Review: Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti is a powerhouse—but good luck finding it at $1,199 MSRP. How much will the 3080 ti cost

Subscribe and access members only articles, ad-free reading, free gifts and game discounts. Your support helps us create more great content about PC games.

Review: Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti is a powerhouse—but good luck finding it at 400,199 MSRP

Machkovech Sam – June 2, 2021 13:00 UTC

reader comments

Share this story

The dual-fan body and design are identical to its non-Ti siblings, with the newer card weighing only 8 grams more than the older one.

Once again, the RTX 3000 series is asking users to plug the PSU into a proprietary port or use an awkward extension cord packed in a box.

Almost nine months ago, the Nvidia RTX 3000 series of graphics cards appeared in the besieged world as an apparent glimmer of hope. The first two GPUs in the series, the RTX 3080 and 3070, were pretty much anything for all graphics lovers. Nvidia built these cards based on the proprietary successes of the RTX 2000 series and added pure rasterization power imaginable in the API.

Sure, the “RTX” optimized game performed great in the initial burst of the RTX 3080 line, but even without improved ray tracing or impressive DLSS upsampling, it went through a lot of FLOPs. Talk about a fun potential buy for nerds trapped in the house.

Moreover, this power came along with more modest MSRP compared to what we saw in the RTX 2000 series. As I wrote in September 2020:

Hopefully, the RTX 3080’s impact on the market will shift the average GPU value proposition into reasonable territory. Its $ 699 price may not be your cup of tea, but if prices for everything below the RTX 3080 (and its siblings, the RTX 3070, which is slated to hit the market in October for $ 499) adjust against the benchmarks below, that is a sign of robust 1080p GPU or 1440p may end up in your budget after all.

so yeah. About that.

At that time, I was too busy doing benchmarks to ask my crystal ball about the imminent future of exploding cryptographic values ​​and diminishing supplies of chips and silicon. The graphics card market turned into cables, and that made me hold a bag of ridiculous claims about future GPU pricing. Anyone who paid attention has witnessed many instant GPU sellouts and stunning eBay auctions.

However, somehow, even though the existing cards in the series are already hard to track, the Nvidia RTX 3000 series continues to expand – as seen in the recent announcement of two new models, the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti, which start at the manufacturer’s suggested prices. : $ 400,199 and $ 599, respectively. (When fans asked you to make more graphics cards, Nvidia, I’m not sure what they meant.)

If you are surprised by this news, you are not alone. Last week, I found out about the new models through an unannounced knock on the door and an 11-pound box, filled with one copy of each new GPU supplied by Nvidia. The first time I remember getting a graphics card sample from a vendor without an email saying I should have a porch mesh ready to catch eager cryptocurrency mining pack thieves.

An asteroid-sized asterisk, as usual

The embargo on 3080 Ti reviews has been lifted today. And as it’s becoming more commonplace on Ars, this review features an asteroid-sized asterisk that is likely to ruin your hopes of purchasing this card in the near future. Nvidia has not provided any information about the company’s efforts to stabilize supply, nor has it attempted to ensure that real people can buy the RTX 3080 Ti starting tomorrow, June 3, “starting at” 400 199. It only remains to guess if, when and How a mild-minded technology enthusiast like you is going to give a good shake up of the current market.

RTX 3080 Ti specification by Nvidia compared to RTX 2080 Ti. A more significant comparison concerns the RTX 3080 FE, which you will find on the next slide.

The 3080 Ti surpasses last year’s RTX 3080 in almost every category: 1536 more CUDA cores, 48 ​​more tensor cores; 22 more RT cores; 152 GB / s more memory bandwidth; and 2 GB more GDDR6X RAM. The default boost clock is getting slower, lower by 35 MHz.

Should there be a real deal to buy this card face, I can tell you the RTX 3080 Ti completes what the RTX 3080 started, at least for this generation GPU. Its gains over the 3080 are interesting: They are substantial, but not necessarily worth another $ 400 at MSRP. But purely gaming, this week’s new card makes the RTX 3090 and its MSRP of 400,499 absolutely debatable.

