EVGA, Galax, Inno3D and Gigabyte Announce their GTX 1080 “Founders Edition” GPUs

Nvidia recently revealed their Pascal series GPUs, the GTX 1080 and the GTX 1070. Both of these GPUs are amazingly fast, the 1080 being faster than 2 GTX 980s in SLI. So, before these GPUs release in the market, Galax, Inno3D and Gigabyte has signed the contract with Nvidia as the official board partners for the GTX 1080. All these brands have announced their “Founders Edition” GTX 1080 graphics card.

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What is “Founders Edition”?

Now you might be thinking, what is this ‘Founders Edition’ GPUs? Well, with the Pascal series, Nvidia have called their “reference” GPUs as “Founders Edition” GPUs, which retail for a $100 more than the non-reference models such as Gigabyte Windforce and EVGA ACX. In simple words, “Founders Edition” is the new name of “Reference” GPUs. The non-reference GTX 1080s will be retailing for $599 while the founders edition cards will hit the market with a price tag of $699. The GTX 1080 will hit the markets on 27th May, 2016.

Is extra $100 for the founders edition worth it?

Long story short, no. The extra $100 you pay for the founders edition GPUs give you no technical advantage over the non-reference GPUs. And astonishingly, the non-reference ones may perform better than the founders edition GPUs, due to aftermarket coolers being used on them. The extra $100 you pay for the founders edition is just for the cool looking reference model, which has no such advantage over the non-reference GPUs.

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GTX 1080 “Founders Edition” – Pictured