Keeping their tradition alive of launching a new Titanium class GeForce card NVIDIA introduces their GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. The Ampere GPU is built upon the foundation set by Turing. Termed as its biggest generational leap, the NVIDIA Ampere GPUs excel compared to previous generations at everything.
The Ampere lineup offers faster shader performance, faster ray tracing performance, and faster AI performance. Built on a brand new process node and featuring an architecture designed from the ground up, Ampere is a killer product with lots of numbers to talk about.
The fundamental of Ampere was to take everything NVIDIA learned with its Turing architecture and not only refine it but to use its DNA to form a product in a completely new performance category. Tall claims were made by NVIDIA when they introduced its Ampere lineup earlier this month & we will be finding out whether NVIDIA hit all the ticks with its Ampere architecture as this review will be your guiding path to see what makes Ampere and how it performs against its predecessors.
Now NVIDIA is taking things one step ahead with the launch of its GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics cards that are designed to compete with the Radeon RX 6900 & RX 6800 series graphics cards.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Gaming Graphics Cards - The Biggest GPU Performance Leap in Recent History
Turing wasn't just any graphics core, it was the graphics core that was to become the foundation of future GPUs. The future is realized now with next-generation consoles going deep in talks about ray tracing and AI-assisted super-sampling techniques. NVIDIA had a head start with Turing and its Ampere generation will only do things infinitely times better.
The Ampere GPU does many traditional things that we would expect from a GPU, but at the same time, also breaks the barrier when it comes to untraditional GPU operations. Just to sum up some features:
- New Streaming Multiprocessor (SM)
- New Turing Tensor Cores
- New Real-Time Ray Tracing Acceleration
- New Shading Enhancements
- New Deep Learning Features For Graphics & Inference
- New GDDR6X High-Performance Memory Subsystem
- New 2nd Generation NVLINK Interconnect
- New HDMI 2.1 Display Engine & Next-Gen NVENC/NVDEC
The technologies mentioned above are some of the main building blocks of the Ampere GPU, but there's more within the graphics core itself which we will talk about in detail so let's get started.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Pricing Per Segment
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 series is made up of a diverse portfolio of graphics cards. The lineup starts at the GeForce RTX 3060 with an MSRP of $329 US and goes all the way up to higher-end configurations starting at $499 US for the GeForce RTX 3070, $599 US for the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, $699 US for the GeForce RTX 3080, $1199 US for the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and $1499 US for the GeForce RTX 3090. NVIDIA themselves call the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti the flagship graphics card and not the GeForce RTX 3090.
The RTX 3080 & RTX 3070 are both priced well and in line with their predecessors but the GeForce RTX 3090 goes all out with a price of $1499 US. Even the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has seen a price hike compared to the MSRP of the RTX 2080 Ti ($999 US vs $1199 US). NVIDIA calls the GeForce RTX 3090 the "BFGPU" and as per the terminology, it seems like this is a new marketing name for the Titan graphics card. It is likely that we could see a Titan-based card under the Quadro branding with faster specs out of the box but the GeForce RTX 3090 is purely a gaming graphics card first with all the horsepower for intense professional and workstation workloads.
With that said, the GeForce RTX 3080 replaces the RTX 2080 SUPER at the same price point and the GeForce RTX 3070 replaces the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER at the same price point. Given this trend, we might see the more mainstream variants cost just as much as their RTX 20 SUPER series cards but with a higher performance out of the box.