The RTX 3080 Ti specifications are closer to the 3090 than the 3080, with the biggest difference being the VRAM chasm. This card is 2GB more than the 3080, but a whopping 12GB less than the 3090. That’s a big difference for VRAM, but between the specs table above and the performance scores below, the 3080 Ti is clearly a better choice than the 3090 if it’s high-res is your GPU priority.

This makes sense as the 3090 was the showpiece of a VRAM card, perfect as an entry-level option for advanced video editing or something that can be plugged into an 8K display. If you don’t belong to either of these camps, you can be sure the 3080 Ti is the better option for over-spending your GPU, especially when your system is tuned for gaming at 4K resolutions and a solid framerate with very few compromises. Meanwhile, if “only 12GB of GDDR6X VRAM” is a phrase you can say aloud with a tear dropping from the tear duct of video processing, the RTX 3080 Ti probably won’t enchant you.

Specifications: • Interface: 3 x DisplayPort (1.4), 1 x HDMI (2.1) • Boost Clock – 1800 MHz • Dimensions: L: 300 mm x W: 136.75 mm x H: 2.75 slots

RTX 3080 Ti Release Date

It looks like the RTX 3080 Ti release date has been pushed back, according to Videocardz. The GPU is expected to be announced on May 31, ahead of the review on June 2. This suggests the 3080 Ti could go live a day later, on June 3, if early releases are something to do.

MSI’s recent detection of the RTX 3080 Ti Suprim X at a distribution center adds more credibility to these alleged dates.

rtx 3080 ti price

The new GPU will be on the Nvidia lineup between the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, which have a suggested retail price of $ 699 and $ 400,499, respectively. From then on, you can expect the card to sell somewhere in between. Accidentally issuing a card at an Australian retail store showed that the card was equivalent to 400,336, suggesting that the suggested retail price is similar..

However, with the current inventory issues, it could actually sell for a lot more, much like the RTX 3060 at nearly double its pre-launch MSRP. In the United Arab Emirates, the RTX 3080 Ti was sold ahead of its launch for over $ 3,500.

The Enlarge / 3DMark test kit, including the Port Royal test that uses RT extensively, is a good starting point for comparisons, although AMD’s latest cards are getting bigger wins in some cases than it might suggest. At least they show a narrow gap between the 3080 Ti and the 3090.

Specs and design

• The RTX 3080 Ti is built on Nvidia’s Ampere architecture
• It has a similar appearance to other Nvidia cards
• Specs-wise, it looks more like the upgraded RTX 3090 than the upgraded 3080

From a design perspective, the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition I tested is similar to most of the other 30 series siblings that have come through Trusted Labs over the past few years.

It has an almost identical design and a two-axis cooling system. The dual-cooled fans are on the top and bottom left and right of the card, with the main heat sink in between. The card also uses the same custom 12-pin PCIe connector as its other 30 series siblings, meaning you’ll have to use the included adapter to connect the card to older power supplies (PSUs).

The RTX 3080 Ti is built on Nvidia’s Ampere architecture that was launched last year with the RYX 3070, RTX 3080, and RTX 3090 first generation.

Ampere is truly impressive and has many key benefits for PC gamers. These include support for ray tracing games using Nvidia’s third generation tensor cores, DLSS, and the inclusion of the HDMI 2.1 port.

Ray tracing is an amazing graphics technology used in most modern triple-A games, including Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a clever solution that allows games to render near-photorealistic lighting effects, shadows and reflections in real time. This is a key feature of most modern GPUs and consoles, including the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S.

The only downside to ray tracing is that it puts a heavy strain on the GPU and causes significant frame rate drops. This is where Nvidia DLSS comes in.

DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) is a feature specific to Nvidia RTX that uses artificial intelligence to improve GPU performance when running demanding processes. In the past, this was the main reason I recommended RTX cards over the latest AMD GPUs, as without them most games won’t run with ray tracing turned on at 60fps.

