Nvidia RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review

1. Introduction2. The Ampere Architecture3. RTX 3080 Founders Edition4. Testing Methodology5. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy6. 3DMark Port Royal7. Control8. Death Stranding9. The Division 210. Far Cry New Dawn11. Gears 512. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint13. Metro Exodus14. Middle Earth: Shadow of War15. Red Dead Redemption 216. Shadow of the Tomb Raider17. Total War Saga: Troy18. Performance Summary (11 Game Average)19. Cost Per Frame Analysis20. RTX On - Control21. RTX On - Metro Exodus22. RTX On - Shadow of the Tomb Raider23. DLSS On - Control & Death Stranding24. A Word on VRAM Usage25. Clock Speed26. Temperatures27. Acoustics28. Power Consumption29. Performance Per Watt Analysis30. Overclocking: Memory Scaling31. Closing Thoughts32. View All Pages

One of the concerns we have heard from enthusiasts in the build up to this launch has been in regards to the amount of memory supplied with the RTX 3080, and particularly the 8GB RTX 3070. While we can't comment on the latter card today, I thought it would be worth taking a look at all the games we tested and their amount of VRAM requested by each.

A word of caution, though – it is not an exact science when dealing with VRAM usage, particularly as tools like GPU-Z or MSI Afterburner will show requested memory instead of actual usage. This makes it challenging as games can request significantly more memory than is actually needed, so do bear that in mind.

The numbers are certainly interesting. I would disregard The Division 2 as the game was requesting up to 9GB VRAM even when sitting in the settings menu, so for me that is certainly a case of the game making sure it doesn't run out of memory by requesting pretty much everything that was available.

Other than that, considering this is a 10GB card, in 7 of the games we tested at 4K, we saw requested VRAM remain below 8GB, with titles like Metro Exodus and Red Dead Redemption 2 barely needing more than 5GB.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is high on the list, but again it is hard to say whether the game needs this much memory, or it is simply requesting that much.

Right now, I can't see 10GB VRAM being an issue, and particularly so for 1440p gamers. At 4K, it is possible we could run into problems down the line, but I'd say we're still a couple years away from that happening. The flipside is, if you're upgrading from a GTX 1080 Ti, or something even older, you may want the 3080 to last several years before upgrading again, at which point is is very possible, and likely, that 10GB will be a limiting factor during the lifespan of the GPU.

According to Nvidia, it's a balancing act between cost and performance. Justin Walker, product manager for desktop GeForce GPUs, said the following: ‘We’re constantly analyzing memory requirements of the latest games and regularly review with game developers to understand their memory needs for current and upcoming games. The goal of 3080 is to give you great performance at up to 4k resolution with all the settings maxed out at the best possible price.

In order to do this, you need a very powerful GPU with high speed memory and enough memory to meet the needs of the games. A few examples – if you look at Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Metro Exodus, Wolfenstein Youngblood, Gears of War 5, Borderlands 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2 running on a 3080 at 4k with Max settings (including any applicable high res texture packs) and RTX On, when the game supports it, you get in the range of 60-100fps and use anywhere from 4GB to 6GB of memory.

Extra memory is always nice to have but it would increase the price of the graphics card, so we need to find the right balance.'

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