a monitor or TV need to do is to quadruple the FHD image into UHD without any further calculations. This is different to when 480p was upscaled to 1080p, or 720p going to 1080p. Neither 720p or 480p were linear increase in pixel count when being upscaled to 1080p, which is why 480p often looks like horseshit in FHD (even with the best post-processing scaler).

1080p looks like 1080p on a "4k" screen because it's a linear increase, not because your "screen looks smaller". You can play a 1080p image on a 120" screen through a 4k projector, you'll actually see next to no difference between that and a 1080p projector to a 120" screen assuming all post-processing are disabled. Of course, the 4k projector would have much more advanced technologies to further boost a 1080p image to look even better than it originally did. This goes the same for most of the high-end "4" (UHD) TVs on the market now a days.

All a smaller screen does is that it has much higher ppi/dpi, which will help mask aliasing issues, giving a perception things look sharper and better. The latter of which is actually down to panel quality as small panels are much more easier to produce in high quality than big panels are.



*EDIT*

As a side note, instead of aiming to go for 4k60p, I heavily recommend people to go for a 1440p (QHD) at much higher refresh rates if gaming on PC is the main target. 1440p at 120hz (or 144hz) is a whole new level of improvement IMO. Even better if one can have Gsync, that's godlike upgrade there.

I'll keep drilling this point, 1440p @ 120hz (or 144hz) with Gysnc is the best sweetspot for PC gaming now. 4k60p is just 1080p60 with sharper visuals, of which does almost nothing to improve gameplay.

This post has been edited by SSJBen: Jun 7 2016, 04:50 PM

Thanks for correction. Am typing on the phone.

What's your budget?

The thing you have to understand is, if one have to spend a lot for a 4k monitor, why not just spend a little more for 1440p at higher refresh rates? A higher refresh rate is a much more substantial upgrade over higher resolution.


I wouldn't mind a 1080p OLED @ 144hz + Gysnc. I'd jump on it.

XB271HU is a great monitor, PROVIDED you can get a defect-free panel.

It has a lot of QC problems till this day. Dust stuck between the panels, mediocre to bad levels of backlight bleed and substantial IPS glow.

Asus PG279q. Although overpriced here, it has less problematic QC reports so far. That said, its time in the market is much shorter than the Acer XB271HU.

From the people I know personally, those who has the Acer DID RMA their screens 2 or 3 times until they got something satisfactory. 1 of them had dead pixels, a couple of them had pretty bad backlight bleed (which is quite common).

Still suggest to go for the Acer and just hope you get a good one. It's a panel lottery indeed, which shouldn't even be a thing considering the price premium.

Like I said, if you get a bad panel, just RMA straight. Don't need cakap banyak with Acer. They know the issue, but they aren't doing much to alleviate it.

What's wrong with buying a 1070 to play at 1080p? Overkill is such a useless word.

Don't have a higher res screen, then why not try downsampling? Sharper images, lesser aliasing, game looks better, still runs at 60fps.

This is so, so, soooo true.

Just hitting "60 fps" on the chart means very little. When actually playing a game, the dips and peaks will be so erratic for a card that just "hits 60fps" on a chart for a given game is actually much more annoying than just playing at a solid 30fps with zero drops.


To everyone who just keeps saying "overkill", nothing is overkill if you know how to use your hardware. It's only the matter of how much you are willing to spend.