However, this may change in the near future as AMD has finally confirmed that competing FidelityFX Super Resolution software will be released to the public on June 22, 2021. I am excited to see how it compares to DLSS when the service becomes available as it was this is a key omission that kept current generation RDNA 2 cards from competing with Nvidia’s Ampere.

HDMI 2.1 is a state-of-the-art input that supports key features such as better HDR (high dynamic range) performance, increased memory bandwidth, and most importantly, 120Hz / 4K gaming.

By now, you may rightly have a hard time figuring out what the main difference between the RTX 3080 Ti and other Nvidia Ampere based graphics cards is. The answer is quite simple: the specifications. While the cards share the same architecture, the 3080 Ti spec sheet includes some key enhancements to the base RTX 3080 and is a full generation leap over the older RTX 2080 Ti.

For starters, the RTX 3080 Ti has 2GB more GDDR6x memory than the regular RTX 3080. GDDR6x is one of the most expensive and efficient types of video memory used in consumer graphics cards. Its key advantage is that it can facilitate much faster data transfer than the basic GDDR6 seen in cheaper graphics cards.

Benchmarks and performance

• The ability to run games at 60 frames per second in 4K with ray tracing enabled
• DLSS helps improve performance

To test the Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti card, I ran various synthetic benchmarks and in-game tests with it using hardware with the specifications below.

Test stand specification:

• Asus ROG Strix Z370-E Gaming (LGA1151)
• Intel Core i9-9900KF
• 16 GB of DDR4 RAM
• Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500 GB SATA SSD
• Corsair RM750X power supply
• MasterLiquid Pro 280 cooler

In each test, the games ran at their maximum graphics settings at 1080p, 1440p and 4K. In titles without built-in benchmarks, we recorded the average number of frames per second going through pre-selected sections of the game.

Control
Control was one of the first titles to be optimized to run ray tracing effects on Nvidia cards, and is a great example of how effective DLSS can be in mitigating the framerate damage it does.

Here you can see how the RTX 3080 Ti performed brilliantly, playing a playable frame rate game with maximum graphics and ray tracing and DLSS enabled. The only case where it dropped below 60fps, which is considered the optimal point for comfortable gaming experience, was playing Control in 4K with ray tracing enabled and DLSS disabled.

Godfall
Godfall is a large-scale open-world action RPG packed with reflective surfaces and advanced lighting effects. Unlike Control, it’s optimized to run ray tracing on AMD rather than Nvidia graphics cards, which is the reason it doesn’t support DLSS at the moment. Here the 3080 Ti has once again proved that it is capable of running the game at playable frames per second at any resolution.

Measured in frames per second

Borderlands 3
Borderlands 3 is a grand open-world shooter full of vast maps, full of NPCs and complex physics. There is no ray tracing, but it’s a good measure to gauge how the GPU handles modern AAA shooters and multiplayer gaming.

Here the RTX 3080 Ti managed to run the game without any problems, at 60 frames per second at maximum graphics settings. However, the performance gain on the regular RTX 3080 was not as high as I would have liked given the price differences.

Measured in frames per second

Division 2
The Division 2 is one of Ubisoft’s biggest live games. This is a third-person multiplayer shooter set in a vast, sprawling, dystopian American city landscape. It’s not the most demanding game on this list, but its internal benchmark is a good indicator of how the GPU will handle most live games. Here the 3080 Ti broke the benchmark in all resolutions.

PCMag editors independently select and review products. If you buy through affiliate links, we can earn commissions that support our testing. Learn more.

RTX 3080 Ti / 3070 Ti specs

Now let’s move on to a few detailed specs. According to Nvidia, starting with the RTX 3080 Ti, it will come with 12 GB of GDDR6X memory – 2 GB compared to 10 GB in the RTX 3080 – and will provide up to 1.5 times the performance of the RTX 2080 Ti. Other specs released by Nvidia during the presentation include 34 teraflops of shaders and 67 teraflops of ray tracing and 273 teraflops of Tensor, but more details can be found in the table below so you can see exactly how they stack up against the rest of their 30 siblings RTX.