NVIDIA GeForce GPU Segment/Tier Prices
| Graphics Segment | 2014-2016 | 2016-2017 | 2017-2018 | 2018-2019 | 2019-2020 | 2020-2021 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Titan Tier | Titan X (Maxwell) | Titan X (Pascal) | Titan Xp (Pascal) | Titan V (Volta) | Titan RTX (Turing) | GeForce RTX 3090 |
| Price | $999 US | $1199 US | $1199 US | $2999 US | $2499 US | $1499 US |
| Ultra Enthusiast Tier | GeForce GTX 980 Ti | GeForce GTX 980 Ti | GeForce GTX 1080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce RTX 3080 Ti |
| Price | $649 US | $649 US | $699 US | $999 US | $999 US | $1199 US |
| Enthusiast Tier | GeForce GTX 980 | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce RTX 2080 | GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER | GeForce RTX 3080 |
| Price | $549 US | $549 US | $549 US | $699 US | $699 US | $699 US |
| High-End Tier | GeForce GTX 970 | GeForce GTX 1070 | GeForce GTX 1070 | GeForce RTX 2070 | GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER | GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GeForce RTX 3070 |
| Price | $329 US | $379 US | $379 US | $499 US | $499 US | $599 $499 |
| Mainstream Tier | GeForce GTX 960 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER GeForce RTX 2060 GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GeForce GTX 1660 |
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB |
| Price | $199 US | $249 US | $249 US | $249 US | $399 US $349 US $279 US $229 US $219 US |
$399 US $329 US |
| Entry Tier | GTX 750 Ti GTX 750 |
GTX 950 | GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050 |
GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050 |
GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650 |
TBA |
| Price | $149 US $119 US |
$149 US | $139 US $109 US |
$139 US $109 US |
$159 US $149 US |
TBA |
In addition to the specs/price update, NVIDIA's RTX technologies are being widely adopted by major game engines and APIs such as Microsoft's DirectX (DXR), Vulkan, Unreal Engine, Unity, and Frostbite. While there were only three RTX titles around the launch of the RTX 20 series cards, NVIDIA now has at least 28 titles that utilize their RTX feature set to offer real-time ray tracing with more coming soon.
In addition to that, with the upcoming consoles confirmed to feature ray tracing, developers can also make use of the RTX technology to fine-tune future games for the GeForce RTX hardware. Currently, NVIDIA has 13 game engines that are leveraging their RTX technologies for use in their upcoming and existing games while both Vulkan and DirectX 12 Ultimate APIs are part of the RTX ecosystem on the PC platform.
So for this review, I will be taking a look at the COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 3080 Ti OC-V graphics card which carries an MSRP of $1699 for a premium of $500 over the MSRP suggested by NVIDIA.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Graphics Card
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is a force to be reckoned with. It takes the throne of the fastest PC gaming graphics card with nothing coming even close to it. It's surprisingly much faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti which is its Turing based predecessor but just being fast isn't enough for a card of this scale or price. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti carries more cores, more memory, higher performance efficiency, and also carries next-generation ray-tracing and tensor cores that make this a truly next-generation graphics card.
NVIDIA designed the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, not just for any gamer but all gamers who want to have the best 4K graphics performance at hand to power the next-generation of AAA gaming titles with superb visuals and insane fluidity. It's not just the FPS that matters these days, it's visuals, and a smoother frame rate too and this is exactly what the GeForce RTX 30 series is made to excel at. There's a lot to talk about regarding NVIDIA's flagship Ampere gaming graphics cards so let's start off with the specifications.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Graphics Card Specifications
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12 GB FE (Founders Edition) graphics card features the PG132-SKU18 PCB design and the GA102-225-KD-A1 graphics core. The GA102-225 GPU features a total of 10240 CUDA cores within 80 SM units. The GPU features a clock speed of 1365 MHz base and a 1665 MHz boost, both of which are slower than the existing GA102 GeForce RTX GPUs.
As for memory, the card will feature 12 GB of GDDR6X memory. Unlike the 19.5 Gbps speeds of the RTX 3090, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is said to retain the same memory speeds as the RTX 3080 at 19 Gbps. Since we are getting 12 GB memory, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti will be using a 384-bit bus interface which equals a total bandwidth of 912 GB/s. So while we see an 8 GB VRAM reduction over the previous spec, the larger bus interface should drive higher memory bandwidth.
The TGP for the card is set to be slightly higher than the RTX 3080 at 350 Watts. That's definitely needed to feed the extra cores so NVIDIA might have to optimize the clocks a bit here. In terms of performance, the graphics card is said to be as fast as the RTX 3090 but with half the memory & LHR technology-enabled. As for compute numbers, the RTX 3080 Ti features 34 shader TFLOPs, 67 RT-TFLOPs, & 273 Tensor TFLOPs (Sparsity).
