Nvidia RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review

[KingNosser]

I think comparing a 3080 to a 2080ti while being a comparison the real comparison is to a 2080, really depends on what card your running like i said the other day if your on a 2080+ no real need to switch.

AMD won't be cheaper but they should be similar performance at same price points maybe with more ram since they are using gddr6.

I think the 3080 is a decent card at a good price if it holds, but if your on a 2080ti even going to a 3090 isn't really going to give you the bump your looking for if you compare tflops alone it's only 6tflops more than the 3080, huge price difference.

I honestly feel 2080ti owners should wait another generation or 2 like most people would.

 

[Warchild]

You need to remember that a large factor in why the 3080 is "so fast" is the G6x. Take that away? yeah we will see with the 3070.

TBH if AMD even have a competitor to the 3070 they are laughing, as that is the card that will light up sales.

The higher you go the more niche it becomes. 1% will own a 3090.

Its still faster...

Its like all the complaints about mercedes in F1.. they have the better Battery management thats why they won. Well, yeah but end of the day they are winning, which is what matters.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

Seems like a very good 4k card. I don't see it being a particularly important upgrade over a 2080 unless you're already at 4k, in which case you might need the extra performance, or unless you want the additional RT capabilities at 1440p. Otherwise it doesn't seem like an essential upgrade. GTX 1080 owners will see a massive leap in performance, but it is a touch wasted at 1440p, which GTX 1080 owners are likely gaming at. Still a solid upgrade though.

I think this card makes the most sense for people moving to 4k gaming from a 1080p or 1440p setup with a card like a GTX 980, 1070 or Vega 64. That would be an upgrade and new experience very much worth the money.

2080Ti don't seem to need to jump ship until the 3090 is released. If you were daft/had enough disposable income to pay £1200 for that monstrosity, you could probably do the same again with the 3090.

 

[AlienALX]

the 2070 I was running was awesome at 1440p. More than enough.

I won't be buying a 3090. Even though I could (and it would be on my ex landlady which makes it all the funnier) I won't bother. Gonna sort out my stereo system next.

 

[Gothmoth]

youtuber will be hyping this to death.
clicks clicks clicks...


it´s a nice generational update, something i EXPECT.
but i guess all this stupid hyping is because the 20 series was such a letdown.


also ....i don´t want to sit next to an even bigger space heater.
the power draw is a real problem.
i have 3 beefy systems in my mancave (a few more in a "server"room) and a 3 monitor setup and when all is running.... it´s already freaking warm.
if i would replace my current three GPU´s with three RTX 3080 i would add another 300-350 watt heat output....

but reading the conclusion here made me think if a 14 years old wrote it.

 

[AlienALX]

Your review contains erroneous infomation. Pertaining to -

There are a couple of things to be aware of with our overclocking efforts on the RTX 3080 FE. Firstly, like so many of our reviews, we're running on pre-release drivers. This brings it's own issues in certain games, but the biggest effect for this particular bit of the review is that the MSI Afterburner overclocking tool doesn't allow voltage adjustment and without the Nvidia OC Scanner tool (it wasnt ready when we were testing) we ended up being cautious, although as you'll see from our results it doesn't stop the RTX 3080 FE stomping the competition regardless.

Sorry that isn't true. The reason it overclocks like crap is because the Vbios is limiting any extra power to the GPU (see also GN). Meaning if they go back on what they finally did with the 2080Ti? that's your lot, mate. Expect 6% like GN got.

 

[looz]

It's pants as far as I am concerned.

After watching a few reviews I found the important one. You know? the one running an AMD CPU like 80% of his viewers asked him to do. I then found the only game in the 14 he tested that I actually have and play, and.

...

Going AMD doesn't seem to be representative of the card's capability. Sure, difference in 4K isn't large in most cases, but 3900X is left behind consistently, despite PCI-E 4.0.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-amd-3900-xt-vs-intel-10900k/

 

[AlienALX]

Going AMD doesn't seem to be representative of the card's capability. Sure, difference in 4K isn't large in most cases, but 3900X is left behind consistently, despite PCI-E 4.0.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-amd-3900-xt-vs-intel-10900k/

Aye it seems 1440p is the new 1080p.

