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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile: A Review of an Outdated but Sturdy GPU for Laptops

April 2025

Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile is a legendary laptop graphics card that was released in 2016. Despite nearly a decade since its launch, it can still be found in some new entry-level devices, particularly in countries with limited access to modern GPUs. In this article, we will explore what this model is capable of in 2025 and who it may still be suitable for.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Pascal Architecture: The Foundation of Power

The GTX 1080 Mobile is built on the Pascal architecture (2016) and manufactured using TSMC's 16nm process. This made it possible to achieve high performance while maintaining moderate power consumption for its time.

What Can It Do, and What Can’t It?

- No RTX and DLSS: The card does not support hardware ray tracing or NVIDIA's neural network technologies like DLSS. Modern games featuring RTX will only run at basic settings.

- VR Ready: At its time, the GTX 1080 was marketed as a solution for virtual reality. It is still suitable for basic VR applications (e.g., Beat Saber).

- Technologies of Its Generation: Supports DirectX 12, NVIDIA Ansel for 360-degree screenshot creation, and G-Sync for synchronization with monitors.

2. Memory: Resources and Speed

GDDR5X: Outdated but Fast Standard

The card is equipped with 8 GB of GDDR5X memory with a 256-bit bus. The bandwidth is 320 GB/s (10 Gbps effective frequency).

Impact on Performance

This amount is sufficient for gaming at medium settings in 1080p and 1440p, but there may be issues with texture caching at 4K. For professional tasks, 8 GB is the minimum threshold for working with 3D models or 4K video.

3. Gaming Performance

Average FPS in Popular Projects (2025)

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Patch 2.5): 35–45 FPS on medium settings in 1080p (no ray tracing).

- Starfield: 40–50 FPS on low/medium settings in 1080p.

- Fortnite (Performance Mode): 60–70 FPS in 1440p.

Resolutions and Settings

- 1080p: Optimal for most games.

- 1440p: Requires reduced detail settings.

- 4K: Only for less demanding projects (e.g., indie games).

Ray Tracing: Not supported. In games with hybrid rendering (e.g., through FidelityFX Ray Reconstruction), the load falls on the CPU, leading to a sharp drop in FPS.

4. Professional Tasks

CUDA Cores in Action

- Video Editing: In Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, rendering 1080p projects takes 2–3 times longer than on modern GPUs with hardware AV1 acceleration.

- 3D Modeling: The card handles simple scenes in Blender or Maya, but for complex tasks (e.g., particle simulations), it's better to use solutions based on Ampere or Ada Lovelace architecture.

- Scientific Calculations: CUDA and OpenCL are supported, but the low FP32 efficiency (2.9 TFLOPs) makes the card unsuitable for modern research.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP: 150–180 W

This is a high figure for a laptop. A quality cooling system with multiple heat pipes and fans is required.

Recommendations

- Use cooling pads to lower temperatures by 5–10°C.

- Regularly clean the ventilation grilles from dust.

- Avoid prolonged loads at temperatures above 85°C — this accelerates chip degradation.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Analogues from 2016–2018:

- AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Mobile: About 15% weaker in DirectX 11, but better at handling Vulkan.

- NVIDIA GTX 1070 Mobile: 20–25% slower but cheaper.

In 2025:

The GTX 1080 Mobile loses to even budget newcomers like the NVIDIA RTX 3050 Mobile (50% faster) or the AMD Radeon RX 6600M (60% faster).

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply

Laptops with GTX 1080 Mobile require a power supply of at least 180–200 W. When replacing the adapter, only use original models.

Compatibility

- Supports Windows 10/11 and Linux (with NVIDIA drivers 470xx and newer).

- Compatible with Thunderbolt 3 eGPU docks, but efficiency is lower due to PCIe 3.0 x8 limitations.

Drivers

NVIDIA ceased official support for the GTX 10 series in 2024. For new games, modified community drivers (e.g., "NVCleanstall") will be necessary.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Affordable price (new laptops starting from $600).

- Reliable construction (often found in premium chassis from 2017–2020).

- G-Sync support.

Cons:

- No ray tracing or DLSS.

- High power consumption.

- Limited driver support.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the GTX 1080 Mobile Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Budget Gamers looking to play at medium settings in 1080p.

2. Owners of Older Laptops who want to extend their lifespan.

3. Professionals needing CUDA for simple tasks but without a budget for an upgrade.

Why in 2025?

The GTX 1080 Mobile represents a compromise between price and performance in the used device segment. However, purchasing new laptops featuring this card is not recommended: even budget-friendly RTX 4050 or RX 7600M offer double the performance and modern features for $700–900.

Conclusion

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile is an example of a "long-lived" GPU. It is still capable of quite a lot, but time takes its toll. If you're not ready to invest in new hardware and are looking for a temporary solution, this card may be your option. However, keep in mind that the future belongs to AI-accelerated technologies and energy-efficient architectures.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

August 2016

Model Name

GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile

Generation

GeForce 10 Mobile

Base Clock

1556MHz

Boost Clock

1734MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

7,200 million

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

160

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

16 nm

Architecture

Pascal

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

GDDR5X

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

256bit

Memory Clock

1251MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

320.3 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

111.0 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

277.4 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

138.7 GFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

277.4 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

8.7 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

2560

L1 Cache

48 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

150W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

CUDA

6.1

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.4

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

8.7 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

6984

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon Pro W6600

9.432 +8.4%

Radeon 880M

9.087 +4.4%

GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile

8.7

Instinct MI8

8.356 -4%

Radeon Pro Duo

8.028 -7.7%

3DMark Time Spy

GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Mobile

10938 +56.6%

GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB GA104

8928 +27.8%

GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile

6984

RTX A1000 Mobile 6 GB

4844 -30.6%

GeForce GTX 970

3708 -46.9%