The design of the card is similar to the existing NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition graphics cards. NVIDIA didn't go with the bulky BFG design like its RTX 3090 and kept the more standard 2-slot FE Flow-Through air-cooled design. The card is powered by a single 12-pin Microfit connector. Display outputs include 1 HDMI 2.1 and three DP 2.0 connectors. The card will be available to buy on the 2nd of June at $1199 US. Expect several custom models to be announced shortly by the NVIDIA board partners.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series 'Ampere' Graphics Card Specifications:
| Graphics Card Name | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Name | Ampere GA107 | Ampere GA107 | Ampere GA106-300 | Ampere GA104-200 | Ampere GA104-300 | Ampere GA104-400 | Ampere GA102-200 | Ampere GA102-225 | Ampere GA102-300 |
| Process Node | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm |
| Die Size | TBA | TBA | TBA | 395.2mm2 | 395.2mm2 | 395.2mm2 | 628.4mm2 | 628.4mm2 | 628.4mm2 |
| Transistors | TBA | TBA | TBA | 17.4 Billion | 17.4 Billion | 17.4 Billion | 28 Billion | 28 Billion | 28 Billion |
| CUDA Cores | 2048? | 2560? | 3584 | 4864 | 5888 | 6144? | 8704 | 10240 | 10496 |
| TMUs / ROPs | 64 / 40 | 80 / 48 | 112 / 64 | 152 / 80 | 184 / 96 | 192/ 104? | 272 / 96 | 320 / 112 | 328 / 112 |
| Tensor / RT Cores | 64 / 16 | 80 / 20 | 112 / 28 | 152 / 38 | 184 / 46 | 192/ 48? | 272 / 68 | 320 / 80 | 328 / 82 |
| Base Clock | TBA | TBA | 1320 MHz | 1410 MHz | 1500 MHz | TBA | 1440 MHz | 1365 MHz | 1400 MHz |
| Boost Clock | TBA | TBA | 1780 MHz | 1665 MHz | 1730 MHz | TBA | 1710 MHz | 1665 MHz | 1700 MHz |
| FP32 Compute | TBA | TBA | 12.7 TFLOPs | 16.2 TFLOPs | 20 TFLOPs | TBA | 30 TFLOPs | TBA | 36 TFLOPs |
| RT TFLOPs | TBA | TBA | 25.4 TFLOPs | 32.4 TFLOPs | 40 TFLOPs | TBA | 58 TFLOPs | TBA | 69 TFLOPs |
| Tensor-TOPs | TBA | TBA | 101 TOPs | 129.6 TOPs | 163 TOPs | TBA | 238 TOPs | TBA | 285 TOPs |
| Memory Capacity | 4 GB GDDR6? | 4 GB GDDR6? | 12 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 8-16 GB GDDR6X? | 10 GB GDDR6X | 12 GB GDDR6X | 24 GB GDDR6X |
| Memory Bus | 128-bit | 128-bit | 192-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 320-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory Speed | TBA | TBA | 15 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps | TBA | 19 Gbps | 19 Gbps | 19.5 Gbps |
| Bandwidth | TBA | TBA | 360 Gbps | 448 Gbps | 448 Gbps | TBA | 760 Gbps | 912 Gbps | 936 Gbps |
| TGP | ~75W | ~100W | 170W | 200W | 220W | 290W | 320W | 350W | 350W |
| Price (MSRP / FE) | $149? | $199? | $329 | $399 US | $499 US | $599 US? | $699 US | $1199 | $1499 US |
| Launch (Availability) | 2021? | 2021? | February 2021 | December 2020 | 29th October 2020 | 10th June 2021 | 17th September 2020 | 3rd June 2021 | 24th September 2020 |
In case you want to read our full NVIDIA Ampere GPU architecture deep dive and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition review, head over to this link.
iGAME GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Vulcan OC-V presentation
TdfROur sample of the iGAME GeForce RTX 3080Ti Vulcan OC-V did not come in a retail box so we're not able to share what that looks like, but the card will be the same along with the included cables and GPU support bracket.
