I agree but some cards do idle higher than others. Even if idling at 45-50c, I would still find that preferable to fan always on due to reasons you mentioned, esp less dust build up.
I expected, that SLI stilll would be supported by API in certain applications, as well for 3080s in the future, implied you donĀ“t need a SLI or NVLink bridge anymore? Hopefully I can get one either, occasionally, at a reasonable price tag, sometime, before RTX40xx is out.
Sadly, we have to believe it. Because manufacturers already maxed out everything what goes for GPU and memory. Now you simply have to pay for OCed cards, just like this one from ASUS. Chips are already preselected, silicon lottery is over. Without heavy hardware mods, I believe, there is no OC headroom anymore, no matter which manufacturer you are looking at. I really hope I am taught better.
I think you are correct, manufacturers and 3rd party partners have decided to make extra money by binning the chips. And, who can blame them, we had a good run with silicon lotteries but they were always going to catch on sooner or later. Many shops do this already with their pre-built systems, OverchargersUK comes to mind. You have to feel sorry for the customers buying things to OC only to find out they have minimal headroom because all the decent ones have been cherry picked and sold for extra profit.
That was the low end of psu's 10 years or so ago I had 2 Enermax DXX's 1kw each in one of my old boxes granted for ocing mostly but gpu's back then needed a minimum 700+ for a high end gpu.
For some stupid reason I bought a 6-rail 1500 W Enermax supply about 7 years ago after a whole bunch of 1200 Ws from other manufacturers died on me or had other issues. I'm drawing max 400 W from it, but it's been rock solid reliable since. I could maybe just about run 2 of these new nVidia cards from this, whereas I could throw 4 vegas at it. Current Radeon Fury is run at half wattage, 150 W for the same perf... Perf per watt is probably better than these nvidia ones.
I have a EVGA 3090 FTW3 Ultra and I seem to be testing worse than all the cards you tested. Are you running completely stock or did you increase power to the card? Over a 1k difference between FE and my FTW3. I can't believe thats right? https://www.3dmark.com/spy/14693033