Review: GeForce RTX 3080 Founder edition

Up to 1100eu the rtx 3080 and up to 2200eu rtx 3090 in my local shops here. You know what? I will just buy xbox series x and will live my important precious life. I deny to be a no lifer no liner for others' joy and entertainment. AMD's navi 2x is my last chance to enjoy high end PC gaming it seems.

 

Great performance, but the power consumption and only 10GB is a turn-off for me.

I've built my PC to be as quiet as possible, with current GTX 1080 card running intentionally undervolted and underclocked to limit the fan speed and keep the PC whisper quiet in the not very demanding games I play.
Combined with Eco mode on Zen2 CPU, my PC uses less than 250W at the wall while I'm gaming.

This card by itself would consume 50% over that...

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I seriously hope TSMC's improved node is much better than this Samsung 8nm, and AMD can bring cards that are much, much more power efficient than this hungry beast of a 3080.

 

Well there are people that understand these things far better than me saying otherwise. I guess we’ll see eventually. DirectStorage should help too, whenever that arrives.

 

This card has the highest performance per watt in many generations (maybe ever?) so it’s actually quite power efficient.

 

oh, don't get me wrong, the 10GB is just fine for 4k currently, but where it isn't the bandwidth won't stop the resulting fps drop.

 

LOL

 

Good ? Yes. Best ? Not really.

https://www.igorslab.de/en/nvidia-g...-step-ahead-and-the-gravestone-for-turing/11/
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-founders-edition/35.html
It's barely in the middle of the pack at 1440, and just -slightly- winning at 4K

Great performance, but using lots and lots of power to achieve it.

 

Don't like power usage? use undervolt then, I'm not sure what else to say

@wavetrex Hardware Unboxed see it differently

 

It’s only middle of the pack at 1080p, it tops the chart at 1440p and 4k. I’m not sure what’s up with the igorslab numbers but it’s quite a bit different than every other test I’ve seen thus far. And yes, it does use lots of power, I’ll give you that, but overall power usage is not the same metric as efficiency.

 

Yeah unless you’re constrained by your PSU and don’t want to buy a new one I don’t see the big deal. The cost to power it will only amount to a few extra bucks per month, nothing crazy.

 

Yeah I was all hyped after the review and ready to pull trigger for one, but now not so sure. The power draw is a bit of a turn off (not due to electric bills), but just that I dont like extra current/heat running thru my PC. Will wait a bit longer until the dust clears in a few weeks to re-examine the scene, or even a few months for a refresh if need be.

 

There is a review that does list vram usage across a number of games, with none near the max it at 4K.

 

The generation leap isn't at all impressive. Compared to the 2080ti its power consumption is up 27% and it averages below a 40% increase in performance even in 4k which is its strength. You can't really compare it apples to apples but that would be less than a 13% performance increase from generation to generation. And if we factor in that the 3080 has higher clocks and double the shader processors (are they counting them the same way as before?!) then it gets even more confusing as to why it looks so good on paper but not so great in practice.
Are they holding back for RDNA2 release or did Samsung's 8nm fab node hit them hard?

 

I think you are looking at it wrong. Its not really going up against the 2080ti, but against the 2080 and 1080ti (still plenty of stubborn owners), and here its performance is nothing to sneeze at.

 

2080 ti isn’t a great comparison though. If you were comparing 3080 ti to 2080 ti it would make more sense to look at it in generational terms. Instead 3080 vs 2080, which both launch(ed) at the same price, is a much more apt comparison.

 

Thank you @Hilbert Hagedoorn great review as always , well done !

Dang !!! What a monster card , never expected this kind of high jump in performance , my 2080Ti is crying in the corner

@Hilbert Hagedoorn can you elaborate a bit more on the power limit on the video ram ? It's got me worried that nvidia keeps adding new restrictions in order to overclock this new video cards. Oh man that short pcb cannot dissipate heat fast enough 90c+ it's not a good thing for pcb components , they should have made it a bigger pcb on the FE in my opinion , will see if reference and aib boards larger pcb gets this hot.

Boss i got a request if you can please run 8k game tittle or benchmark as it would be great to see where this monster fps card will fair. There is an 8k benchmark that uses 8k at hwbot unigine superposition - https://benchmark.unigine.com/superposition/ , thank you for the hard work , appreciate it a lot !

I'm really looking forward to the 3090 review

 

Cheapest 3080 here is 800 euro. For some strange reason it's on sale too.
Cheapest 3090 is 1700. Every sale should include a complementary smack in the head.

 

Overhyped, overpromised and under delivered. Nowhere near 2 x 2080 in 99% of the games, and barely 25% faster than a 2080Ti. Yes its cheaper, but the 2xxx series was laughably overpriced, and so the current prices are where they should be. Waiting for the now inevitable 3080Ti to be worth upgrading from a 1080Ti. Not paying £700 for 45-50% more performance.

 

The 10GB has proved to not be a problem (so far). Hilbert mentioned earlier that PCIe bandwidth was pretty low, suggesting it wasn't feeding off of system memory.
Sure, some games in the future will demand more VRAM, but those are likely going to be optimized for 8K. This is not an 8K GPU. Lower the texture detail, enable DLSS, and you'll be fine.

Don't confuse efficiency with economy. Just because the 3080 is power-hungry, that doesn't mean it isn't efficient, because it very much is.

 

Comment of the year!