MSI Gaming X 3080
Hold onto your hats ladies and gentleman! The launch of a new generation of Nvidia graphics cards is always a major event, and here it is with Chris Szewczyk in the Labs.
The GeForce RTX 3080 is the lead card of the brand new Ampere range. It’s joined by the RTX 3090 (a consumer level Titan replacement) and soon the RTX 3070 and RTX 3060. Ampere cards incorporate everything great about the Turing architecture and improve on it. The RTX 3080 is faster in games, offers better AI performance, it packs in cutting edge technology support and features improved ray tracing capabilities. If Turing served as a teaser of the possibilities of ray tracing, the Ampere generation may be the one that elevates it from a technology with potential into one that becomes as commonly enabled as anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering.
What’s under the hood
At the heart of the RTX 3080 lies the GA102 GPU. This is actually the same GPU as the one that powers the RTX 3090, but with one of the shader clusters disabled. The 3080 packs in 8,704 CUDA cores vs the 4,352 of the outgoing RTX 2080 Ti. 10GB of brand new GDDR6X memory ticks along at 19Gbps, up from the 14Gbps of the 2080 Ti. The GPU is built with Samsung’s 8nm process, a surprise in itself when TSMC has long been the preferred supplier of Nvidia GPUs. The GPU crams 28.3 billion transistors into its 628.4mm² package. This is a very large and complex GPU. If by chance you’re thinking about SLI, don’t. Only the RTX 3090 supports it.
The Ampere architecture contains improved Deep Learning and AI technologies. Deep Learning Super Sampling 2.0 (DLSS) uses details from multiple frames in order to produce an image. Rather than forcing the GPU to render every displayed image, the rendering burden is lessened. With the improved performance of the Tensor cores, Nvidia claims that 8K gaming is well and truly possible on Ampere graphics cards. To game at 8K, you need improved display support, and the RTX 3080 has it.
HDMI 2.1 is now included, which means support for 8K 60Hz or 4K 144Hz displays. There’s PCI Express 4.0 support and upgraded video capabilities including AV1 decode support. The Founders Edition
incorporates a new 12 pin PSU connector, though for now the Founders cards are the only ones we’ve seen supporting this connector. The MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio we’re using for this review uses standard 8 pin power connectors (three of them actually!) The MSI includes a single HDMI 2.1 port and three 1.4a DisplayPorts.
One of the really interesting new technologies introduced with Ampere is RTX IO. This is a toolset that utilises the GPU to accelerate storage performance including things like improving game loading times and file compression. The upcoming consoles are expected to use something similar so this is a tech to keep an eye out for once games begin to incorporate it.
In addition to cutting edge hardware, Nvidia is also introducing new software tools and applications. One of these is Nvidia Reflex, which aims to reduce total system latency. Competitive e-sports is big business and improving the responsiveness and latency of a system beginning with a mouse click and ending with an action on screen is the goal. With refresh rates reaching 360Hz and higher, milliseconds count.
Pricing and performance
Australian pricing (quoted pre-release) seems to be quite reasonable. The MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio has an RRP of $1,469. This compares to $1,139 for the Founders Edition. These prices may prove to be optimistic if initial demand greatly outstrips supply. Having said that, it’s important to remember that people were asked to pay over $2,000 for the top tier 2080 Ti’s so to have a card that’s much faster while costing 25 percent less is something that Nvidia and partners deserve credit for.
The only real downside is the jump in power consumption. While the performance per watt is better compared to the last generation, we can’t get used to a new normal where graphics cards pull close to 400W. We are at the limit. Where do graphics cards go from here? 450 or 500W? Four slot coolers? Please let this be the ceiling!
Now that we’ve gone over some of the tech and features introduced with Ampere and the RTX 3080, let’s jump into a look at a card. You might ask, why aren’t we covering the RTX 3080 Founders Edition? We were planning to up until the last minute, but sadly Covid continues to wreak havoc with courier services and it didn’t arrive in time before we went to print.
“The GPU crams 28.3 billion transistors into its 628.4mm² package. This is a very large and complex GPU. If by chance you’re thinking about SLI, don’t. Only the RTX 3090 supports it.”
