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

We take our noise measurements with the sound meter positioned 1 foot from the graphics card. I measured the noise floor to be 32 dBA, thus anything above this level can be attributed to the graphics cards. The power supply is passive for the entire power output range we tested all graphics cards in, while all CPU and system fans were disabled. A reading under load comes from running the 3DMark Time Spy stress test for 30 minutes.

Following on from our thermal testing, in terms of overall noise from the card we measured 39dB at a distance of 30cm, with both fans spinning at 1880rpm. This is, once more, pretty much in line with the 20-series Founders Editions. However, as with the thermal performance, Nvidia has created a card that requires significantly more power than the previous generation, yet is no louder – and is still quieter than the RTX 2080 Ti.

For me, this just goes to show how good a design the new RTX 3080 is. The card is cooler and quieter than the RTX 2080 Ti, all while out-performing it and demanding 28% more power. It will be fascinating to see how Nvidia's partners fare with their custom cards.

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