It took a little bit longer, but finally, here's our EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra review. The FTW3 Ultra is EVGA's most premium air-cooled RTX 3080 variant, boasting a massive triple slot, triple-fan cooler, iCX technology, dual BIOS, adjustable RGB, and a large factory overclock. With 1800 MHz, the rated Boost Clock is among the highest of all RTX 3080 cards that we've tested so far. Only the MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio is specced higher—to 1815 MHz, which isn't that much more (the Founders Edition ticks at 1710 MHz). Where EVGA has an edge over all other cards is the power limit, which seems to be more important for Ampere performance than Boost clock alone. While the majority of 3080's that we've reviewed are limited to slightly above 300 W (FE: 320 W, Palit: 320 W, Zotac: 320 W, ASUS TUF: 340 W, MSI Gaming X: 340 W), EVGA went all the way to 380 W, at which point it actually begins to benefit the third 8-pin PCIe power connector.

Thanks to increased power limit, the EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra is the fastest RTX 3080 we've tested so far. At 4K, it is 5% faster than the NVIDIA Founders Edition, which is more than half the way to the much more expensive RTX 3090, which is another 4% faster than the EVGA FTW3 Ultra. Compared to last generation's RTX 2080 Ti, the EVGA card is 38% quicker, and the uplift vs RTX 2080 Super is 64%. The RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra is twice as fast as the aging GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, and twice as fast as AMD's Radeon RX 5700 XT.

If you are looking for fluid 4K gaming, then the RTX 3080 is the card you want. At lower resolutions many games are CPU bottlenecked though, so the card won't be able to play out its full potential. The RTX 3080 is also a good option for 1440p high refresh-rate gaming, but I definitely wouldn't spend that much money just for Full HD 1080p gaming.

EVGA reconsidered the looks of their coolers for GeForce 30 Ampere, and I have to say I'm very happy with the result. The new thermal solution looks great, even though I'm sure some will complain about the use of red for highlights. On the back of the card you'll find a metal backplate, which is one of the best looking I've ever seen—it almost reminds me of a Crysis nanosuit, thanks to the hexagonal cutouts paired with metallic print in in the same shape. My only complaint is that there's no thermal pads on the backplate, which could have helped reduce temperature a little bit. Still, overall thermal performance is excellent. When fully loaded, the card reaches 74°C, which is good, especially when you consider the much higher power limit. What's more important is that noise levels are extremely quiet with just 31 dBA. This makes the FTW3 Ultra the quietest RTX 3080 we've tested so far, matching the ASUS TUF with "Quiet BIOS" active. The big difference is that the TUF, in that mode, runs slightly lower clocks to reduce heat output. Should you prefer lower temperatures, then set the EVGA dual BIOS switch to "OC". While the naming might suggest something different, the only differences are that the fan curve is more aggressive and idle-fan-stop is disabled, clocks are the same. Personally I don't see why you would want fan stop to be off, ever. On the other hand, some people might want to reduce their idle temperatures, hoping that their card might last longer.

Power consumption of the FTW3 Ultra looks scary at first: triple 8-pin power inputs, up to 467 W in Furmark, and 315 W in typical gaming. Actually, if we take the performance gain over FE into account, the FTW3 Ultra is slightly more efficient—5% faster, 4.6% more power. Good. Custom designs usually compromise on some efficiency to achieve higher performance. While three 8-pins are a little bit more complicated to use than dual 8-pins, it's a reasonable choice, as it gave EVGA enough power headroom to achieve meaningful performance gains.

Should you want to go even higher with the power limit, then EVGA has you covered. The manual power adjustment range goes up to 400 W, which is higher than nearly all RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 (!) cards from most vendors. Still not enough? EVGA released an "XOC" BIOS on their website, which lets you bump the power limit to 450 W—better bring some good GPU cooling. While such high power limits are for a small part of the market only, it still shows the EVGA cares about their customers and listens to their requests.

Overclocking worked well, but due to the high factory overclock, the additional gains are much smaller than what we could achieve on cards that ran lower frequencies at stock. It seems that most Ampere GPUs top out at roughly similar frequencies, with the silicon lottery playing a smaller part than before. Still, if I had to pick an RTX 3080 for serious overclocking, then the EVGA FTW3 Ultra would be my weapon of choice.

A unique feature on EVGA graphics cards is the iCX sensors, which are nine additional thermal probes that are located at strategically important spots on the PCB: GPU, memory, VRM phases. Sensor buffs will have a clear view on all these measurements from within the EVGA Precision software, which also offers overclocking and fan control.

EVGA is asking $810 for the RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra, which is quite a large increase over the NVIDIA MSRP of $700. The 5% factory overclock alone can't justify the 15% higher price. No doubt, the cooler is much better, and the additional power delivery capability will come in handy for overclocking. The dual BIOS, ARGB and fan headers are nice, too, I'm still not convinced I would pay that much more for a RTX 3080. On the other hand, RTX 3080 demand is so high, that people are willing to pay any price, so what price I find reasonable really doesn't matter these days. I'd still recommend you look at competing cards to decide whether the additional cost/features for the FTW3 are worth it. EVGA also has plenty of other RTX 3080 models, for example the FTW3 Gaming, which is $790, and identical to the FTW3 Ultra, except it runs lower clocks out of the box. The EVGA RTX 3080 XC3 range uses a different cooler and is even more affordable, $700, $750 and $770—but all out of stock, too.

It will be interesting to see what AMD has to offer to counter NVIDIA's GeForce 30 series, the AMD RDNA 2 announcement will happen later this month.