This review will focus on the flagship 3080 Ti from MSI, the SUPRIM X series. The MSI RTX 3080 TI SUPRIM X boasts an 1845 MHz boost clock and 1830 MHz out of the box. That's a rather noteworthy bump seen from the reference 1665 MHz boost. The SUPRIM X model also features a TDP of 400W, which is 50W over reference specs. In return, you'll gain more performance, bringing the series even closer and sometimes passing 3090 performance. MSI equipped the card with a semi-passive design; the three fans start to spin and cool once the GPU warms up.
Make no mistake; both modes offer the same performance; just a marginal difference in temperatures and acoustics can be perceived. MSI increased the power allowance as well as the turbo clock frequency. SUPRIM X has been fitted with a new TRI FROZR cooling solution with three TORX 4.0 fans. New in the design is that it has close quarters heat pipes around the VRM and a backplate .
The Ampere architecture features 2nd Gen RT Cores and 3rd Gen Tensor Cores. The GPU features 12GB of GDDR6X VRAM and a 384-bit memory interface, offering improved performance and power efficiency over the previous Turing-based generation. The front panel of the card features a variety of outputs, such as DisplayPort 1.4a and HDMI 2.1. HDMI 2.1 supports up to 48 Gb/s bandwidth and a range of higher resolutions and refresh rates, including 8K @ 60fps, 4K @ 120fps, and even up to 10K. Computationally intensive programs can utilize the GPU's cores to accelerate tasks using CUDA and other APIs.
Godfall is a large-scale open-world action RPG, full of reflective surfaces and advanced light effects. Unlike Control, it's optimised to run ray tracing on AMD, rather than Nvidia graphics cards, which is the reason it doesn't support DLSS at the moment. Here, the 3080 Ti once again proved capable of running the game at playable frame rates across every resolution. It takes the throne of the fastest PC gaming graphics card with nothing coming even close to it. It's surprisingly much faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti which is its Turing based predecessor but just being fast isn't enough for a card of this scale or price. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti carries more cores, more memory, higher performance efficiency, and also carries next-generation ray-tracing and tensor cores that make this a truly next-generation graphics card.
Elsewhere, MSI has taken care to give the memory modules their own heatsink and heat pipe to help whisk heat away. This is a nice touch as they're sometimes neglected, even on custom cards. To keep the GPU die cool, MSI has gone with a nickel-plated copper base plate and an array of seven heat pipes to channel heat to the sprawling heatsink. The heat pipes run the full length of the heatsink for more efficient heat dissipation, and they've also been machined flat to maximize the surface area that comes in contact with the copper base plate. Well-placed thermal pads provide additional heat dissipation for other components on the PCB. The RTx 3080 Ti's specs and performance were also leaked by other sources about a week ago.
Nvidia's card will likely stand as a middle-of-the-line option between the RTX 3080 and 3090 in terms of both performance and price. It is rumored to have 10,240 CUDA cores, 12GB of GDDR6X memory, and a 384-bit memory bus. In addition, Nvidia's mining limiter will be included to discourage the use of such cards for cryptocurrency miners.
Nvidia has made it clear that RTX should be primarily for gaming and hope this move will make graphics cards more accessible to PC users. It's not just the FPS that matters these days, it's visuals, and a smoother frame rate too and this is exactly what the GeForce RTX 30 series is made to excel at. There's a lot to talk about regarding NVIDIA's flagship Ampere gaming graphics cards so let's start off with the specifications. Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards.
Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. The Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti is one of the most powerful graphics cards I've tested in quite some time, offering stellar 4K performance across the board, even with ray tracing graphics settings on. But its price makes it a very expensive luxury, with better value found elsewhere.
The best graphics cards have been near impossible to buy thanks to a worldwide silicon shortage, limiting supply of available stock. On top of that, potential shoppers have had to contend with store lotteries and, even worse, scalpers. Considering the starting price of this graphics card is a premium $1,199, finding one of these is not going to be easy. The MSI RTX 3080 Ti Suprim X supercharges the RTX 3080 Ti with its highest clock speeds—1830 MHz vs. 1665 MHz reference. In this review, we take the card for a spin across our test-suite to tell you if shelling RTX 3090 kind of money for a top custom RTX 3080 Ti is worth it.
MSI hasn't provided any pricing information yet, but we expect the card to go for around $2100, $100 more than our estimate for the NVIDIA baseline price. The MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Suprim X is the company's new flagship gaming graphics card and part of NVIDIA's refresh of the RTX 30-series "Ampere" family to bolster its position in the high-end segment. The Suprim X is an MSI exercise at leveling up to the NVIDIA Founders Edition in terms of original design and build quality. The most premium design and materials combine with the company's most advanced graphics-card cooling solution and overclocking-optimized PCB to offer the highest tier of factory overclocks.
