NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 12 of 42 graphics cards by recommenders
Owners report it stays strong for years, running modern games at 1080p and local AI models. Caveat: Nvidia ended driver updates, leaving only security fixes.
Owners report it stays strong for years, running modern games at 1080p and local AI models. Caveat: Nvidia ended driver updates, leaving only security fixes.
27 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 23
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 85%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 8 years
Median of the 5 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 23 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Still performs well years later
“no longer supported with driver updates (outside of "security updates")... it still is an excellent card even 10 years later”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “US Rep Announces Congressional Legislation to Protect Video Game Ownership” “that 1080 ti isn't dead either, I passed the rig onto someone who wanted to get into PC gaming and it's still going strong.”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “Apple Is Fighting for TSMC Capacity as Nvidia Takes Center Stage” “It was still viable and not in urgent need of a replacement”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “Apple Is Fighting for TSMC Capacity as Nvidia Takes Center Stage” - Comment from 15 Jul 2026 in “GTX 1080s: Testing a Legend”
- Comment from 22 Jun 2026 in “Minecraft: Java Edition 26.2, the first version with Vulkan 1.2”
- Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage”
Runs local AI models well
“It runs Gemma e4b multimodal, qwen 3.5 8b or the qwen 4b embeddings models well enough (40+ t/s for the LLMs).”
Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “AI Coding at Home Without Going Broke” “I can run a genuine dense model with usable context. GOAT card.”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “GTX 1080s: Testing a Legend” “You can get 60tps with three 1080tis and the sparse model”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?” Remarkably strong, long-lived hardware
“remarkably great card that landed at just the right time”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “GTX 1080s: Testing a Legend” “It really is an impressive bit of hardware.”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “Every GPU That Mattered” “the GTX 1080 Ti is/was a monster card”
Comment from 24 May 2026 in “Memory has grown to nearly two-thirds of AI chip component costs” - Comment from 6 Jan 2026 in “AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention”
Great value over a long life
“One of the best things I've purchased in retrospect since it was my main GPU up until the middle of 2025”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “GTX 1080s: Testing a Legend” “making it effectively free (minus electricity use and opportunity cost)”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Nvidia Reportedly Ends GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Production, RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB Next” “one of the best technology investments I've ever made”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “Every GPU That Mattered”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Driver support ended; poor Wayland
“no longer supported with driver updates (outside of "security updates")... it still is an excellent card even 10 years later”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “US Rep Announces Congressional Legislation to Protect Video Game Ownership” “there isn't/wasn't proper support for 1000 series NVIDIA GPUs with Wayland”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark” “The 1080ti support depreciation is a travesty.”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “US Rep Announces Congressional Legislation to Protect Video Game Ownership” Power draw made it costly
“caused it to never enter low power mode, changing power consumption permanently from 10W -> 50W”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “How to Quickly Warm Up Your MacBook” “By the time I gave it away it wasn't worth the power cost”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “Every GPU That Mattered”
Other graphics cards people recommend
The four most recommended other graphics cards, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 | 116 | 21 | 85% | 12 | 5 yrs14 owners | Approved |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 | 102 | 37 | 73% | 12 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 | 77 | 26 | 75% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Nvidia GPUs | 67 | 67 | 50% | 11 | 6 yrs3 owners | — |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 TiThis page | 23 | 4 | 85% | 10 | 8 yrs5 owners | Approved |
What people said
26 of the 28 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“The 1080ti support depreciation is a travesty.”
“no longer supported with driver updates (outside of "security updates")... it still is an excellent card even 10 years later”
“Their warranty was worth the premium price for sure.”
“it comfortably hits 165 fps in Rocket League at 1080p”
“remarkably great card that landed at just the right time”
“One of the best things I've purchased in retrospect since it was my main GPU up until the middle of 2025”
“I can run a genuine dense model with usable context. GOAT card.”
“My 2700X and 1080ti do plenty of what I need these days.”
“Could have picked up 4x1080ti for about $100 + shipping!”
“A 1080 TI is a relatively good card these days still.”
“You can get 60tps with three 1080tis and the sparse model”
“It runs Gemma e4b multimodal, qwen 3.5 8b or the qwen 4b embeddings models well enough (40+ t/s for the LLMs).”
“the GPUs sit at 1x2.0 pcie lanes and low wattage. That slows down loading quite a bit.”
“caused it to never enter low power mode, changing power consumption permanently from 10W -> 50W”
“the GTX 1080 Ti is/was a monster card”
“It really is an impressive bit of hardware.”
“one of the best technology investments I've ever made”
“By the time I gave it away it wasn't worth the power cost”
“User tries local model on their 1080 ti but they can barely run entry-level models”
“It was still viable and not in urgent need of a replacement”
“that 1080 ti isn't dead either, I passed the rig onto someone who wanted to get into PC gaming and it's still going strong.”
“making it effectively free (minus electricity use and opportunity cost)”
“did a great service over all these years”
“or GTX 1080 Ti but I fear that Nvidia has learnt their lesson”
“and it's still doing fine”
“there isn't/wasn't proper support for 1000 series NVIDIA GPUs with Wayland”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.