Honestly, I think that 3080 is owed much of its popularity (like in the Steam HW charts) to the glut of cheap ex-mining cards that kinda propelled it into prominence. I’d have to check to make a definitive statement, but I doubt it held ownership numbers that high on Steam during the peak crypto boom when those cards went for, like, 3-4x MSRP.
The founders Edition 3080 was special in that the 3080FE was good value in the product stack relative to other cards, and Nvidia kept pumping these FE cards out to compensate for the fact partners were selling their cards to miners.
In the UK on tech forums, the FE was the most popular card owned of that generation, which is highly unusual, usually partner cards dominate, on the OCUK forum where they were not the authorised FE retailer, they even allowed a discussion thread for it due to how popular it was.
I dont consider the card in the same ballpark as the 1080ti, the 1080ti got sold for £500, it was a flagship, the 3080 FE was £650, lower in the product stack. But it was probably the best value card from the turing and ampere generations.
Of course anyone with sense could predict Nvidia were never going to sell the 4080 FE for that kind of price, that also helped its popularity, knowing that the next generation was going to be much more expensive. Nvidia were very likely wanting to up the MSRP and be part of the bandwagon, but they ultimately decided the rep of the product was more important so the £650 for the FE was honoured for the entire production run. They did eventually release the 3080 TI FE which of course was priced much higher, but even then the 3080 FE was kept in production as an option.
Meanwhile OCUK who had lots of back orders from partners like Asus, MSI etc. Were getting their orders cancelled, as those partners didnt want to fulfil the back orders at the original lower launch prices, they released new SKU's with extremely minor changes so they could claim no more in production, no obligation to fulfil. EVGA didnt deliver a single 3080 card.
