# ASUS GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB STRIX OC



## W1zzard (Feb 18, 2022)

The ASUS GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB STRIX OC brings more than just an additional 2 GB of VRAM over the 10 GB RTX 3080. In our in-depth review, we're checking performance of 25 games and ray tracing performance, and we also measure VRAM usage for each tested game.

*Show full review*


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## GhostRyder (Feb 18, 2022)

Seems like its the equivalent of the "SUPER" series in terms of this update.  I mean, if the price stays around what its MSRP, that's a pretty darn good deal considering how close it is the the 3080ti and 3090!

I mean, this variant is a bit more expensive but still its a decent update.


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## the54thvoid (Feb 18, 2022)

I just can't get excited about 'new' GPU's while the industry is shafting the consumer with hyper-inflated pricing. I also find it galling that there seems to be a race to the bottom in terms of efficiency. I recall the Fermi-era power and heat debate and why AMD (or ATI) was pushing leaner, more efficient chips. Then Nvidia upped their game and efficiency became a driver for GPU PR. Now it appears irrelevant as the cards are simply being pumped up on steroids to become the biggest, baddest ever. I understand process nodes and the 'nm' scale are important drivers in this regard but still, I can't but help feel there's little to no point in these new releases.


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## kiriakost (Feb 18, 2022)

I do not need any RTX 5000, but to move my home next to game servers in Germany = 5ms Ping.


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## WhoDecidedThat (Feb 18, 2022)

@W1zzard If you can make time, can we have overclocking results where you overclock the GPU but not the memory? This should allow the GPU to have slightly more power and since the 3080 12 GB already has 20% more memory bandwidth than 3080 10 GB, it should not be memory bottlenecked.


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## aciDev (Feb 18, 2022)

"AMD is addressing this "problem" by teaming up with developers to ensure they implement watered-down ray tracing that doesn't come with as big a performance hit."

Is AMD incentivizing the watering down of the use of ray tracing or is it encouraging a moderate use since it destroys performance on both amd and nvidia gpu's and has to be compensated with upscaling techniques and it's just nvidia marketing recycling technology in gaming?


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## seth1911 (Feb 18, 2022)

okay for this price i can get a ps5, xbox sx and switch.

Nope sorry i dont need that crap,
fck pcmr


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## W1zzard (Feb 18, 2022)

aciDev said:


> "AMD is addressing this "problem" by teaming up with developers to ensure they implement watered-down ray tracing that doesn't come with as big a performance hit."
> 
> Is AMD incentivizing the watering down of the use of ray tracing or is it encouraging a moderate use since it destroys performance on both amd and nvidia gpu's and has to be compensated with upscaling techniques and it's just nvidia marketing recycling technology in gaming?


I can't answer that, and of course I have no proof what AMD is doing, but looking at a bunch of AMD-sponsored RT titles I really can't see much RT, despite RT enabled. This is actually REALLY bad for NVIDIA, because if people stop caring about RT, they'll lose their biggest selling point. OTOH we're in this crazy market where you can sell anything, but I doubt this will last forever


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## Pumper (Feb 18, 2022)

W1zzard said:


> This is actually REALLY bad for NVIDIA, because if people stop caring about RT, they'll lose their biggest selling point. OTOH we're in this crazy market where you can sell anything, but I doubt this will last forever


Most people don't care about RT anyway, but it's the inevitable future of gaming, so it's not really relevant what people without RT capable GPUs think about it. I bet that by the time PS6 is released, RT will be the standard and exclusives won't even have raster option.


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## W1zzard (Feb 18, 2022)

Pumper said:


> RT will be the standard


Yes



Pumper said:


> won't even have raster option


Doubt it. Except for Quake RTX there is no fully raytraced game. They all combine rasterization, which works unbelievably well for 90% of cases, with RT, which, when used ideally, offers a visual upgrade


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## mouacyk (Feb 18, 2022)

This is just an excuse to undo the perfectly sane MSRP of $699 for the original 3080.  When the 4080 comes out at $999, nveople will actually be relieved.


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## trog100 (Feb 18, 2022)

mouacyk said:


> This is just an excuse to undo the perfectly sane MSRP of $699 for the original 3080.  When the 4080 comes out at $999, nveople will actually be relieved.



as someone who paid over £1100 for a 2080TI i dont think $699 dollars for a 3080 was perfectly sane.. it was fake right from the word go.. 

trog


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## mama (Feb 18, 2022)

Wait.  Buy it in a year.  Half the price.


