Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti Review ft. Gigabyte, Inno3D, Palit

1. Introduction2. Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition3. Gigabyte RTX 3080 Ti Gaming OC4. Inno3D RTX 3080 Ti iChill X45. Palit RTX 3080 Ti GameRock OC6. Testing Methodology7. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy8. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing9. Assassin's Creed Valhalla10. Control11. Cyberpunk 207712. Days Gone13. F1 202014. Gears 515. Hitman 316. Horizon Zero Dawn17. Red Dead Redemption 218. Resident Evil Village19. Total War Saga: Troy20. Watch Dogs: Legion21. Ray Tracing - Cyberpunk 207722. Ray Tracing - Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition23. Ray Tracing - Resident Evil: Village24. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)25. Testing the AIBs!26. Clock Speed27. GPU Temperatures28. Memory Temperatures29. Acoustics30. Noise-Normalised Temperatures31. Power Draw: 1080p32. Power Draw: 1440p33. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)34. Performance per Watt: 1080p35. Performance per Watt: 1440p36. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)37. Total System Power Draw38. Cost Per Frame Analysis39. Overclocking40. Closing Thoughts41. View All Pages

Following on from our stock thermal and acoustic testing, here we re-test the operating temperature of the GPU, but with noise levels normalised to 40dBa. This allows us to measure the efficiency of the overall cooling solution as varying noise levels as a result of more aggressive fan curves are no longer a factor.

Noise-normalised testing is where we get the most apples-to-apples comparison, but do bear in mind different power limits can still affect things. That's proven by the Gaming OC's OC BIOS running 1C hotter than the card's Silent BIOS, despite both using the same fan speed – the OC BIOS has a 370W power limit, compared to 350W for the Silent BIOS. The same also goes for the GameRock OC, with its OC BIOS targeting 400W compared to 370W for the Silent BIOS. At the very top, the iChill X4 is suffering slightly, again with a large delta between the GPU and hot spot temperatures.

Noise-normalised memory temperatures meanwhile are mostly fine. Gigabyte is once again leading the pack, with both its BIOS keeping the memory at 76C when noise-normalised, while Palit saw a 6C delta between its two BIOS. The iChill X4's memory hit 90C, though that was still cooler than the Founders Edition.

Update 20/07/21: Inno3D have been in touch and sent us a second iChill X4 to test – the noise-normalised GPU thermal results of which are below. Noise-normalised memory temperatures remained the same.

Once more, the hot spot temperature is significantly reduced with our new sample. The iChill X4 still sits atop the chart, so it ran hottest when noise-normalised, but the delta between the GPU and hot spot temperatures is significantly reduced now.

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