Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 review

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition – It shows us one of the most impressive leaps in the history of GPU manufacturing. If you’re into 4K gaming, check out RTX 3080 right away. Don’t be discouraged if the advantages are a bit harder to notice at low resolution.

Pros:

• Great performance in terms of 4K gaming
• Proper cooling system
• Multiple helpful non-gaming features

Cons:

• Pricey
• The founder’s version lacks USB-C

The video card finally followed the Turing series. We have a serious performance boost without a price raise.
Nvidia presented a product that has a huge advantage over its predecessor RTX 2080. To be precise, performance quality grew by 50-80%, while it retails for the same money. Ti has a price that is twice as much, yet performance is exceeded by 20-30%.

Without any exaggeration, this solution is one of the most remarkable ones in PC graphics. Such a generational move has always been a rare thing to witness in the industry. Let’s break down why it has so much value.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Price

The graphics card is available for at Amazon for $1,099.99 in the Founders Edition. But there are multiple kinds produced by various manufacturers, like ASUS or, for example, Zotac. It’s a typical situation in the graphics cards market.

It’s important to remember that the price may increase depending on the secondary CPUs’ design. As a rule, a sophisticated fan system and factory-made overclocking have an impact on pricing. However, every RTX 3080 can only perform on the level of graphics cards made by Nvidia.

Review of the main specs of the graphics card

RTX 3080 vs 3080 TI specs

The graphics card uses the fresh Ampere graphics architecture, which notably boosts its efficiency and performance. In fact, we have a raise in both power and energy efficiency after RTX 2080. That is to say, the review hero easily exceeds any Turing series graphics cards capabilities.

The tensor cores, as much as the RT cores, underwent some obvious upgrades. However, in our opinion, the most important improvement was made in the rasterization engine. Nvidia seriously worked on the optimization here.

So we have doubled CUDA cores in every streaming multiprocessor. Each one’s data streams are able to handle 32-bit float workloads. That’s a big advantage over Turing where we only had one stream for integer workloads. As a result of this solution, the underlying core bandwidth doubles. However, there’s no doubling in frame rates when playing the most popular games.

In other words, the graphics card offers 46% more streaming multiprocessors than the RTX 2080. Also, it provides almost thrice the number of CUDA cores (from 2944 to 8704). This way, the theoretical FP32 bandwidth almost triples, growing from 10 to 29.7 teraflops. It’s an absolute generational leap.

A significant increase in the cache, CUDA cores, and texture blocks are not all. The memory bandwidth also grows with super fast GDDR6X on a 320-bit bus. We’re witnessing the biggest leap in terms of gaming performance over the last few years. Although the graphics card doesn’t show a doubling in the performance itself, as some might expect.

RT cores by Nvidia are back, and they come with some improvements as well. After all, they are the reason why there’s the RTX prefix in the name. New cores of the 2nd generation provide the same performance as the 1st-generation ones. But they are twice more efficient.

Once you activate ray tracing, the light beam comes out from the streaming multiprocessor. It goes straight to the rendered scene. And then the RT core starts to work. It does necessary calculations to define the place for the light beam to be reflected.

After that, the RT core returns the information to the multiprocessor. Now the latter one is free to render the rest. But we live in a time where activating ray tracing still affects the performance. Maybe, one day things will change.

The tensor cores, again, show twice more power. It led to Nvidia putting 4 cores only in every multiprocessor. In the case of Turing, the number was 8. Along with this increased number, DLSS performance also showed some lift.

However, the recent generation’s graphics cards aren’t just about gaming. The company presented a number of fresh features. They are expected to bring some improvement to all the RTX GPUs.

Let’s take the RTX Voice as an example. We were happy to find out this feature was brought out of beta testing. It offers a whole broadcasting app. Thanks to that, you can remove the external noise from your mic. In addition, you can use it to adjust your webcam’s image. Filter your background or simply apply blurring.

Video processing functions are still under test so we could see some glitching. But in any case, the feature does a good job. Especially, compared to other solutions to block the background where a green screen is avoided.