Eyepiece	Nvidia RTX 3070	Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti	Nvidia RTX 3080	Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti	Nvidia RTX 3090
CUDA cores	5888	6144	8704	10240	10496
Base / boost clock	1.50 GHz / 1.73 GHz	1.58 GHz / 1.77 GHz	1.44 GHz / 1.71 GHz	1.37 GHz / 1.67 GHz	1.40 GHz / 1.70 GHz
VRAM	8 GB of GDDR6 memory	8 GB of GDDR6X memory	10 GB of GDDR6X memory	12 GB of GDDR6X memory	24 GB of GDDR6X memory
Memory interface width	256-bit	256-bit	320-bit	384-bit	384-bit
Power	220W	290W	320W	350W	350W
Recommended PSU power	650W	750W	750W	750W	750W
Starting price	£ 469 / $ 499	£ 529 / $ 599	£ 649 / $ 699	£ 1049 / $ 1199	£ 1,399 / $ 1,499

The RTX 3070 Ti, on the other hand, will come with 8GB of GDDR6X memory, which is the same as the original RTX 3070, but the key difference is that it’s the faster GDDR6X type that is currently found in the RTX 3080 and above, instead of the regular GDDR6 memory. In addition to 22 teraflops shaders, 42 teraflops ray tracing and 174 teraflops Tensor, this will make the RTX 3070 Ti approximately 1.5 times faster than the RTX 2070 Super, says Nvidia.

As I mentioned before, everything about the performance of the RTX 3080 Ti can be read in my RTX 3080 Ti review, and I will do the same with the RTX 3070 Ti closer to its launch next week.

Tagged With

Katharine is the editor-in-chief of the RPS, which means she is now to blame for it all. After joining the team in 2017, she spent a lot of time in the mines of RPS gear testing all the components that are in our computers, but now she can write about all the cute games we play as well. She will play pretty much anything she can get her hands on and is very biased in JRPG games and quest downloads.

Support Rock Paper Shotgun

Subscribe and access members only articles, ad-free reading, free gifts and game discounts. Your support helps us create more great content about PC games.

Once again, the RTX 3000 series is asking users to plug the PSU into a proprietary port or use an awkward extension cord packed in a box.

What does the RTX 3070 Ti offer?

While it may not be as powerful as the RTX 3080 Ti, the 1.77 GHz RTX 3070 Ti is still a high-performance graphics card that offers a big improvement over last year’s RTX 2070 Super, with Nvidia delivering a 1.5x performance leap between generations.

This is thanks to 8GB of GDDR6X memory, which may not be an increase over the standard RTX 3070, but is boosted with 6144 CUDA cores, 42 RT cores, and 174 Tensor cores which improve 1440p performance.

Will you choose the Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti or 3080 Ti?

Related content

Note: We can earn a commission when you buy via links on our site at no extra cost to you. This does not affect our editorial independence. Learn more.

While it may not be as powerful as the RTX 3080 Ti, the 1.77 GHz RTX 3070 Ti is still a high-performance graphics card that offers a big improvement over last year’s RTX 2070 Super, with Nvidia delivering a 1.5x performance leap between generations.

Overclocking and Thermals: Almost as Cool as It Looks

We ran a 10-minute stress test at 3DMark Port Royal on a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition card and the card temperature peaked at 81 degrees C. This is a little hotter than the RTX 3080 Founders Edition at 77 degrees Celsius and shows that with The growth of the RTX Founders Edition family increases with it.

As in our RTX 3080 Founders Edition review and in our FLIR One Pro thermal imaging camera rating, most of the waste heat appears to accumulate in the center of the card rather than evenly dispersing along its length. Founders Edition cards were not consistent in this respect. Go ahead and check out some of our Founders Edition reviews and check out the photos for yourself!

