Introduction

The ASUS ROG STRIX LC GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is the company's flagship custom-design RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, characterized by its factory-fitted, all-in-one liquid cooling solution. The cooler combines an AIO liquid cold-plate to pull heat from the GPU and memory, while a set of heatsinks and lateral blower provide additional cooling. Interestingly, this cooler debuted with the Radeon RX 6800 XT STRIX LC, which along with the RX 6900 XT are believed to have triggered product-stack updates among NVIDIA's ranks.



The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti replaces the RTX 3080 as NVIDIA's new flagship gaming product. The RTX 3090 is still positioned higher, but that SKU is more of a TITAN-like halo product, with its massive 24 GB memory favoring certain professional use-cases when paired with Studio drivers. The RTX 3080 Ti utilizes the same GA102 silicon, maxing out its 384-bit memory interface with 12 GB. There are more CUDA cores on offer—10,240 vs. 8,796 on the RTX 3080, and a proportionate increase in Tensor cores, RT cores, and other components. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is based on the new Ampere graphics architecture, which debuts the 2nd generation of NVIDIA's path-breaking RTX real-time raytracing technology combining third-generation Tensor cores with second-generation RT cores and faster Ampere CUDA cores.

As mentioned earlier, the ASUS ROG STRIX LC lugs a bulky all-in-one liquid cooling and air hybrid solution without it coming across as ugly and tacked on. ASUS appears to have taken a keen interest in adding to the industrial design of the card and radiator. The cooler also supports a major factory-overclock to 1830 MHz, compared to the 1665 MHz reference. This puts its performance well above even the RTX 3090, while also costing more than its MSRP. In this review, we show you whether it's worth just picking this card over an RTX 3090, if available.