I see there are a lot of 1080 TI's out there by different mfg's (Nvidia, Asus, EVGA, etc.).  What are the differences?  Is it brand preference or do some cards perform better, have better support, etc?

I would say that they are all more of less virtually identical. Some may have a 3 fan cooling solution others a 2 fan. Some have water blocks, Some have RGB. Some are factory Overclocked, some are cherry picked. I can tell you that Asus warranty's are officially non-transferable but having said that I just got a new 2080ti from an RMA on GPU I bought used. If you want more piece of mind EVGA warranty's are transferable. But for a 1080ti I wouldn't worry about that. If I was going to buy a 1080ti, I'd buy the cheapest used one I could find locally on craigslist or equivalent. I'd always pick it up from the home or place of employment of the seller not at the gas at the intersection of highway and main. do your due diligence and follow safety protocols.

Also, be wary of 1080Ti cards  that have been used in mining.

Fortunately I bought mine new several years ago. 11GB VRAM onboard too! :)

 

10 hours ago, Zimmerbz said:

I see there are a lot of 1080 TI's out there by different mfg's (Nvidia, Asus, EVGA, etc.).  What are the differences?  Is it brand preference or do some cards perform better, have better support, etc?

Many manufacturers overclock and soup up the memory on cards they sell.  Nvidia just provides the basic card or board.  Manufacturers will then put a new cover on them and soup them up by overclocking or adding more memory.  They tweak them to give you the best performance possible.  Some will put pretty lights on them too and the box they use will show their brand and many adjectives describing the product and get one all excited.  I always get the ASUS cards as they are very expensive but very reliable and fast!  I prefer the ones that have been overclocked with a lot of memory.  I think most Nvidia basic cards just have 8GB's of memory.  Manufacturers also give them fancy names and make sure "Gaming" is somewhere in the details.  They also provide software with drivers (which you might need to update after you install the card) and a tweaking program they developed where you can change the performance settings.  This is where a lot of people get in trouble because they see on the Internet where someone was successful in increasing the overclock using the tweaking program.  It may work for some but not for everyone and many will get unexplained crashes.  Computers are strange sometimes and tweaks do not fit everyone.  I always leave mine at the default (overclocked) settings.  Plenty fast for me!!

To get the difference in all the various cards, you can do a Google search like I run sometimes with key works like the following:  ASUS 1080 TI vs EVGA 1080 TI and you will get something like the following:

https://versus.com/en/asus-rog-strix-gtx-1080-ti-gaming-oc-vs-evga-gtx-1080-ti-black-edition-w-icx-cooler

12 hours ago, Zimmerbz said:

I see there are a lot of 1080 TI's out there by different mfg's (Nvidia, Asus, EVGA, etc.).  What are the differences?  Is it brand preference or do some cards perform better, have better support, etc?

For me living in the u.s I have learned my lesson I will only buy my video cards from evga best costumer service and rma and good warranty if something goes wrong and I would pay more for better warranty.

I'll have to second what Silverbird said about EVGA and their return policy.  I bought a 560Ti SOC EVGA card and it was one of the infamous cards that failed almost immediately.  I contacted them, they approved an RMA and sent me a replacement, which performed flawlessly.  Then again, I had, and still have, an 8800 from a startup company called Zotac.  They had no history, but offered a lifetime warranty.  I never had to make use of their warranty as that 8800 refused to malfunction or die.  Unfortunately, no one offers lifetime warranties today.  I would say that companies that offer the longest warranty probably have the most faith in their product.

Beware used video cards, especially high end cards.  Used, high end cards may have been used by cryptocurrency miners and may be pretty well worn out.

Is it worthwhile buying an 1080 ti now or should I wait till prices for the 2080 ti come down?

 

Thanks

The GPU in the RTX 2080ti was expensive to manufacture and it had no high end competition from AMD. Nothing has really changed so I wouldn't expect the price gouge to disappear any time soon. 

Nvidia and AMD only sell these flagship products for "bragging rights" as most PC users do not not need such a card to run mainstream video games. Flightsims are so taxing on the hardware so they fall into a different category, along with benchmark nuts, cryptominers and workstation users.

On 1/30/2020 at 2:01 PM, Zimmerbz said:

I see there are a lot of 1080 TI's out there by different mfg's (Nvidia, Asus, EVGA, etc.).  What are the differences?  Is it brand preference or do some cards perform better, have better support, etc?

If you don’t actually need a better card at present, I’d definitely suggest waiting a few months until the NVIDIA 3000 series cards become available. They will potentially offer much more performance for the money.

I think you are right. Thanks