Still, AMD have their chance soon

 

[MiNo]

Love absolutely everything except the power draw.


I game in a smallish room - and already (1080ti) it gets hot pretty fast. Guess most people have more space and don't care. But 350 watts (+100 if OC'ing) *is* a lot on top of everything else.


Expect a lot of people with mid-range PSU's to get in trouble. And that many will run close to the limit of the PSU - meaning worse utilization and even more heat.


The flipside though - i suppose - is that this card will not be pushed 100% in most situations, and therefor average powerdraw will be far less. I sure hope so.

 

[NeverBackDown]

This card really is not all that impressive over a 2080 or even 2080ti(even in general imo).

3080 : 8704 cores, 19Gbps memory, 760GB/s

2080 : 2944 cores, 14Gbps memory, 448GB/s

In % : ~2.97x cores, ~36% faster mem, ~59% bandwidth


So with the core advantage alone, you could expect a 3x performance increase(in theory).

Not even close to that in benchmarks. Take into account ALL the other advantages? It's still only roughly depending on the game, 40-70% faster.

So to me this is not impressive. You are tripling your core counts, making the architecture more efficient/faster, more memory and faster memory, while raising the power limit up from 250 watts to 320 watts and not even getting all that much faster.

Essentially all it comes down to is in the best case scenario from what I have seen, for every 1 Watt increase over a 2080, you get 1% more performance on average.


Not impressed at all against Turing. This seems more like a larger Turing rather than a newer architecture in terms of performance. I do expect better results with smaller Ampere dies however.


Now against Pascal and specifically a 1080? Yeah this card is impressive. Anywhere from 2-3x faster. However considering the card is over 4 years old and its power limit is 1/3 lower than a 3080, it's really expected increases.


It's a fast card, but man the hype did not justify this at all. I blame Digital Foundry's early performance video only showing percentages.


Only saving grace of this card is it's price. FE 1080 and a FE 3080 launch at $700. Which makes it quite a value after 4 years.
Against a 2080/Super its also the same but far less value in an upgrade.


Also Looking at a few reviews now, seems to me most reviewers are only testing against Non Super cards. Find that very interesting.

 

[WYP]

Your review contains erroneous infomation. Pertaining to -

There are a couple of things to be aware of with our overclocking efforts on the RTX 3080 FE. Firstly, like so many of our reviews, we're running on pre-release drivers. This brings it's own issues in certain games, but the biggest effect for this particular bit of the review is that the MSI Afterburner overclocking tool doesn't allow voltage adjustment and without the Nvidia OC Scanner tool (it wasnt ready when we were testing) we ended up being cautious, although as you'll see from our results it doesn't stop the RTX 3080 FE stomping the competition regardless.

Sorry that isn't true. The reason it overclocks like crap is because the Vbios is limiting any extra power to the GPU (see also GN). Meaning if they go back on what they finally did with the 2080Ti? that's your lot, mate. Expect 6% like GN got.

Dude, as Tom said in the video, we are going to look into this again when the proper tools are available. I haven't seen the Gamers Nexus stuff, but overclocking without the proper toolset is always going to be a limiting factor.

TBH, you have been looking for every possible reason to be negative about this launch, but I will not let you call Tom a liar for saying that overclocking tools weren't there yet when I know for a fact they weren't.

 

[looz]

With proper tools I'd expect good units to respond well to undervolting, not unlike recent AMD cards.

 

[AlienALX]

Dude, as Tom said in the video, we are going to look into this again when the proper tools are available. I haven't seen the Gamers Nexus stuff, but overclocking without the proper toolset is always going to be a limiting factor.

TBH, you have been looking for every possible reason to be negative about this launch, but I will not let you call Tom a liar for saying that overclocking tools weren't there yet when I know for a fact they weren't.

Thanks !

From where I am sitting Mark sadly there isn't much positive about this launch. It's been very sadly predictable.

I didn't say Tom was a liar. I said the review included erroneous information. Who did it come from? not Tom. Please don't take that the wrong way. Steve @ GN has already discovered that the VBIOS is severely limiting the current draw to the GPU. So no scanner tool is going to help that. There are two reasons for this.