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## dparis1977 (Feb 19, 2022)

so anyone else think that having 2 3080's that are not at all the same a little mind f#@K to the consumer , this should really be a super at the very least.
pretty lame to me


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## Jism (Feb 19, 2022)

blanarahul said:


> @W1zzard If you can make time, can we have overclocking results where you overclock the GPU but not the memory? This should allow the GPU to have slightly more power and since the 3080 12 GB already has 20% more memory bandwidth than 3080 10 GB, it should not be memory bottlenecked.



I think the margin is really slim.


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## MarsM4N (Feb 19, 2022)

Sub 3080ti performance & topping 3090 power consumption.

Now that's some *impressive* technological advancement. 



aciDev said:


> "AMD is addressing this "problem" by teaming up with developers to ensure they implement watered-down ray tracing that doesn't come with as big a performance hit."
> 
> Is AMD incentivizing the watering down of the use of ray tracing or is it encouraging a moderate use since it destroys performance on both amd and nvidia gpu's and has to be compensated with upscaling techniques and it's just nvidia marketing recycling technology in gaming?



Considering that *AMD is dominating the console market* (PS5 & xBox Series S/X) and most games are programmed for all platforms, it's logical that developers are working together with AMD to get the most visual bling without sacrificing performance. Nvidia's advanced ray tracing is only used in a few "showcase" games, they aren't setting "the standard".

I expect raytracing will become a "mainstream thing" with future AMD versions, after implementation in future (refresh?) consoles.


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## Berfs1 (Feb 19, 2022)

I think "20% more bandwidth" is a better approach to this. Idk why a lot of people care so much about VRAM _size_ when they don't actually _need_ it.



trog100 said:


> as someone who paid over £1100 for a 2080TI i dont think $699 dollars for a 3080 was perfectly sane.. it was fake right from the word go..
> 
> trog


2080 Tis are selling for around 700-900 bucks on ebay right now..


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## Jhart1228 (Feb 19, 2022)

"we found the ASUS RTX 3080 12 GB STRIX OC to be a whopping 7% faster than the RTX 3080" I wish this was sarcasm.


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## W1zzard (Feb 19, 2022)

Jhart1228 said:


> "we found the ASUS RTX 3080 12 GB STRIX OC to be a whopping 7% faster than the RTX 3080" I wish this was sarcasm.


7% is a lot in this space. Agreed that subjectively during gaming it might not be a big thing, but then why are people buying 6900 xt, 3090, etc


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## Jhart1228 (Feb 19, 2022)

W1zzard said:


> 7% is a lot in this space. Agreed that subjectively during gaming it might not be a big thing, but then why are people buying 6900 xt, 3090, etc


People love to encourage shameless money grabbing.


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## arni-gx (Feb 19, 2022)

average performance from pc games with 1080p-2160p = 5-7%..... wow..... amazing.......


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## Aimussage (Feb 19, 2022)

W1zzard said:


> 7% is a lot in this space. Agreed that subjectively during gaming it might not be a big thing, but then why are people buying 6900 xt, 3090, etc


Is your comparison with a 3080 FE? My Aorus 3080 10G performs about 4% better than the 3080 founders edition out of the box and with a bit of tweaking and an undervolt I get even more out of it so if it is compared to a FE 3080 10G it makes that 7% suddenly a lot less impressive.


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## Bwaze (Feb 19, 2022)

"I'm giving our Recommended award to the RTX 3080 STRIX because it's a fantastic custom-design with an excellent cooler, good factory overclock, large power limit increase, and good fan settings (in quiet mode). It was a close call though, because the card is definitely not for everyone at that price point; it's just SO much money."

So, giving Recommended by disregarding the price? I guess the people that get their cards for free can do that...

 

Also, even stock Asus 3080 TUF Gaming OC that launched at $700 beat the Founders Edition 3080 by 3% at 4K. So most of this 4 - 7% is just due to better cooling, higher OC?


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## spnidel (Feb 19, 2022)

aaaaaaaaaaaaand the gap between a 3080 and 3080 ti narrows even further

rtx 3060 12gb
rtx 3060 ti 8gb
rtx 3070 8gb
rtx 3080 10gb
rtx 3080 12gb
rtx 3080 ti 12gb

what a mess this entire lineup is, nvidia definitely got a run for their money thanks to AMDs 6000 series


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## arni-gx (Feb 19, 2022)

spnidel said:


> aaaaaaaaaaaaand the gap between a 3080 and 3080 ti narrows even further
> 
> rtx 3060 12gb
> rtx 3060 ti 8gb
> ...



rtx 3050 8gb
rtx 3060 12gb
rtx 3060 ti 8gb
rtx 3070 8gb
rtx 3070 ti 8gb
rtx 3080 10gb
rtx 3080 12gb
rtx 3080 ti 12g
rtx 3090 24gb
rtx 3090 ti 24gb

yup..... its very a mess.....