Nvidia RTX I/O is one of the technologies that makes us most excited. It’s an API that works along with the Microsoft DirectStorage API. It works the following way. The program routes data right from the SSD to the CPU.

This solution plays an important role in next-generation gaming. It promises to decrease loading time. Hopefully, it’ll also present innovative methods and approaches to I/O performance. The technology is crucial for the gaming industry’s development, putting aside frame rates and graphics.

However, the feature is supposed to be applied by game developers. Therefore, we can’t evaluate the practical changes as of now. We’ll closely test the technology once it’s implemented. Besides, consoles will utilize a similar feature. But we assume it’ll perform at a higher speed than ray tracing.

For the Founders Edition CPU, the company came up with a fresh improved design. It shows more practicality than any previous product with the reference style. The company applied a shortened multilayer PCB. It turns the whole back of the graphics card into a heatsink allowing air to circulate.

In the beginning, we had some concerns regarding the fan design affecting CPU temperatures. The construction implies that hot air blows straight onto the components. Nevertheless, we saw no impact on performance. Probably, it’s because there’s no high load on power components.

Also, there’s a 12-pin power cable there, and we have some questions about it. We understand that the fresh PCB design required a decrease in size. It’s necessary to enable the new cooling system. But we’d prefer a 2×8-pin to 1×12-pin adapter to be available to all market participants. Even to AMD, in case they’d like to use it.

In addition, the graphics card offers three convenient DisplayPorts and an HDMI 2.1 for screens. Some users may get disappointed about the lack of USB-C output. It could be especially useful for professionals who work with powerful gaming monitors. They normally have this type of connection.

Overall, the graphics card looks attractive, even with some minor issues and a bad first impression. This CPU is all covered in black and has silverish inserts. In our opinion, that’s what a piece of professional hardware is supposed to look like.

Besides, there is a backlit element on the graphics card. It’s the GeForce RTX logo in white color, located on the side. If you don’t enjoy bright backlighting, this detail will certainly please you. Gamers with the opposite design preferences may find suitable solutions provided by third-party CPU manufacturers.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Performance – Benchmarks

Test rig specifications

Here comes the configuration of the system we used to evaluate the device:

• CPU version: Ryzen 9 3950X (up to 4.7GHz, 16 cores)
• Fans: Cooler Master Masterliquid 360P Silver Edition
• Electricity supply system: Phanteks RevoltX 1200
• RAM: 64GB Corsair Dominator Platinum @ 3600 MHz
• Main circuit board: X570 Aorus Master
• SSD type: ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro @ 1TB
• Case: Praxis Wetbench

The company did a good job with the graphics card’s promotion on the market. So we actually expected it to be fast. However, the word “fast” seems an understatement in this case. This CPU could easily handle any game, whether we tested Control or Final Fantasy.

Earlier we evaluated RTX 2080 using the same equipment, and the difference was quite obvious. Even before the changes in performance began. Thus, we had serious issues with one of our favorites, the XIV Final Fantasy. At some points, RTX 2080 allowed the picture quality to drop below the satisfactory mark.

For us, it’s 60 fps, when applying 4K. We never witnessed anything like that with the RTX 3080. In fact, most of the time the game held from 75 to 100 fps. We also applied 4K resolution, as much as maximized graphic settings. It’s a considerable boost in performance for half the price compared to the RTX 2080.

The same twist happened in many games repeatedly. Metro Exodus with DLSS and ray tracing gave us a smooth fix at 60 fps. Maximizing tracing effects brings a supreme performance quality. Even the most unusual additional effects in Final Fantasy cannot change the situation. The graphic card continuously maintains 60 frames at 4K. It provides an utterly comfortable gaming experience.

In terms of temperature, however, the performance didn’t go too well. But you need to keep in mind one thing about our testing stand. It’s fully open. So with the 240-mm fans in a closed tower, the peak temperature was 60℃. This is way below the average result of the Ti model. The GPU heated up to 80℃.

