How to Get the Most Out of Games
Few things matter as much when it comes to gaming as your graphics card. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 is a high performance graphics card designed to wring as much gaming goodness as possible out of your computer.
What Are GTX 1080 System Requirements?
One thing you always have to consider when looking at a new video card is its list of system requirements. You can't simply drop a GTX 1080 in any laptop and hope that it's going to work. In fact, the moment you start looking at a new graphics card, you are talking about desktop computers. Even so, you can't get the most out of the card with just any desktop; there are certain requirements it has to meet:
- Space: The Founders Edition reference card is a dual-slot design, so you need enough space in your case for an empty PCIe slot beside your video card.
- Power: The card itself draws 180 Watts, so you want at least a 500-Watt power supply with a dedicated 8-pin power connector to drive it.
- Slot: Given its bandwidth requirements, you want to use a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot to get the most out of your new card.
What About SLI?
While a GTX 1080 provides more than enough performance for many users, to get the most out of your graphics installation you can always turn to SLI. Standing for Scalable Link Interface, SLI offers a way to boost your frame rate or image quality by taking advantage of the power of two or more Nvidia GTX 1080 cards. Some things to consider include:
- Number of Cards: While you can use as many as four cards in SLI with the right board and SLI bridge, you can often get significant benefits from two.
- Compatibility: All cards need to have exactly the same processor, memory capacity, and memory bus width; you can't combine a GTX 1080 Ti 11GB card with a GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5X card in SLI.
- Bridge: In addition to the PCIe slots, you also want an SLI HB Bridge to transfer gigabytes of graphics data between your cards so the system can divide the workload appropriately.
Taking Advantage of Your 1080
To take full advantage of your VR-ready card you need to make sure you have current DirectX 12 drivers for your GTX 1080 game system. You can also get a gaming monitor and step beyond 60 Hz for even smoother gaming experiences.
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