Like I opined in my original review, most gamers would absolutely be better served picking up an RTX 3080 as soon as they can find one at MSRP. Yet, if you have your heart set on a 3080 Ti, there is no mistaking that this is an excellent choice that is clearly ready to be pushed further with a custom overclock. It's just a shame that pricing is so high because while this card may just be the best "gaming" card on the market right now, it's so cost-prohibitive that it's hard to recommend to anyone other than high-level enthusiasts. That said, price to performance value has always gone out the window when it comes to the upper echelons of graphics cards, so those looking for the best of the best typically are prepared to pay for it. Near the three-pin power connector, MSI has added a BIOS selector switch that lets you choose between Gaming and Silent modes.
Both have the same clock speed, but Gaming Mode allows the fans to ramp a little higher to keep the card cool. In this mode, the card peaked at 68C after repeat runs of Unigine Heaven and hovered closer to 65C when playing actual games. This was also in a hot 26C office, so I would expect the card to run cooler in an air conditioned setting. In Silent Mode, this ramped to 72C but I honestly didn't find it necessary. The cooling system is performant enough that it never needed to ramp the fans up obnoxiously high and was on par, if not a bit better, than the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition in acoustic performance. The GeForce RTX™ 3080 Ti delivers the ultra performance that gamers crave, powered by Ampere—NVIDIA's 2nd gen RTX architecture.
It's built with enhanced RT Cores and Tensor Cores, new streaming multiprocessors, and superfast G6X memory for an amazing gaming experience. However, I'd still recommend most gamers, who don't have expensive 4K gaming monitors or TVs with HDMI 2.1, to invest in a cheaper GPU such as the RTX 3070, RTX 3060 Ti or AMD RX 6700 XT. These offer more than enough power for 1080p or 1440p gaming and retail for a fraction of the price. And if none of these sound like the right fit, then you can see a curated pick of the best graphics cards we've tested in this handy guide.
Because the RTX 3080 Ti basically brings the same level of performance as the RTX 3090 for a bit less money, this is the graphics card to get if you just want a top-notch gaming experience. Contrary to this, I recommend to keep that piggy bank and skip this generation of GPUs. The more we give in to scalpers, manufacturers, the higher the likelihood of them increasing prices, not just for this generation, but also for future generations of GPU. Time and time again it has been demonstrated that so many people are panic buying idiots, that thinking you're going to sit on the sidelines and wait for it to clear up just means you're never going to end up with anything. So either do your due diligence and find your card at a reasonable price, or move on to something else. The TGP for the card is set to be slightly higher than the RTX 3080 at 350 Watts.
That's definitely needed to feed the extra cores so NVIDIA might have to optimize the clocks a bit here. In terms of performance, the graphics card is said to be as fast as the RTX 3090 but with half the memory & LHR technology-enabled. As for compute numbers, the RTX 3080 Ti features 34 shader TFLOPs, 67 RT-TFLOPs, & 273 Tensor TFLOPs .
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 series is made up of a diverse portfolio of graphics cards. NVIDIA themselves call the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti the flagship graphics card and not the GeForce RTX 3090. The chinese company MSI (Micro-Star International) has earned a solid place in the world of IT, mainly producing motherboards for desktop computers. However, it also produces high quality graphics cards, barebone computers, notebook computers, networking products, servers, and many other computer components. MSI products support the latest technologies and provide the performance necessary for all applications. Recently, the company has begun making a name for itself in the growing segment of gaming notebooks.
The premium construction of the card shows itself in the brushed aluminium shroud, which confers a really solid feel. The TriFrozr 2S cooler keeps things chilly, featuring three Torx 4.0 fans. Each double-ball bearing fan has a unique design, where individual pairs of blades are linked with a ring of sorts. This is supposed to help focus airflow toward the heatsink and increase static pressure.
This cooling system itself is identical to what was featured in the earlier RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio, but the new brushed metal shroud is the visual highlight that elevates the graphics card to another level. The precision-crafted heat pipes ensure max contact to the GPU and dissipate heat evenly throughout the length of the heatsink. Airflow Control guides the air to exactly where it needs to be for cooling. Mystic Light gives you complete control of RGB lighting for MSI devices and compatible RGB products.
Here you can see the RTX 3080 Ti performed admirably, playing the game at playable frame rates with the graphics maxed and ray tracing and DLSS turned on. The only time it dropped below 60fps, which is considered the optimal point to comfortably play games, was when playing Control in 4K with ray tracing on and DLSS off. The Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti is a powerhouse graphics card that delivers an excellent 4K ray tracing performance.
If you can afford its steep up-front cost then it's an excellent choice for any hardcore gamer looking for top-of-the-line performance. However, the gains you get compared to the base RTX 3080, which costs a lot less, make it a hard sell for gamers who don't need the best performance possible in 4K. Next to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is the best graphics card on the market right now if you care about ray tracing, and DLSS will help boost that performance even more.