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## N3M3515 (Feb 19, 2022)

Your prices(from the table) are way off, they are at least $150 higher.


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## W1zzard (Feb 19, 2022)

N3M3515 said:


> Your prices(from the table) are way off, they are at least $150 higher.


I looked them up on the day of the review. At roughly these prices you can find decent supply on eBay USA and other sites


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## Chrispy_ (Feb 19, 2022)

@W1zzard said in his review 

"designed to fill the gap between the original RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 Ti"

What gap? Oh, I see - that's the joke!


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## AloneKing1650 (Feb 20, 2022)

Why this card SO much consuming power? Maybe memory chips little bit effected.


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## boomheadshot8 (Feb 20, 2022)

AloneKing1650 said:


> Why this card SO much consuming power? Maybe memory chips little bit effected.


little incresed of core +150 ish; the vram and also more voltage regulator ? there is 3 x8 pins...


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## zx128k (Feb 20, 2022)

If the 3080 12GB sold for the MSRP for the 3080 10GB.  Then why would you buy a 6900xt, the 3080 12GB is faster stock and would be the same MSRP as the 6800xt.  Prices are just silly atm.   If I was getting a gpu I would wait untill september for the 40 series.  At this point, by the time prices return to normal, the 40 series will be around the corner or released.


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## TKnockers (Feb 21, 2022)

W1zzard said:


> 7% is a lot in this space. Agreed that subjectively during gaming it might not be a big thing, but then why are people buying 6900 xt, 3090, etc


3080 12gb OC 7% lead over 3080 FE 10 Gb stock is not a lot.. if we consider that this 3080 12Gb is oc-ed from the factory that 7% lead seems even smaller.. fair comparison would be overclocked 3080 10gb vs this 3080 12Gb witch stock oc.. then we could really say what is the difference. We could leave memory clocks on both cards as is.. my guess is lead would be maybe 2% which is negligible. It really is interesting that the difference between these cards is so small.


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## zx128k (Feb 21, 2022)

TKnockers said:


> 3080 12gb OC 7% lead over 3080 FE 10 Gb stock is not a lot.. if we consider that this 3080 12Gb is oc-ed from the factory that 7% lead seems even smaller.. fair comparison would be overclocked 3080 10gb vs this 3080 12Gb witch stock oc.. then we could really say what is the difference. We could leave memory clocks on both cards as is.. my guess is lead would be maybe 2% which is negligible. It really is interesting that the difference between these cards is so small.


An overclocked 3080 12GB is faster than a stock 3090 in raster.  



> Overclocking worked well on our card. After a few minutes, we gained another 6% in real-life performance, which lets the card beat the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3090.





> Averaged over our test suite, we found the ASUS RTX 3080 12 GB STRIX OC to be a whopping 7% faster than the RTX 3080.





> In the fight against AMD's offerings, the ASUS STRIX can beat the Radeon RX 6900 XT by 3%, and it's almost 10% faster than the RX 6800 XT.



Also the 10GB is not enough proved to be false.



> With the RTX 3080 12 GB, NVIDIA addresses the concern in the community that "10 GB is not enough" on the RTX 3080. While there are certainly specific scenarios where that is true, across a wide range of titles, even at highest settings and 4K, this is a non-issue—we specifically looked at VRAM usage for this review. Even when we enabled ray tracing, there wasn't a significant framerate difference between 10 GB and 12 GB. Yes, few games will exceed 10 GB VRAM at 4K with RT on, but these VRAM usage numbers are actually allocations. A game putting a texture or model into VRAM doesn't mean it will be used all the time. Rather, many games are optimistic—as much memory as possible is filled in hopes those assets are used in the near future.



Did the review not state its faster than both the 6800xt and 6900xt in stock config.  That should be 10% faster in raster than the 6800xt and 3% faster than the 6900xt at 4k and equal at all other resolutions.  This means that the RTX 3080 12GB is faster than the whole AMD 6000 series product line.  With a massive lead in DXR and DLSS.  Overclocked the lead is 16% faster than the 6800xt and 9% faster than the 6900xt.  This makes it hard for the 6800xt to make a comeback even as the 6850xt in raster and this card does not match the 3080 10GB in DXR already.

AMD need a 6850xt or a 6950xt, just to stay in the game performance wise.  The RTX 3080 12GB is now going to be thee card after the price drop.  AMD should hope prices remain high until the 40 series and their own new cards release.


