ASUS RTX 3080 TUF Gaming OC Review

1. Introduction2. ASUS TUF RTX 3080 OC 10GB3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy5. 3DMark Port Royal6. Control7. Death Stranding8. The Division 29. Far Cry New Dawn10. Gears 511. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint12. Metro Exodus13. Middle Earth: Shadow of War14. Red Dead Redemption 215. Shadow of the Tomb Raider16. Total War Saga: Troy17. Performance Summary (11 Game Average)18. Cost Per Frame Analysis19. Clock Speed20. Temperatures21. Acoustics22. Power Consumption23. Performance Per Watt24. Overclocking25. Closing Thoughts26. View All Pages

For our fourth RTX 3080 review, our attention turns to ASUS and one of its custom designs. Rather than a look at the ASUS ROG Strix model, however, the card in for review today is the TUF Gaming RTX 3080 OC. While not as premium an offering as the upcoming ROG Strix card, the TUF 3080 still sports an all-aluminium shroud, on-board dual-BIOS functionality as well as a factory overclocked core. With an MSRP of £689, it's certainly ticking a lot of boxes on paper, but just how good is it?

First of all, we are clearly aware that finding stock of any RTX 3080 is difficult at the moment, and pre-order prices seem to have been increased over the MSRPs at several retailers. That can make an objective review tricky, but ASUS has explicitly told us the MSRP for the TUF Gaming RTX 3080 OC is £689, so that is the price we will use throughout this review. We don't know when cards will actually be in stock to buy at that price, but at least two retailers we have seen (Currys and AWD-IT) are using the MSRP price for their listings, the cards are just not available.

We contacted ASUS UK about the supply issues and were sent the follow statement, copied verbatim:

“ASUS is delighted to see the interest in their new RTX 30 series range and hopes that all who were able to purchase a card enjoy their next generation of ASUS and ROG gaming power. Demand for this stock is high and we will be replenishing stock with our retail partners as soon as possible. Please make sure your pre-order is made with your chosen retailer who will update you when stock will be available.”

Aside from the supply troubles, it's also worth making clear we are reviewing the TUF Gaming RTX 3080 OC edition (TUF-RTX3080-O10G-GAMING), when there is also a non-OC edition (TUF-RTX3080-10G-GAMING) which has an MSRP of £649. The only difference appears to be the clock frequency, as the OC edition – obviously – comes factory overclocked.

GPU	RTX 3090	RTX 3080	RTX 2080 Ti (FE)	RTX 2080 SUPER	RTX 2080 (FE)
SMs	82	68	68	48	46
CUDA Cores	10496	8704	4352	3072	2944
Tensor Cores	328	272	544	384	368
RT Cores	82	68	68	48	46
Texture Units	328	272	272	192	184
ROPs	112	96	88	64	64
GPU Boost Clock	1695 MHz	1710 MHz	1635 MHz	1815 MHz	1800 MHz
Memory Data Rate	19.5 Gbps	19 Gbps	14 Gbps	15.5 Gbps	14 Gbps
Total Video Memory	24GB GDDR6X	10GB GDDR6X	11GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6
Memory Interface	384-bit	320-bit	352-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	936 GB/Sec	760 GB/Sec	616 GB/sec	496.1 GB/sec	448 GB/sec
TGP	350W	320W	260W	250W	225W

Just before diving into the details, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the key specs for the RTX 3080. Built on Nvidia’s GA102 GPU, fabricated on Samsung’s 8nm process, RTX 3080 houses 8704 CUDA cores, 68 RT Cores and 272 Tensor cores.

A reference board would come clocked at 1710MHz, but as we are reviewing the TUF Gaming OC edition, this model has a rated boost clock of 1785MHz. We would still expect GPU Boost to bring actual frequency well above those levels, but we will look at that later in the review.

The 10GB VRAM is provided thanks to Micron’s new GDDR6X memory. Operating at 19Gbps, over a 320-bit bus this gives total memory bandwidth of 760GB/s.

All of those cores, fast memory and factory overclock come at a cost, however, and that is power draw. Reference TGP for a RTX 3080 is 320W, but ASUS has bumped this up to 340W, making it one of the most power-hungry GPUs I have ever tested.

Become a Patron!