The iGAME GeForce RTX 3080Ti Vulcan OC-V is an absolute unit of a card requiring 3 full slots for installation and plenty of room between the motherboard and the side panel as the card is much much wider than a standard reference model. The front of the card features the 3 fan arrangement with a stationary hub that makes for a really cool effect when the fans are engaged, it leaves the hub just like you leave it set (and the hub is adjustable so you can have the logos facing any direction). The rear of the card features a very nice two-tone finish with clear branding and an RGB iGAME logo towards the rear of the card.
The side profile of the card shows its mass off really well. Triple slot cooler with a nice clean aesthetic, basically consisting of another GeForce RTX logo along with the full-color LCD screen on the side. You can see the inverted triple 8-pin connectors along the rear as well.
A big draw by many to this particular graphics card is certainly the LCD screen, and with many people mounting their graphics cards vertically COLORFUL has taken that into consideration and put the screen on a tilting mechanism allowing for up to 90 degrees of adjustment.
The I/O of the GPU even features COLORFUL's signature OC button which is really neat as one profile allows the card to run at the default reference speeds and the other allows for the graphics card's overclocked settings (which is what we used for this review).
Along with the graphics card, in the box, you'll find the necessary cables to connect the GPU to an open USB 2.0 header in order to control the screen with the iGAME Game Center Software. You'll also find a GPU support bracket and screwdriver to hold up this massive graphics card to keep it from sagging, no one wants to spend this kind of money and see their GPU look like it's about to snap their PCIe bracket off inside their build.
The graphics card LCD is actually a bit more useful than I expected it to be, by default it just shows the Vulcan logo in a smoothly animated fashion but when you install the software and the included cable you're able to display graphics card diagnostics from the clock speeds to temperatures but you will need the software to do that.
I'm not a big 3rd party software person but this implementation has much more care put in than the iGAME RTX 3080 Advanced OC got and that is great as you'll need to use this on your system to get the most of this extremely expensive graphics card. You can change the image as well as what information is displayed and how often. I was unfortunately not able to play DOOM on the display which was a bit of a bummer.
We used the following test system for comparison between the different graphics cards. The latest drivers that were available at the time of testing were used from AMD and NVIDIA on an updated version of Windows 10. All games that were tested were patched to the latest version for better performance optimization for NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.
*Note on Resizable BAR. The GeForce RTX 3060 marks the beginning of the rollout for NVIDIA with Resizable BAR support. With Radeon supporting it through Smart Access Memory and my test bench is fully compliant with both, going forward this feature will be enabled through the testings. So in this review and future reviews, it will be noted that the results are with that feature enabled.
Test System
| Components | X570 |
|---|---|
| CPU | Ryzen 9 5900X (stock) |
| Memory | 32GB Hyper X Predator DDR4 3600 |
| Motherboard | ASUS TUF Gaming X570 Plus-WiFi |
| Storage | TeamGroup Cardea 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 |
| PSU | Cooler Master V1200 Platinum |
| Windows Version | Latest verion of windows at the time of testing |
| Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling | On if supported by GPU and driver. |
| Smart Access Memory/Resizable BAR | Enabled. |
Graphics Cards Tested:
| GPU | Architecture | Core Count |
Clock Speed | Memory Capacity |
Memory Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT | RDNA 2 | 5120 | 2015/2250 | 16 GB GDDR6 | 16Gbps |
| AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT | RDNA 2 | 4608 | 2015/2250 | 16 GB GDDR6 | 16Gbps |
| AMD Radeon RX 6800 | RDNA 2 | 3840 | 1815/2105 | 16 GB GDDR6 | 16Gbps |
| NVIDIA RTX 3090 FE | Ampere | 10496 | 1395/1695 | 24 GB GDDR6X | 19.5Gbps |
| NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti FE | Ampere | 10240 | 1365/1665 | 12GB GDDR6X | 19Gbps |
| NVIDIA RTX 3080 FE | Ampere | 8704 | 1440/1710 | 10 GB GDDR6X | 19Gbps |
| NVIDIA RTX 3070 FE | Ampere | 5888 | 1500/1730 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 14Gbps |
| AMD Radeon RX 5700XT | Navi 10 | 2560 | 1605/1755/1905 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 14Gbps |
Drivers Used
| Drivers | |
|---|---|
| Radeon Settings | 21.5.2 |
| GeForce | 466.47/RTX 3080 Ti On Press Driver |
- All games were tested at 1440p, Ultrawide (3440x1440), and 4K UHD resolutions for traditional rasterized games, and 2560x1440 (QHD) and 4k UHD for Ray Traced gaming tests.
