NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Review: Amped-Up Ampere For Gamers

We also spent a little time overclocking the EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti XC3 Ultra to see what kind of additional performance we could wring from the card...

Overclocking The EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti XC3 Ultra

Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30-series cards feature GPU Boost just like previous-gen GeForces. GPU Boost scales frequencies and voltages up and down based on the GPU's workload at the time, within predetermined power and thermal limits. Should a temperature or power limit be reached, GPU Boost will drop down to the previous boost frequency/voltage stepping, in an attempt to bring power and temperatures down gradually and not cause and significant performance swings. The maximum boost clock and power limit can be tweaked and tuned to wring more performance from most cards, however.

As we've mentioned in some of our previous coverage, NVIDIA has optimized the interfaces and power delivery on RTX 30-series cards to preserve signal integrity and ensure a smooth supply of power, which are two things that should help with overclocking. That said, like previous-gen Turing-based cards, the Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30-series is still power limited to prevent damage and ensure longevity, which will usually be the gating factor in any overclocking efforts. With the EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti XC3 Ultra, however, the power target can be increased by up to 5%, the max temperature target from 83°C to 91°C, and the GPU voltage can be raised by up to .1v as well.


We kept things simple while overclocking the EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti XC3 Ultra and used the frequency and voltage offsets, and power and temperature target sliders available in the latest version of Precision X1, to manually push the card beyond its stock configuration. First, we turned up the temperature and power targets, bumped the voltage up by 35mV, and then we increased the GPU and memory clock offsets until the test system was no longer stable, showed on-screen artifacts, or performance peaked due to hitting the power limit.

The EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti XC3 Ultra has a default boost clock of 1,725MHz, which is somewhat higher than NVIDIA's reference spec of 1,665MHz, but those numbers mean very little in the real world, since both cards routinely boosted much higher. The EVGA card boosted to 1,925MHz in its stock configuration, with a 19Gbps effective memory speed. While overclocked, however, we were able to take its GPU clock up to 2,175MHz with 19.4Gbps memory.


The EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti XC3 Ultra was routinely hitting its power limit in its stock configuration, but we were still able to squeeze some additional performance out of the card. In fact, the card ended up at the top of the stack in FarCry New Dawn while overclocked and it overtook the Founders Edition card as well.

GPU Power Consumption Tested at the Outlet

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition and EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti XC3 Ultra cards we tested put up strong numbers throughout our benchmarks and game tests, that were within a couple of percentage points of each other. If you plan to do any sort of manual tuning, there won't be much (in terms of performance) to separate the various GeForce RTX 3080 Ti cards that are due to the hit the market. Versus competing cards, they both fall into the same slot as well. More often than not, the GeForce RTX 3080 Tis were faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT  -- especially when ray tracing was involved -- but the Radeon did score a couple of key victories. Generally speaking though, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti cards aren't quite as fast as the beastly GeForce RTX 3090. The deltas separating the RTX 3080 Tis and 3090, however, are tiny and would not be perceivable in real-world use. For gamers the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is the clear choice between the two. If you're a creator or professional that can make use of the 3090's additional memory, however, it remains the king of the hill.

Find GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Cards @ Amazon

Disregarding the current craziness in the GPU market, NVIDIA expects GeForce RTX 3080 Ti cards to be available tomorrow on its website and at various eTailers. The company has set its MSRP at $1,199. We don't have official pricing for the custom EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti XC3 Ultra, but it will probably be within a few dollars of NVIDIA's design. At those prices, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti arrives at the effectively the same price point at the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, which it expectedly crushes across the board. The RTX 3080 Ti is also a couple of hundred dollars more than the $999 Radeon RX 6900 XT, which is a much tougher battle. And versus the original RTX 3080, the new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is hundreds of dollars more (at least in terms of its MSRP). Whether or not the premium is justifiable will likely depend on the games you play, and at what resolutions. However, any way you slice it, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti does have some clear advantages over the current top-end Radeon, the most significant of which is ray tracing performance, and it's clearly faster and has more memory than the original RTX 3080 too. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti also runs cooler and quieter than the competing Radeon offering.

All told, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti enters the market at a time when there is much more fierce competition, but it is arguably one of the most powerful gaming GPUs money can buy right now. 

3090-Like Performance In 3080 Form Factor Class Leading Features Quiet Same MSRP As Previous Gen	Price Premium Availability Will Be Tight