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## Kelvin (Feb 21, 2022)

Can you compare this with the old STRIX 3080 10GB ?
Now the charts have only 3080 10GB FE, making the comparison difficult.


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## neatfeatguy (Feb 22, 2022)

I wouldn't say:

Significant performance increase over RTX 3080 10 GB

Modest performance increase would be a better way to describe it.

The card is basically a 3080Ti that costs a little less, but draws just as much or more power than the 3080Ti and 3090.  I find this bit of information as being significant. Roughly 80W more power draw over a 3080 while gaming to gain an extra maybe 5-7% over a 10GB 3080? Perhaps other 3080 12GB models don't make the power draw look as embarrassing as this ASUS Strix one does.


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## zx128k (Feb 23, 2022)

neatfeatguy said:


> I wouldn't say:
> 
> Significant performance increase over RTX 3080 10 GB
> 
> ...


The RTX 3080 10GB is EoL its not produced any more.  The RTX 3080 12GB is the card that replaces it.  Many RTX 3080 10GB with factory overclocks had 450 watt power limits maximum.  Give the stock power draw is 320 watts, thats an 130 watt increase in protential power draw.  Increase in performance of a ASUS RTX 3080 12 GB STRIX OC is 7% faster that of the RTX 3080 10GB.   In the fight against AMD's offerings, the ASUS STRIX can beat the Radeon RX 6900 XT by 3%, and it's almost 10% faster than the RX 6800 XT.  That would imply a 7% gap between the 6900xt and the 6800xt.  So by your statement there is a modest increase in performance between the 6800xt and the 6900xt.  The 3080TI is 3% ahead of the 3080 12GB and 3% behind the 3090.

AMD are the same with power draw, start overclocking and watch the power draw go insane.  Actual 3D performance gained from overclocking a 6900xt (2857 MHz) is 6.1% in benchmarks, source techpowerup.


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## Chomiq (Feb 23, 2022)

neatfeatguy said:


> I wouldn't say:
> 
> Significant performance increase over RTX 3080 10 GB
> 
> ...


Yeah, the only time I can max out the power draw is when I run Control with full RTX on, that's when it my 3080 Ti pulls 360W.


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## Cutechri (Feb 25, 2022)

zx128k said:


> The RTX 3080 10GB is EoL its not produced any more. The RTX 3080 12GB is the card that replaces it


Of course, why did we ever think Jensen would bless us with a $700 flagship GPU. What is this, 2017? Pfft.


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## neatfeatguy (Feb 25, 2022)

Cutechri said:


> Of course, why did we ever think Jensen would bless us with a $700 flagship GPU. What is this, 2017? Pfft.



I don't know if the 3080 10GB is officially EOL, I do see some coming through MC still, but even then those amounts weren't that great and they're priced around $1000 still. I also see the 12GB versions coming through, but they're pushing the $1400+ range. Those prices are crazy. I'm glad I was able to get my 3080 for around $850 after taxes + shipping. Hopefully this card lasts me a while.


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## zx128k (Feb 25, 2022)

Cutechri said:


> Of course, why did we ever think Jensen would bless us with a $700 flagship GPU. What is this, 2017? Pfft.


Current gpu prices are caused by the market.  This is how the economic system works.  Miners were paying more money for the available gpus.  NVidia cant legally control prices, all they can do is set a MSRP.  NVidia make chips, not cards.  AIB's make the cards.  Yet everyone blames NVidia.  The market could set gpus at MSRP but they wont.  Profit motive wins. 

If enough people stopped buying they would not make a profit.  Then you will see the real truth, the prices wont be reduced until after new nvidia 40 series cards release.  Once the stock is bought it is solded at the price they need to make a profit.  Only when they buy new stock will the price go up or down.  You see it in shops, the latest 3080 gets release but the 2080 is still at its same price as the new 3080.

Once the factory makes too little of a stock they can price fix by buying all the stock and set the price to what they want.  Or by storing stock and allowing the price to rise.  As gpus are luxury goods there is nothing anyone can do about it.  This is the reason there is crazy prices, as all of these things are happening.

Its not Jensen's job to get a gpu to you.  His job is to make maximum profit from gpu chip sales.

Basically you hate capitalism and thats okay.  Only government action can help you get a gpu.  Like the USA banning crypto and protecting luxury goods from price gouging via regulation.  This would lead to government price controls and the capitalists screaming socialism.