- Image Quality and graphics configurations are provided with each game description.
- The "reference" cards are the stock configs.
Firestrike
Firestrike is running the DX11 API and is still a good measure of GPU scaling performance, in this test we ran the Extreme and Ultra versions of Firestrike which runs at 1440p and 4K and we recorded the Graphics Score only since the Physics and combined are not pertinent to this review.
Time Spy
Time Spy is running the DX12 API and we used it in the same manner as Firestrike Extreme where we only recorded the Graphics Score as the Physics score is recording the CPU performance and isn't important to the testing we are doing here.
Port Royal
Port Royal is another great tool in the 3DMark suite, but this one is 100% targeting Ray Tracing performance. It loads up ray traced shadows, reflections, and global illumination to really tax the performance of the graphics cards that either has hardware-based or software-based ray tracing support.
Thermals
Thermals were measured from our open test bench after running the Time Spy graphics test 2 on loop for 30 minutes recording the highest temperatures reported. The room was climate controlled and kept at a constant 22c throughout the testing.
*Hot Spot only reported on cards that feature that monitoring point.
Forza Horizon 4
Forza Horizon 4 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series. The latest DX12 powered entry is beautifully crafted and amazingly well executed and is a great showcase of DX12 games. We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, unlike its predecessor, does a good job putting DX12 to use and results in higher performance than the DX11 counterpart in this title, and because of that, we test this title in DX12. I do use the second segment of the benchmark run to gather these numbers as it is more indicative of in-game scenarios where the foliage is heavy.
DOOM Eternal
DOOM Eternal brings hell to earth with the Vulkan powered idTech 7. We test this game using the Ultra Nightmare Preset and follow our in-game benchmarking to stay as consistent as possible.
Watchdogs Legion
Watchdogs Legions sees a return of the Disrupt Engine they've been using since the early days with the original Watchdogs but this time it has been updated to next-generation feature support. Dropping DX11 for DX12 we see much better utilization than in the past. Being one of the recent top sellers it earned a place in our test suite.
Call of Duty Modern Black Ops Cold War
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is the latest installment of the Call of Duty Series. Returning with DX12 support just like the Modern Warfare remake we tested this game during the opening of the Fractured Jaw level with the highest settings selected.
Horizon Zero Dawn
Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the two major PS4 exclusives that rocked their way onto the PC scene with massive acceptance and sales. Horizon Zero Dawn is powered by the Decima Engine and has been ported to DX12. We used the in-game benchmark to account for performance.
Borderlands 3
Borderlands 3 has made its way into the test lineup thanks to strong demand by gamers and simply delivering MORE Borderlands. This game is rather intensive after the Medium preset but since we're testing the 'Ultimate UW 1440p' card, High it is. We tested using the built-in benchmark utility
Total War Saga: Troy
Total War Saga: Troy is powered by their TW Engine 3 (Total War Engine 3) and in this iteration, they have stuck to a strictly DX11 release. We tested the game using the built-in benchmark using the Dynasty model that represents a battle with many soldiers interacting at once and is more representative of normal gameplay.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, unlike its predecessor, does a good job putting DX12 to use and results in higher performance than the DX11 counterpart in this title, and because of that, we test this title in DX12. I do use the second segment of the benchmark run to gather these numbers as it is more indicative of in-game scenarios where the foliage is heavy. SotTR features Ray Traced Shadows and enabled in the benchmarks with the game set to the 'Highest' preset and RT Shadows at High. DLSS was used only when labeled.