Seeing the thermals so stable, we were sure to see what kind of overclocking we could get from the card with the EVGA Precision X1 tool. After some fine-tuning, I was able to achieve a stable 1915MHz clock, 225MHz over the baseline, which slightly exceeds the boost clocks of the RTX 3090 and translates into a roughly 5% increase in test results. Founders Edition cards are renowned for their persistence in overclocking, so it’s nice to see anything in this department, let alone a noticeable gain. Well played, Nvidia.

Verdict: The Most Muscled-Up Middle Child Ever

A card that’s small, light, quiet, and cool doesn’t look as good as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition. Nvidia is once again doing well not only with AMD, but also with every other manufacturer that is producing its own RTX 3080 Ti models in tandem at this premiere. The company’s Founders Edition cards are designed beyond what any other card manufacturer seems capable of today, and the RTX 3080 Ti is another almost flawless example of Nvidia’s technological dominance in space.

But this precision comes at a price. Oh, price: suggested retail price, followed by any changes that might ruin the current market for it. The RTX 3080 Ti may be beautiful on the outside and a beast for 4K gaming on the inside, but it doesn’t generate enough extra performance compared to the RTX 3080 without Ti to justify a big increase in MSRP. Nobody can guess what it looks like at real prices, but we don’t expect the price ratios to be in their favor.

Think of it this way: in the current ecosystem of limited supply, cards in some open markets averaged 1.25 to 4 times the retail price. Hundreds of dollars added to the card’s suggested retail price – for example, $ 500 between the RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 Ti – are inflated by this multiple, making the cards even more out of reach for the average buyer than they were before. And also further apart in absolute price.

The GPU market today – June 2, 2021 – does not tolerate such gaps. If you’re buying an RTX 3090 or RTX 3080 Ti, you should really love creating and playing. But if you’re just looking for a gaming card that powers games at 1440p and 4K at superhero level, the RTX 3080 (contrary to what eBay might say) is objectively the better deal.

That said, with cryptocurrency prices dropping by the minute in this writing, it might not be long before a wave of used RTX 30 series GPUs hit the used market. Shortly thereafter, we saw a stabilization in the prices of newer GPUs such as the RTX 3080 Ti, in which case it may only be a few months before you can get the RTX 3080 Ti at the 400 199 price that Nvidia is suggesting to sellers at launch. (That would mean it would be a steal compared to the current RTX 3080 retail price of $ 400,399, but probably the RTX 3080 would also drop proportionally.)

RTX 3080 Ti is not a bad graphics card at all, it is far from there. It’s a wild beast on a 4K card. It’s just that the RTX 3080 is really great, especially for the price at which it was launched. If the card market stabilizes in 2021, the price of the RTX 3080 at $ 699 will still be the best thing that can happen in 4K gaming, perhaps surpassed in some situations only by the equally stellar GeForce RTX 3070.

Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti is not the faster RTX 3080; it’s the slower RTX 3090. As the 400199 card, the RTX 3080 Ti is the overpriced RTX 3090 which, like this card and the earlier Titans, should only be seriously considered by content creators and Powerball winners. As such, it deftly fits into a niche for budget-minded content creators who may be able to utilize VRAM and clock speed without losing anything visible during rendering. But for gamers, the RTX 3080 (and the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, for that matter) are worthy enough 4K gamers to remain prime options for 4K gamers headed for the other half of this craziest GPU of all years.

In each test, the games ran at their maximum graphics settings at 1080p, 1440p and 4K. In titles without built-in benchmarks, we recorded the average number of frames per second going through pre-selected sections of the game.

Best RTX 3080 Ti Graphics Card

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is an amazing graphics processor that has a lot to offer. These are the absolute best RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards on the market.

This author has been vetted and has the necessary knowledge or education to be able to write on this topic. Find out more on our info page.