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## John Naylor (Mar 2, 2022)

All true .... the people doing the complaining have only themselves to blame.  Well perhaps not exactly only.

a) The *need* to be the 1st one on the block to have the new shiny thing is, in the social media age, believed to be a way to increase one social standing is the primary driver of the price structure.  At the time of release, yields are the lowest they will be in the production cycle, demand far exceeds supply and ... forget nVidia.... think of all all the resellers who still have to pay rent, taxes, employees, utilities and all other soft costs.  When supply exceeds demand, then they can sell as many cards as they want, pricing based upon what the competition is charging and how fast they are going out the door.  If they sell 1,000 cards in a  week, have a  $20 markup over their costs, they make $20k to put against those costs with some left over for profit (hopefully).   But if they have cards sitting on the shelves, they are not making anything .... they still gotta pay those bills.  If they get an allocation of 200 cards ... then they need to charge $100 markup to pay those same bills ... and they will continues to do that and more until they stop flying out the door.

b)  Yes, it's a fiduciary responsibility of all corporate officers to maximize profits.   Officers can be fired and even prosecuted for failing to maximize stockholder profits provided of course actions that would violate law, contract, policy or long term goals.

c)  Competition ... the least real competition they had at the top end was themselves .... Nvidia realized they can make more money selling the top tier cards than 2 lower tier cards, so they nerfed SLI at resolutions lower than 4k so their premium pricing at the top end no longer suffered from competition from twin 2nd tier cards.   With the power of SLI being negated, support by game developers fizzled.


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## tepusal (Jul 17, 2022)

@W1zzard Thank you for your review. I managed to snag this card from Newegg right after it became available for $799 and before it went out of stock. Can you please clarify if the overclocking you performed on page 39 of the review involved any voltage adjustments, as well, or if all was needed was to crank up the power limit and memory and GPU clock?


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## W1zzard (Jul 17, 2022)

tepusal said:


> @W1zzard Thank you for your review. I managed to snag this card from Newegg right after it became available for $799 and before it went out of stock. Can you please clarify if the overclocking you performed on page 39 of the review involved any voltage adjustments, as well, or if all was needed was to crank up the power limit and memory and GPU clock?


No voltage increases, I just increase the clocks until no longer stable


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## tepusal (Jul 17, 2022)

W1zzard said:


> No voltage increases, I just increase the clocks until no longer stable


Great, thank you. Eagerly waiting for the card to arrive.


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## masterchither (Aug 13, 2022)

I had purchased this 3080 ROG Strix OC 12GB core before I read this. Thankfully it was a good reading, so thank you for all the time you spent breaking things down. I am one of the lucky people who has been able to snag this at $799.99. It's good to see the prices falling to where they were suppose to be. 

I also have an EVGA FTW3 Ultra 3080 12GB in my other pc. They are both pretty much identical in performance, and cooling!

Cheers!


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## leifericson84 (Aug 28, 2022)

Thanks @W1zzard! Great Reviews as always, really enjoy the noise and temp testing since I prefer to keep a quiet rig.

One question, I have noticed you have adjusted your acoustic testing to 50cm vs 100cm, I know it won't be perfect but I'm trying to compare my current Asus Strix 2070 Super with this card. I have read on some various websites that if you halve the distance away the dba should increase by 6? What I'm getting it is there a rough adjustment factor with the new 50cm testing that we can correlate to the 100cm testing. For example a new 50cm measurement of 33 dba is equivalent to 27 dba measured at 100cm? I believe the Strix 2070 Super you guys had measured at 29 dba at 100cm, roughly how does that compare to this card measured at ~33 dba at 50cm. Maybe this is on the forum somewhere, but I'm new and haven't scoured everything yet.

THanks,
Eric


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## leifericson84 (Aug 31, 2022)

leifericson84 said:


> Thanks @W1zzard! Great Reviews as always, really enjoy the noise and temp testing since I prefer to keep a quiet rig.
> 
> One question, I have noticed you have adjusted your acoustic testing to 50cm vs 100cm, I know it won't be perfect but I'm trying to compare my current Asus Strix 2070 Super with this card. I have read on some various websites that if you halve the distance away the dba should increase by 6? What I'm getting it is there a rough adjustment factor with the new 50cm testing that we can correlate to the 100cm testing. For example a new 50cm measurement of 33 dba is equivalent to 27 dba measured at 100cm? I believe the Strix 2070 Super you guys had measured at 29 dba at 100cm, roughly how does that compare to this card measured at ~33 dba at 50cm. Maybe this is on the forum somewhere, but I'm new and haven't scoured everything yet.
> 
> ...


@W1zzard bump


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## W1zzard (Aug 31, 2022)

I also changed the loading software and the microphone. I think you can estimate if you look at the data for the reference cards, these are the exact same cards


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