For instance, a custom GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card starts at $2,600 in the U.S. market. Therefore, the Ti version, which is faster, will likely arrive with a significant retailer markup. Stock is limited, and whatever is in stock sells at ridiculous prices.
LambaTek has listed prices starting at $2,000 for custom 3080 TI models, but there are caveats. The current consensus is that Nvidia could launch the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with a $999 to $1,099 MSRP to fill in the small gap left by the GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090. Even if the price is accurate, it's probably for the Founders Edition, which means custom models will ultimately arrive with a steeper price tag.
Furthemore, the graphics card market isn't exactly in a good place right now, so we doubt retailers will respect Nvidia's MSRP for the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. The gaming crowd, then, looked to the rest of the RTX and GTX lineup for cards that catered to them; think entries like the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, GTX 1660, or RTX 3080. Until the launch of today's RTX 3080 Ti, any Nvidia Founders Edition graphics card that called itself "for gamers" was priced under $999 at launch, a ceiling set by the RTX 2080 Ti in September of 2018.
From the front and back, MSI's custom GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X graphics card is a helluva card to look at. The triple-fan cooler on the front looks mean, and will keep your Ampere GPU + GDDR6X memory nice and chill -- while on the back we have a fantastic heat sink -- carried over from the RTX 3080 + RTX 3090 SUPRIM X cards. The latest iteration of MSIs iconic GAMING series once again brings performance, low-noise efficiency, and aesthetics that hardcore gamers have come to recognize and trust. Now you too can enjoy all your favorite games with a powerful graphics card that stays cool and silent. Of course, on a card of this scale, cooling is of paramount importance.
Don't expect temperatures to be a problem, and with the aluminium backplate and metal anti-bending strap, there's little sign of sag despite the card tipping the scales at just over 1.9kg. The RTX 3080 Ti is based on the same 8 nm GA102 silicon as the RTX 3080, but features a lot more CUDA cores. More importantly, it maxes out the 384-bit wide GDDR6X memory bus of the GA102. NVIDIA is giving the card 12 GB of memory, not 24 GB like on the RTX 3090, which it considers a halo product that even targets certain professional use cases. The RTX 3080 Ti is also endowed with 320 TMUs, 320 Tensor cores, 80 RT cores, and 112 ROPs. The memory operates at the same 19 Gbps data-rate as the RTX 3080, which results in a memory bandwidth of 912 GB/s due to its increased bus width.
This allows you to configure multiple monitors in order to create a more immersive gaming experience, such as having a wider field of view. As you might guess from the ramped up cooler and extra PSU plug compared to the original, the Suprim X is all about performance. It increases the power draw from the Founders Edition a full 50 watts, bringing it to 400 watts total. The added power in combination with high quality components for delivery and regulation make this an exceptionally good choice for gamers looking to overclock and squeeze some added performance out of their card. The latest iteration of MSI's iconic GAMING series once again brings performance, low-noise efficiency, and aesthetics that hardcore gamers have come to recognize and trust. MSI Afterburner is the most recognized and widely used graphics card overclocking software in the world.
Take full control of the graphics card while monitoring key system metrics in real-time. It's free to use and compatible with most other vendor graphics cards. The latest iteration of MSI's iconic GAMING series once again brings performance, low-noise efficiency, and aesthetics that hardcore gamers have come to recognize and trust.
Like most of MSI's high-end, premium graphics cards, the company has spared no expense in the design of the SUPRIM X RTX 3080 Ti. Unlike the Founders Edition variant, the card used the standard PCB design that is, in turn, kept cool with a massive heatsink that envelops the entire card. The Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti is a powerhouse graphics card that delivers excellent 4K ray tracing performance. If you can afford its steep up-front cost, it's an excellent choice for any hardcore gamer looking for top-of-the-line performance. Here, the RTX 3080 Ti once again ran the game at more than playable frame rates at every resolution with its graphics settings maxed. The game doesn't have an internal benchmark, so we gauge performance by taking an average frame rate while playing through the open section of the first level.
Ampere is seriously impressive and brings with it a wealth of key benefits for PC gamers. These include support for ray tracing games using Nvidia's 3rd-generation tensor cores, DLSS and the inclusion of an HDMI 2.1 port. Because, sure, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti does have more VRAM, with 12GB of GDDR6X compared to 10GB of the stuff on the original card, but it's also on a faster 384-bit memory bus. That means you get 912 GB/s of memory bandwidth on the RTX 3080 Ti compared to the RTX 3080's 760 GB/s. With faster VRAM, not to mention just more memory, the RTX 3080 Ti should be even more adept at 4K gaming in the future. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is an absolute monster of a graphics card, delivering RTX 3090-level gaming performance at a lower price.
However, the high starting price may still be a turn off for budget-conscious folks that just want to get some PC gaming in. The launch of NVIDIA's latest Ampere graphics cards is right around the corner , which means that more information is leaking out about both the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti and the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. Such is the case with the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, which has shown up for sale at UK retailer LambdaTek.
