: Review | Test | Spec | Pros & Cons

Contents hide

1 Specifications

2 Packaging and delivery set

3 Appearance and features

4 Cooling system

5 Printed circuit board

6 Test stand

7 Temperatures, noise, power consumption and overclocking

NVIDIA’s new products in the face of the GeForce RTX 3000 launched this fall with particular success. The GPU manufacturer offered more affordable prices with significantly increased performance compared to ther previous generation GeForce RTX 2000. In this review, I will tell you about one of the most interesting and anticipated video cards – GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming OC . This graphics accelerator attracts interest with a proprietary cooling system with RGB backlighting, high performance in 4K, as well as a 4-year manufacturer’s warranty. At rthe time of the start of sales in the CSN network, the cost of the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming OC ( check on Amazon)

Specifications

Manufacturer: GIGABYTE;
Модель: GeForce RTX 3080 GAMING OC;
GPU: Ampere GA102;
Process technology: 8 nm;
GPU frequency: 1440 MHz;
GPU Boost frequency in games: 1800 MHz;
Number of shader processors: 8704;
Video memory: 10 GB;
Video memory type: GDDR6X;
Video memory bus width: 320 bit;
Video memory frequency: 19000 MHz (2376 GHz QDR);
Порты: 3 x DisplayPort 1.4a, 2 x HDMI 2.1;
Additional power connector: 2 x 8-pin;
TDP parameter: 370 W;
Dimensions: 320 x 129 x 60 mm.

Packaging and delivery set

The RTX 3080 Gaming OC graphics adapter is not quite a basic solution when compared to the RTX 3080 Founders Edition. The manufacturer has endowed this graphics card with an efficient Windforce 3X cooling system, RGB lighting, factory overclocking and a 4-year warranty. It is these features that are highlighted as the characteristic advantages of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC.

The RTX 3080 Gaming OC supports the “advantage in detail” philosophy. From the point of view of the manufacturer, they are a well-thought-out design of the cooling system, an alternative fan rotation scheme, a metal backplate and an RGB backlight module on the upper end of the graphics adapter.

In the box with the RTX 3080 Gaming OC, the user will find a user manual and a product registration form for a 4-year warranty.

Appearance and features

For such a powerful graphics card, which is no doubt the RTX 3080 Gaming OC, it took a really powerful and efficient cooling system. Therefore, it is not surprising that the RTX 3080 Gaming OC turned out to be a very dimensional solution – 320 x 129 x 55 mm. The video card received sharp chopped forms of the CO casing, inside which there are two 90-mm and one 80-mm fans.

The back of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC was provided with reliable protection by a metal backplate with the name of the manufacturer.

In the upper part of the backplate is the continuation of the frame, on the folded side of which the inscription “GeForce RTX” flaunts.

From the solid thickness of the radiator of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC cooling system, it becomes clear that they definitely did not save money here. The CO cover is designed in such a way as to provide free ventilation of the printed circuit board from the top and bottom of the video card.

To display images on the RTX 3080 Gaming OC, a pair of HDMI 2.1 and three DisplayPort 1.4a connectors are implemented. The video card supports the simultaneous connection of 4 monitors, the maximum possible picture resolution is 7680×4320 at 60 Hz.

The right end of the graphics adapter is tightly closed by the casing of the cooling system. Apparently, the manufacturer did not see any practical utility in this place for ventilation of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC PCB.

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Speaking of the fact that the RTX 3080 Gaming OC has factory overclocking, one cannot but mention the numerical expression of this feature. On this version, the GPU frequency in Boost mode is 1800 MHz, versus 1710 MHz for Founders Edition solutions.

Since the RTX 3080 Gaming OC PCB is noticeably shorter than the CO design, the backplate has holes for hot air blowing through on the right side of the graphics adapter.

The manufacturer placed connectors for additional power supply 2×8-pins at some distance from each other. This engineering solution from GIGABYTE is designed to prevent excessive heating of the connectors when the graphics card is under maximum load.

