After having a taste of the mighty NVIDIA GTX 1080 Founders Edition, I was very eager to get my hands on the AIB cards. Right after my return from COMPUTEX, MSI had already sent me some of its latest Pascal-based cards but due to pressing personal matters I was unable to test them out until now. So without any more delay, let's dig into these magnificent specimens.

The new GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 Gaming X 8G sit right at the top of MSI's Pascal-based product stack, and bring a host of clever customizations to an already powerful platform. From custom design to enhanced clocks and cooling solutions, MSI rebuilt the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 according to its Gaming brand. These Gaming X cards are factory overclocked and clad in a custom shroud that sports RGB LEDs and TORX 2.0 fans. Under the layer of eye candy, MSI infused the cards with the new TWIN FROZR VI thermal design and select "Military Class 4" components. We also get an exquisite matte-metal backplate etched with MSI's tribal dragon. All these customizations are much needed to fully harness the performance within, since MSI boosted the GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G to 1847MHz on the core and 10108MHz on the GDDR5X memory, while the GTX 1070 Gaming X 8G clock speed are bumped to 1797MHz on the core and 8108MHz on the GDDR5 memory.