Now, if we take a closer look at the test results, one thing becomes clear. The graphic card creates a new category, even exceeding the RTX 2080 Ti. In addition, we’d like to note a curious fact. The 3D Mark test revealed a 63% advantage in speed over the 2080 model. In addition, it brought 26% faster results than the 2080 Ti. This is, obviously, a generational leap. Especially, if you remember the 2080’s advantage over the GTX 1080 by 40% in 2018.

Nevertheless, even such an accurate test as Time Spy doesn’t fully reveal the card’s potential. Red Dead Redemption 2 at maximized graphics options showed an 87% difference between generations.

It’s not the performance twice as high as it was promised at the card’s presentation. But this is more than we expected. In general, the review hero shows a 50-80% higher speed than the RTX 2080 model. The Fire Strike Ultra results make an exception with a gain of just 29%. However, it’s still a fairly good percentage.

On the other hand, such a huge performance gap is only present at 4K. This resolution doesn’t reveal the card’s bottleneck points. This test bench proves that even the chosen processor withholds the graphic card. So it shows nearly identical results with the 2080 Ti at 1080p, when playing Metro Exodus. Meanwhile, after switching to the 4K resolution, our CPU gives a 19% advantage in performance.

That’s why buying this graphics card only makes sense if you’re going to apply for 4K. Or, at least, you should intend to play at 3400 x 1440 pixels. Otherwise, the expected boost simply won’t happen. So, for gaming at lower resolutions, you better choose RTX 3070.

The review graphics card’s performance makes the existing gap between AMD and Nvidia even larger. It more than doubles the efficiency of the most powerful consumer-driven graphics card by AMD. We’re talking about the RX 5700 XT, of course, which was defeated in most tests. Big Navi will have to work hard to overperform RTX 3080. As of now, the latter one, undoubtedly, owns the 4K gaming crown.

Reviews of other Nvidia GeForce models:

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 review

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 review

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti review

Summary

You should definitely consider buying this video card if you meet the following conditions:

1. You seek the best possible performance in 4K. This resolution has incredibly high demands, and the review card is the best option here. It’ll allow you to find a maximum value of every 4K game applying 60 fps.

2. You’re interested in next-generation performance. The requirements grow extremely fast with new games constantly released. RTX 3080 promises much more power than the competitors in the same price range.

3. You own an older model. The company’s earlier generations, namely Pascal and Turing, didn’t show much difference. Therefore, many players decided to remain with the 10-series video cards. So, in case you use one of them, RTX 3080 will be a great advantage.

4. There’s also a list of conditions that make it meaningless to buy the review card. Read them carefully as well.

5. You mostly apply lower resolution when playing. 3080 is designed to work at 4K resolution, so it should be used for higher resolution gaming. Otherwise, it simply won’t be able to show its maximum potential. Even if you combine it with a highly powerful processor.

6. You have a strapped budget. As the Turing came out, RTX 2080’s price drastically increased compared to the GTX 1080. So Nvidia neither raises the new generation’s price nor lowers it to the previous level. If you’re going to buy the review item, prepare $700, even if it’s worth it.

Final judgment

This video card is a paragon of performance. It shows us one of the most impressive leaps in the history of GPU manufacturing. If you’re into 4K gaming, check out RTX 3080 right away. Don’t be discouraged if the advantages are a bit harder to notice at low resolution.

Read more about Best Gaming Graphics Cards:

The Top 10 Best Gaming Graphics Cards 2023

The Best 4K Gaming Graphics Cards in 2023

Video-review on gaming graphics card Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

Gaming Graphics Card Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti review - a graphics card of high performance. It shows the most impressive leaps of GPU. If you’re into 4K gaming, check out RTX 3080

Product SKU: RTX 3080

Product Brand: Nvidia

Product Currency: $

Product Price: 1099

Price Valid Until: 2023-06-04

Product In-Stock: InStock

Editor's Rating:
9.8