Another interesting feature of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC is the ability to choose between OS or Silent modes. The corresponding BIOS switch is present on the upper end of the printed circuit board, for access to which a corresponding hole is provided in the backplate of the video card.

Cooling system

The opportunity to study in more detail the cooling system of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC was made possible by the disassembly of the video card. The cooling system can be easily removed; for this, it is enough to unscrew all fastening screws and unfasten three interface cables.

The CO design of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC uses a massive aluminum heatsink with seven 6mm heat pipes. It is commendable that the manufacturer did not use direct GPU contact with heat pipes, but implemented this heat transfer through a copper plate. For all ten GDDR6X memory chips and the VRM zone, the heat sink to the heatsink is implemented through thermal pads.

The metal backplate on the RTX 3080 Gaming OC is not directly involved in cooling, but serves as a protective function for the PCB.

Also, an adapter module is fixed to the metal plate, which increases the reliability of additional 2×8-pin power connectors by moving them outside the printed circuit board.

Printed circuit board

The dense placement of components on the RTX 3080 Gaming OC should not scare or confuse the future owner of such a video card. A similar picture is associated with technological requirements, according to which engineers need to minimize the distance of the GDDR6X chips from the GPU.

On the back side of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC, the PCB is also very rich in element base. The manufacturer used Ultra Durable capacitors, designed for extended life and increased loads.

The heart of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC is the GA102-200-KD-A1 GPU based on Ampere architecture, manufactured at 8nm process technology in week 32 of 2020. This GPU includes 8704 CUDA cores, 96 raster and 272 texture units. A metal frame is used to protect the GPU crystal from chips.

Around the GPU are 10 Micron GDDR6X memory chips with a capacity of 1 GB each. They operate at an effective frequency of 19000 MHz, exchanging information with the GPU over a 320-bit bus. At the same time, the bandwidth is an impressive 760.3 GB / s.

The power supply system of the video card is spaced apart on the right and left sides of the GPU. It includes 14 phases for the GPU and 3 phases for the GDDR6X memory chips.

Power management of the GPU and GDDR6X memory chips is managed by three uP9512R 8-phase PWM controllers from uPI Semiconductor. Also on the RTX 3080 Gaming OC you can find the Holtek HT32F51242 controller, which is responsible for the RGB backlighting.

Test stand

Processor – Intel Core i9-10900k (10-cores)
Motherboard – Gigabyte Z490i Aorus Ultra
Cooling System – ID-Cooling ZoomFlow 240X ARGB
Thermointerface – Arctic MX-2
RAM – G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4-4266 8Gb * 2 @ 4400cl18
Storage – M.2 SSD Samsung 970 Pro + M.2 SSD Intel 660p
Power Supply – 1000W Corsair RM1000i
Case – Open test bench
Монитор – TV LG, 47″, 1920×1080, 2560×1440/3840×2160 (NVIDIA DSR)
Operating system – Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 2004
Drivers – GeForce 456.71

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To test the RTX 3080 Gaming OC video card, we used a productive PC based on an Intel Core i9-10850k processor and a Gigabyte Z490i Aorus Ultra motherboard.

To obtain high performance results of the graphics adapter, DDR4 RAM was installed in the 4400 MHz operating mode with timings of 18-18-18-37-328-2T.

This is how a test bench with an RTX 3080 Gaming OC video card looked, assembled without using a case.

A few words should be said about the backlighting of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC graphics card. It is implemented here in the form of a small RGB LED module on the upper end of the graphics accelerator. RGB backlighting demonstrates and underlines the manufacturer’s name. Backlight control is available using proprietary RGB Fusion 2.0 software, or in automatic mode.

Temperatures, noise, power consumption and overclocking

In the practical part of the review, we will evaluate the cooling efficiency of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC, its power consumption and overclocking capabilities over the factory one. Based on the readings of the GPU-Z program, we can say that the power consumption limit of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC is fixed at 370 W, and does not increase using the software method.

The RTX 3080 Gaming OC graphics card supports passive cooling mode. If there is no load, the fans on the graphics adapter stop, allowing you to enter a completely silent mode. At this point, the GPU temperature drops to 44˚С.