The RTX 3000 series was a clear win for NVIDIA. It is a range of GPUs that offer solid performance at a reasonable price. Consumers can also enjoy many additional features such as ray tracing, DLSS, ReShade filters, NVIDIA Reflex, NVIDIA Broadcast and many more.

The RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070, and 3080 were the top SKUs in this generation of GPUs. The 3060 Ti is a budget option offering the best performance per dollar while the 3080 provides the best performance for a reasonable price. 3070 ends somewhere in between.

However, as with many other NVIDIA GPU releases, we’ve also seen additional SKUs, specifically the Ti variants of the 3070 and 3080. Unlike previous generations, the Ti variants are less impressive this time, especially due to their price tag.

The 3080 Ti is priced $ 500 more than the 3080 at MSRP. This is a huge price difference, while the performance difference is minimal.

Even so, we know that there will always be enthusiasts looking to acquire the best possible hardware for their computers. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of the best 3080 Ti GPUs on the market.

Contents Show

EVGA RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 Ultra

Technical data:
• Interface: 3 x DisplayPort (1.4), 1 x HDMI (2.1)
• Reload clock – 1800 MHz
• Dimensions: L: 300 mm x W: 136.75 mm x H: 2.75 slots

The Pros:

• Much shorter than the competition
• great overclock

The Cons:

Many NVIDIA GPU enthusiasts say that if you ever decide to go with the EVGA variants, you’ll never go wrong. Models of this brand are always affordable, but also quiet and fast.

The EVGA RTX 3080 Ti uses the already well-known “FTW3 Ultra” design that has proven to be thermally efficient with the previous SKUs in the RTX 3000 series. The expectations for this model are high.

Let’s see if it meets these expectations.

Pricing

The MSRP of all RTX 3000 SKUs was positive for these GPUs, with the obvious exception of the RTX 3090. Well, so far the 3090 was the only exception. We can add 3080 Ti to the list of disappointing prices.

Its price is $ 1,200, $ 500 more than $ 3,080. For a 40% price increase, expect a significant performance improvement. Unfortunately, you will also be disappointed in this regard, but we’ll look at it later.

According to EVGA, the FTW3 Ultra variant will cost $ 1,400, which is $ 200 more than NVIDIA’s suggested retail price. This is a big price increase, bringing your costs closer to the RTX 3090 (if you can find the 3090 at its suggested retail price).

Design

In terms of design, it is the same as other RTX 3000 SKUs using the FTW3 Ultra model. A basic black grille surrounds a three-fan setup on the front with a nice amount of RGB on the side. The RGB strip can be a bit tacky, but that is down to personal preference.

There is a metal back plate on the back which acts as a heat conductor as there are thermal pads on the memory chips on the back of the circuit board. The back plate itself has many lugs (holes) that can help with heat dissipation.

Interestingly, the Founders Edition of this card has a power of 320 W, so it only has 2 8-pin connectors. The 3080 Ti FTW3 Ultra is 350W, but has three 8-pin connectors, possibly to allow for additional overclocking, which brings us to our next topic.

In terms of connectivity, you’ll get three DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI 2.1 that support up to 8K @ 30FPS or 4K @ 144Hz.

Performance And Overclocking Capabilities

Naturally, appearance is the least of a technology enthusiast’s concern. You’re probably more interested in the performance of this card, so let’s cover that.

At factory settings, the 3080 Ti FTW3 Ultra averages around 1,846MHz and peaks around 1,875MHz when loaded in gaming. This is as much as 4% more than the advertised clock speed. Not bad, but let’s see if any custom OC can help this card reach higher frequencies.

Based on several results found on the Internet, it appears that the EVGA card can continuously overclock up to 1950 MHz, which is 8-9% faster. The performance improvement will in fact likely be lower.

Remember that thanks to the three 8-pin connectors, the power consumption can go up to 450W.

Thermals

Good performance does not necessarily translate to a good graphics card. A good card also needs to have a strong enough radiator / heatsink to keep it quiet and cool.