Call of Duty Modern Black Ops Cold War
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is the latest installment of the Call of Duty Series. Returning with DX12 support just like the Modern Warfare remake we tested this game during the opening of the Fractured Jaw level with the highest settings selected.
Control
Control is powered by Remedy's Northlight Storytelling Engine but severely pumped up to support multiple functions of ray-traced effects. We ran this through our test run in the cafeteria with all ray tracing functions on high and the game set to high. DLSS was enabled for this title in the quality setting when it was available.
Resident Evil Village
Resident Evil Village is the latest in the horror franchise that was wonderfully rekindled with RE7 and onto the RE2 Remake. But now the RE Engine is back and better than ever with Ray Traced Reflections and Lighting that makes the world just come to life, unironically. The game was tested in the center of the village itself with setting maxed out and Ray Tracing on High settings.
Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
Metro Exodus was the third entry into the Metro series and as Artym ventures away from the Metro he, and you, are able to explore the world with impressive RT Global Illumination. RTGI has proven to be quite an intense feature to run. Metro Exodus also supports DLSS so it was used in our testing. Advanced PhysX was left disabled, but Hairworks was left on.
Watchdogs Legion
Watchdogs Legions sees a return of the Disrupt Engine they've been using since the early days with the original Watchdogs but this time it has been updated to next-generation feature support. Dropping DX11 for DX12 we see much better utilization than in the past. Being one of the recent top sellers it earned a place in our test suite.
DiRT 5
DiRT 5 is the latest in the series and it's an absolute joy to play but it is not kind on your hardware. AMD worked with Codemasters to get Ray Traced Shadows and VRS into the game. But as of the time of publishing only the Ray Traced shadows have made their way into the public build of the game
Graphics cards and power draw have always been quite synonymous with each other in terms of how much performance they put out for the power they take in. Measuring this has not always been the most straightforward when it comes to accuracy and methods for reviewers and end-users. NVIDIA has developed their PCAT system, or Power Capture Analysis Tool in order to be able to capture direct power consumption from ALL graphics cards that plug into the PCIe slot so that you can get a very clear barometer on actual power usage without relying on hacked together methods
The Old Way
The old method, for most anyway, was to simply use something along the lines of a Kill-A-Watt wall meter for power capture. This isn't the worst way, but as stated in our reviews it doesn't quite capture the amount of power that the graphics card alone is using. This results in some mental gymnastics figuring out how much the graphics card is using by figuring the system idle, CPU load, and the GPU load and estimating about where the graphics card lands, not very accurate, to say the least.
Another way is to use GPU-z. This is the least reliable method as you have to rely entirely on the software reading from the graphics card. This is a poor method as the graphics cards vary in how they report to software when it comes to power usage. Some will only send out what the GPU core itself is using and not consider what the memory is drawing or any other component.
The last way I'll mention is the use of a multi-meter amperage clamp across the PCIe slot by way of a riser cable with separate cables then more power clamps on all the PCIe power cables going into the graphics card. This method is very accurate for graphics card power but is also very cumbersome and typically results in you having to watch the numbers and document them as you see them rather than plotting them across a spreadsheet.
The PCAT Way
This is where PCAT (power capture analysis tool) comes into play. NVIDIA has developed quite a robust tool for measuring graphics card power at the hardware level and taking the guesswork out of the equation. The tool is quite simple to set up and get going, as far as components used there are; a riser board for the GPU with a 4-pin Dupont cable, the PCAT module itself that everything plugs into with an OLED screen attached, 3 PCI-e cables for when a card calls for more than 2x 8-pin connectors, and a Micro-USB cable that allows you to capture the data on the system you're hooked up to or a secondary monitoring system.