Keep an eye out for that and 3080s from other vendors in our next issue! We thank MSI for stepping up and sending through its first 3080 card quickly so we could get our initial tech and architecture review in this issue for you.
MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio
MSI graphics cards are typically very capable and come with a solid reputation, particularly the high end Twin- and Tri Frozr-equipped models, along with its strong PCB designs. The RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio appears to be another top quality entry by MSI. It’s a big, beefy card that takes up three slots. The cooler fins and fans have been redesigned. The fans themselves have pairs of blades connected at the ends for improved static pressure. The heatsink fins are waved for improved dissipation properties and the GPU heatpipes are squared off for maximum die contact. Even the attractive backplate has an embedded heatpipe. And, it’s been infused with graphene! We’re starting to get the feeling that the RTX 3080 needs some serious cooling. There’s also a nice little RGB light bar that can be controlled via MSI’s Mystic Light app.
Under full load, the cooler cannot be heard above the sounds of our AIO cooling fans or even the sound of the pump. Unless you have an airflow restricted case, we’re confident in saying that this MSI won’t be distracting you during your gaming sessions. There appears to be a hard limit of 350W for the whole card. Time restrictions prevented us from testing our sample cards with Nvidia’s new power measurement tools, but we did record a full system peak power consumption of 487W. Bear in mind that’s including an overclocked 10900K, plus fans and an AIO cooler etc. We consider that to be not too bad, though perhaps we too are becoming desensitised to high power consumption figures.
It’s not just a quiet cooler, it’s effective too. During a looping test at 100 percent load, the highest temperature we saw was just 69c. This allows the boost clock to stay at an insanely high level. At this temperature we saw fluctuations between 1950MHz and as high as 1985MHz. That’s well above the card’s rated 1815MHz rated boost clock. Will some custom cards feature boost clocks above 2.0 GHz? Surely the answer is yes. Our 3080 Founders Edition may have fallen off the back of a courier truck somewhere in Australia, but we don’t think it’s a leap to assume that premium tier custom cards like MSI’s will significantly outperform the Founders Edition in terms of noise levels, temperatures and importantly, the maximum boost clocks. We’d expect that though given the price premium.
Now we come to biggest question we all have. How does it perform? Very well indeed! The RTX 3080 is way ahead of the outgoing RTX 2080 Ti. Bear in mind this card is actually replacing the RTX 2080 and 2080 Super in the product stack, and in that case it’s an absolute belting. The performance per watt isn’t massively improved but if you’re going to drop $1,500 on a GPU, you probably aren’t worried about power consumption when you’re getting such a huge gain in performance.
At 4K it’s a good 25 percent faster than the previous flagship 2080 Ti, and well over 50 percent faster than its direct predecessor, the RTX 2080 Super. The difference isn’t as big at lower resolutions, indicating that even a 5.1GHz all core 10900K is somewhat of a bottleneck, even at maximum settings! It’s crazy really. The 3080 only really makes sense if you’re gaming at maximum settings at 4K, you use an ultrawide, or use multiple screens (hello to all you sim racers!). Users with very high refresh rate monitors will love it too.
The MSI Gaming X Trio is damn fast. It offers good value too; at least, we hope so. We won’t be surprised to see some price gouging going on in the shops once the initial batches sell out. Will the choice of Samsung as the foundry partner prevent shortages from happening? Time will tell.
Nvidia is off to a very strong start with the first of its RTX 30 series. The RTX 3080 sets a new bar, and the MSI flavour only raises it higher. And this is only the beginning. There’s still the mighty RTX 3090 to come, and don’t forget the very exciting RTX 3070 and 3060 models. These two in particular may really shake up the market if they are priced competitively. We’re sure they’ll sell like hotcakes anyway. The pressure is really on AMD now. RDNA2 cards will need to be something special if they are to compete with Nvidia in any relevant measure. The next great GPU battle has begun. Oh what a time to be a PC gamer.
The RTX 3080 redefines the high end GPU market with a stunning generational leap.
“Under full load, the cooler cannot be heard above the sounds of our AIO cooling fans or even the sound of the pump. Unless you have an airflow restricted case, we’re confident in saying that this MSI won’t be distracting you during your gaming sessions.”