1. It's an "Overclocker's Dream !" only worse, because at least Fiji managed about 8%.

2. They don't want people to see how terrible this thing munches through wattage overclocked. If it can even overclock at all, because they haven't wrung its neck trying desperately to make it look good.

So, this "assumes" that they are going to release a VBIOS unlock. Because if it does not? that's your power limit. However, when was the last time they released a VBIOS for a 30 series card? never.

Maxwell - all locked.
Pascal - all locked.
Turing - all locked apart from high end 2080Ti.

So, that indicates to me that the 3080 will never be unlocked. Of course, there could well be a reason 3 for that. They could be worried that the 3080, if overclocked, would perform too closely to the £1400 3090.

I'm sorry if all of this has been very negative. However, don't look at the monkey look at the organ grinder. When he bungs companies money to gloss over the truth and lie what do you expect intelligent people to do? be happy? thank him for the BS sandwich? or get peed off from day 0?

It's not you, it's certainly not Tom and it's no one else but Nvidia.

Oh, Kepler were all locked, too.

With proper tools I'd expect good units to respond well to undervolting, not unlike recent AMD cards.

From everything we have been told so far these *are* the good units. So I will be interested to see what, if anything, can be done. The temps are clearly not a problem though.

 

[looz]

Found the following video of a card which managed -100mV, which slashed power consumption by 50W with very little impact on performance.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1B4qZFDpYE


Also ran with a 8700K which I personally find most interesting. But I have no previous knowledge of this reviewer.

 

[AlienALX]

I had no luck with my Vega whatsoever. It would just pink screen.

 

[Crion]

Thanks, Tom, for being the only one I've seen to include testing for 10 series cards. I feel like that's the generation that most people, myself included, are interested in upgrading from.

 

[23RO_UK]

Dude, as Tom said in the video, we are going to look into this again when the proper tools are available. I haven't seen the Gamers Nexus stuff, but overclocking without the proper toolset is always going to be a limiting factor.

TBH, you have been looking for every possible reason to be negative about this launch, but I will not let you call Tom a liar for saying that overclocking tools weren't there yet when I know for a fact they weren't.

To be fair Mark, the only positive from this launch is the pricing, well that's to say what the prices are meant to be not what they will in point of fact end up at.

I'm a 2080 FE owner, I refer to it as a 1080Ti Mk2, in point of fact it's all it really is at the end of the day.

I think you'll find most 2xxx series card owners will concede they were paying through the nose for lower than expected performance gains, heralding the arrival of the 3xxx series at reasonable prices in comparison is just a mockery for those that were stung last time around IMO.

 

[looz]

Thanks, Tom, for being the only one I've seen to include testing for 10 series cards. I feel like that's the generation that most people, myself included, are interested in upgrading from.

Almost took the review for granted, thanks Tom and people who assisted - other reviewers don't really go through everyday characteristics of the card like the thoroughly warm alloy construction and currently limited overclocking tools. Leaves with a better picture on what owning the card actually is like.

 

[TheF34RChannel]

Thanks Tom and OC3D for the review. Always the first one I watch. I'm comparing it to my 1080 = nice upgrade (I also look at the new features and software etc. so to me that's major). I'll stick with 1440p for a few more years anyway. More eyecandy over resolution for me.

I wish more reviewers would use stuff like 8700K and more instead of 10900K which hardly anyone runs, though. I do like your move onto Ryzen here

 

[Warchild]

Thanks Tom and OC3D for the review. Always the first one I watch. I'm comparing it to my 1080 = nice upgrade (I also look at the new features and software etc. so to me that's major). I'll stick with 1440p for a few more years anyway. More eyecandy over resolution for me.

I wish more reviewers would use stuff like 8700K and more instead of 10900K which hardly anyone runs, though. I do like your move onto Ryzen here :)

This is why I like Steve from GN. He often does benchmarking for the questions we all have every generation.. e.g is my 7700k still good against the 10900k etc.

well he goes ahead and pits them against each other to show our older cpus are still fighting well. I think hes done the same for the 8700k too and others.