Well, that's what it looks like when all hooked up on a test bench, you're not going to want to run this one in a case for sure. Before anyone gets worried, performance is not affected at all by this and the riser board is fully compliant with PCIe Gen 4.0. I'm not so certain about those exposed power points however, I will be getting the hot glue gun out soon for that. Now, what does this do at this point? Well, two options: Plug it into the computer that it's all running on and let FrameView include the metrics, but that's for NVIDIA cards only so a pass, OR (what we do) plug it into a separate monitoring computer and observe and capture during testing scenarios.
The PCAT Power Profile Analyzer is the software tool provided to use to capture and monitor power readings across the PCI Express Power profile. The breadth of this tool is exceptionally useful for us here on the site to really explore what we can monitor. The most useful metric on here to me is the ability to monitor power across all sources, PCIe power cables (individually), and the PCIe slot itself.
Those who rather pull long-form spreadsheets to make their own charts are fully able to do so and even able to quickly form performance per watt metrics. We've found a very fun metric to monitor is actually Watts per frame, how many watts does it take for the graphics card to produce one frame at a locked 60FPS in various games, we'll get into that next.
Control Power
Control was the first game that we wanted to take a look at running at 1440p with RT on, and then again with RT off.
These results for Control show that NVIDIAs measurements and claims of improvements were accurate, but it's not always the case. We tested Forza Horizon 4 in a spot to test the same way again but this time at 1440p and looking at when we target a 1440p60 scene in this game
There's a new gaming flagship in the Ampere Lineup. The RTX 3080 Ti managed to take that title from the existing RTX 3080 and push that performance right up against the RTX 3090 in gaming loads but not quite pushing it over the edge. So you'll still find an argument for the RTX 3090 and its big ol massive cooler to stick around at the top of the stack. In another lifetime the RTX 3080 Ti could easily have gotten away with a title like RTS 3090 or RTX 3090LE but the titanium moniker suits it well.
The cooler on the iGAME GeForce RTX 3080Ti Vulcan OC-V had no issues keeping the card running well within spec of what the GPU is designed to target. While the thermals were close to that of the reference RTX 3080 Ti the performance doesn't lie. Sure it may seem similar on thermals but the iGAME GeForce RTX 3080Ti Vulcan OC-V was running a couple hundred MHz faster than the reference with ease resulting in it matching and often surpassing the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition.
In the review for the GeForce RTX 3080Ti Founders Edtion, I hypothesized that a slight tweak could result in RTX 3090 levels of performance and this card has proven that to be true. This is also a good showing quite the performance improvement made by a 3rd party graphics card maker. While I think from a sheer capacity stance I would have loved to see the RTX 3080 Ti double the VRAM of the RTX 3080 but moving to that wider bus does deliver better overall performance and still gets us a 20% bump in VRAM capacity.
I can't go over performance without mentioning DXR and the likes of Ray Tracing's performance. It's there, people argued that the RTX 20 Series just wasn't quite there, but the RTX 30 Series is it. We're seeing great performance in all games that run the RT features and even better when they're paired with DLSS. Early implementations of DLSS may have been mired with image quality issues but the later DLSS 2.0 has been spectacular.
The elephant in the room with the RTX 3080 Ti is from within its own product family. The RTX 3090 comes in at an extra $300 MSRP and that gets you double the VRAM and (at least on the Founders Edition) a massive cooler, but the RTX 3080 gets you a little less VRAM but at $500 less MSRP so you're going to have your hands full deciding which of these in the Ampere lineup to pick from. The RTX 3080 Ti does put up good performance compared to its competitors RX 6900 XT but that one comes in at $200 less for their reference edition.
At the end of the day, the iGAME GeForce RTX 3080Ti Vulcan OC-V does indeed deliver RTX 3090 matching and often beating performance but it does come at a cost. The MSRP of the iGAME GeForce RTX 3080Ti Vulcan OC-V is $500 over that of the $1199 Founders Edition might be a tough pill to swallow but if you're in the market for one of the most unique RTX 3080 Ti models you can get then COLORFUL won't let you down with excellent build quality, aesthetics, and performance to go along with it.
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source https://wccftech.com/review/colorful-igame-geforce-rtx-3080-ti-vulcan-oc-v-review/