Over time, the radiator of the video card cooling system begins to warm up, as a result of which the GPU temperature rises to 47˚С during idle time.

With the RTX 3080 Gaming OC fully loaded with Furmark’s benchmark, the GPU only heats up to 67 ° C, which is an excellent result for a 370W TDP graphics card. For such a comfortable temperature of the GPU, the automation spins the fans up to 1924 rpm or 77%.

When trying to overclock the RTX 3080 Gaming OC video card, I had to face the problem of the power consumption limit of the video card. Which, as mentioned above, does not increase by the software method and is fixed at 370 watts. Therefore, overclocking the GDDR6X memory on the RTX 3080 Gaming OC leads to a decrease in the Boost frequency of the graphics adapter, which in turn negatively affects the final performance. Therefore, the optimal option for overclocking the RTX 3080 Gaming OC was chosen, namely overclocking the GPU. It turned out to be overclocked to +70 MHz without losing stability in Furmark and test games.

Furmark’s overclocked RTX 3080 Gaming OC warmed up to 67˚C after prolonged load, maintaining the same fan speed at 1930 rpm.

A wattmeter was used to measure the total power consumption of a test system with an RTX 3080 Gaming OC graphics card. The impressive figures, which turned out to be close to 500 watts, confirmed that the manufacturer is not in vain recommending a power supply with a capacity of 750 watts or more for the RTX 3080 Gaming OC. But in terms of noise level, the graphics adapter turned out to be very quiet and comfortable for room use. Even at maximum load, the noise from the RTX 3080 Gaming OC cooling system and other components of the assembly did not exceed the psychological 40 dBA.

Performance

At the NVIDIA presentation, it was stated that the RTX 3080 has a performance of up to 30,000 Gigaflops. This was verified and confirmed in AIDA64 when evaluating the performance of FP32 blocks.

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Also, the RTX 3080 Gaming OC graphics card was tested in the Cinebench R15 benchmark, where there is the possibility of evaluating the rendering through OpenGL using the GPU.

In the V-Ray benchmark, the standard test scene with the RTX 3080 Gaming OC took 27 seconds. Which is just 4 seconds less than the RTX 3090 Founders Edition can do.

Moving on to the graphics benchmarks, let’s look at the gaming performance of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC in 3D Mark TimeSpy Extreme. This benchmark is equivalent to 4K gaming in modern games. The RTX 3080 Gaming OC graphics card achieves an average FPS of 53-56 fps, depending on the scene.

The next test, 3D Mark Port Royal, uses Ray tracing, allowing you to evaluate the performance of a video card using this technology. The RTX 3080 Gaming OC again delivers an acceptable 54-55 FPS in the test scene.

Now let’s look at the performance of the RTX 3080 Gaming OC in large-scale gaming projects with colorful graphics and large gaming locations. The focus is only on the ultimate graphics settings and three popular resolutions: 4K (3840×2160 DSR), 2K (2560×1440 DSR) and FullHD (1920×1080). In games where Ray tracing and DLSS technologies are available, the corresponding settings have been activated.

Far Cry 5

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Red Dead Redemption II

Metro Exodus

In all five games used, the RTX 3080 Gaming OC was able to deliver a stable 50+ FPS at 4K. It should be emphasized that the graphics adapter demonstrated such performance at the highest possible graphics settings. As for the more popular 2K and FullHD resolutions, in this case, the RTX 3080 Gaming OC is ready to give owners of 144 and 240 Hz gaming monitors an appropriate level of FPS in competitive games.

Conclusion

The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming OC is a graphics card that will appeal to you for several reasons. As shown by testing this graphics adapter, an extremely efficient and sufficiently quiet cooling system is installed here, capable of coping with power consumption of 350-370 watts without any problems. The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming OC has several eye-catching features. First of all, these are colorful and expressive RGB backlighting, chopped forms of the CO casing, as well as a metal backplate to protect the printed circuit board. As for the gaming performance of the video card, it is truly impressive. If earlier 4K gaming on ultra-graphics settings was not available on the PC, then today with the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming OC it is just a reality!