If you’ve read our GeForce GTX 1080 review (and we suggest you read that before delving into this article), then you know Nvidia’s new flagship graphics card is a beast. We also knew it was overclockable from our preliminary test, but properly overclocking a GPU can take hours, if not days, to do properly. Now that we’ve had more time with the card, we’ve been able to get a better read on how well the GPU will overclock.

It is worth mentioning that all GPUs overclock differently, even GPUs within the same SKU. Why is this? Well, when you’re manufacturing GPUs at the nanometer level, imperfections with transistors and yields tend to occur, which leads to some chips being more power-efficient than others. Thus, our overclocks are indicative of our particular GTX 1080, but it should at least give you a good reference point for the card’s overclocking capabilities.

Methodology

For our PC, we’re using the same system we used in our GTX 1080 review, which is a rig equipped with Intel’s six-core 5960X CPU coupled with 16GB of DDR4 RAM. To give you a wide array of comparative data, we’re also using the same suite of maxed-out benchmarks from the review and are again testing them at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K.

Overclockability

With a pre-release version of EVGA Precision (provided by Nvidia), there’s a way to overclock the card using a new automated method that Pascal allows for, but we couldn’t get it to reliably run. To be fair, the feature is in a really early state. Regardless, the old tried and true method of manually tweaking the voltage, clocks, and fan speed still work here, so we just did that.

After several hours of tweaking coupled with an overnight stability test using Unigine Valley, we settled on a clock and memory offset of 225MHz and 500MHz, respectively. We were able to push up the memory clocks to 600Mhz, but noticed that performance actually regressed here. We suspect that this is due to the card’s error-correction techniques, which can increase overhead and latency. For fan speed, we revved it up to the max to mitigate any thermal bottlenecks, which was a loud 4,003rpm in our case. We also set the power target to 120% and gave it an additional 20% overvoltage boost in case the GPU needed a little more juice.

With the methodology explained, let’s get onto the benchmarks. We’ll begin at 1080p and move up to 4K and VR.

BioShock Infinite 1080p

While two GTX 980s are five percent faster than a stock-clocked GTX 1080 here, with our overclocks giving the Pascal card a five percent boost, it evens out the playing field for the GTX 1080.

Metro Last Light 1080p

While the five-performance boost in BioShock Infinite in the last slide wasn’t mind-blowing, we saw a much bigger 11

percent gain from our overclocks in our Last Light test here. With an average FPS of 89.6, it managed to barely outperform the pair of 980s.

Shadow of Mordor 1080p

Shadow of Mordor is another game at 1080p that saw a big performance boost from our overclocks. With its 10 percent gain, it garnered a 154 average FPS, which is high enough to allow you to fully take advantage of the game using a super fast 144Hz 1080p monitor.

Tomb Raider 1080p

With a healthy eight percent gain, our overclocked GTX 1080 steals the lead from the pair of 980s in our 1080p Tomb Raider test with a very high 184.9 FPS average.

Unigine Valley 1080p

Unigine Valley represents the GTX 1080’s most minimal performance gains at 1080p. Considering the card is still able to enjoy a five percent boost here, that’s not bad. It still is bested by the dual 980s, however.

3DMark 11

We ran 3DMark 11 under the Extreme settings, which renders multiple scenes at 1080p. The overclocked GTX 1080 was able to see a big 10 percent performance boost here, which allows it to overtake the pair of 980s with a score of 10495.

BioShock Infinite 1440p

With a three percent improvement, this is the smallest increase in performance for our overclocked GTX 1080 out of all of our tests. Regardless, it’s still just enough to help the GTX 1080 barely beat the pair of 980s.

Metro Last Light Redux 1440p

While BioShock Infinite at 1440p represented the smallest performance gains for our overclocked GTX 1080, the card is able to get its biggest boost out of all of our tests with Last Light here via a 12 percent gain. It’s enough of a performance jump to put it on equal footing with the pair of 980s.

Shadow of Mordor 1440p

The GTX 1080 already was ahead of the pack here with an average 105.6 average FPS, but with the eight percent nudge, it lifts performance above 115 average FPS.

Tomb Raider 1440p

Against the stock GTX 1080, the pair of 980s was barely able to edge out the Pascal card, but with the added nine percent boost from our overclocks, the GTX 1080 clearly pulls ahead with a seven percent lead.

Unigine Valley 1440p

The dual 980s were able to handily outperform the stock GTX 1080, but with the added 10 percent overclock, they’re statistically tied here.

BioShock Infinite 4K

The stock GTX 1080 was already the fastest graphics card in our lineup here, and with a decent six percent boost, it runs at nearly 70 average FPS maxed out at 4K.

Metro Last Light Redux 4K

With a big eleven percent performance boost, our overclocks put the GTX 1080 on parity with the dual 980s. With an average FPS of 21.6, however, it’s still not playable, and it reminds us that there’s definitely room for added GPU performance at the high-end of the spectrum.

Shadow of Mordor 4K

With a 59 average FPS, the GTX 1080 at stock clocks can’t quite seem to crack the 60FPS average holy grail figure, at least not maxed-out at 4K. With the nine percent performance boost from our overclocks, the card is able to pass that threshold with a 65 average FPS.

Tomb Raider 4K

Similar to Shadow of Mordor, our stock GTX 1080 was a little shy of reaching the coveted 60 average FPS mark, but with the big 10 percent boost from our overclocks, the card is able to turn the corner and garner a 62.2 average FPS.

SteamVR

The GTX 1080 was already the best graphics card for VR, but with our overclocks giving the GPU an additional nine percent boost, it only further cements the card’s dominance over the competition.

Conclusion

Nvidia claimed that the GTX 1080 was highly overclockable. Considering our overclocks gave us a performance boost between 3-12 percent in our suite of tests and the card’s core clocks would be slightly shy of reaching 2.1GHz, we’d say that’s a pretty accurate statement. While the GTX 1080 at stock speeds traded blows with the dual 980s in many of our benchmarks, with our overclocks, it managed to tie or handily beat the SLI setup in all but two of our 16 tests. That’s impressive when you consider its biggest loss amounts to a two-percent deficit.

Having said that, we want to taper expectations here. Graphically-intensive benchmarks like Metro Last Light Redux, which had the overclocked GTX struggling with a 21.6 average FPS, show us that there is room for more GPU performance growth, most notably at 4K. To smoothly play the most graphically-demanding games maxed out at 4K, you’ll still need an SLI solution at this point.