Right in time for Computex, NVIDIA had great news to share: the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is launching—reviews today, in stores tomorrow. We have a total of six GeForce RTX 3080 Ti reviews today: ASUS RTX 3080 Ti STRIX LC, EVGA RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 Ultra, MSI RTX 3080 Ti Suprim X, Palit RTX 3080 Ti Gaming Pro, NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, and Zotac RTX 3080 Ti AMP HoloBlack.

The GeForce RTX 3080 has been a huge success NVIDIA sought to +1—partly because AMD has launched extremely competitive cards in the meantime, partly to introduce their hash-rate limiter designed to make new GeForce cards unattractive to miners. The Radeon RX 6800 XT matched the 3080, which the RX 6900 XT beats. That's why NVIDIA has increased the number of cores by 17%, from 8,704 to 10,240. At the same time, the memory bus width got bumped to 384-bit, matching the RTX 3090. VRAM has also been increased from 10 GB to 12 GB, a good PR move of little effect on real-life gaming. EVGA has given a large factory overclock to the FTW3 Ultra—their top-of-the-line RTX 3080 Ti variant. Rated boost is 135 MHz higher than on the NVIDIA Founders Edition.

Averaged over our 22-game-strong test suite at 4K resolution, the FTW3 Ultra ends up 4% faster than the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition—more than most other cards tested today. This lets the FTW3 Ultra beat the RTX 3090 by 2%. The RTX 3080 is 13% slower. AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT is beat by 15%, and even the RX 6900 XT can't keep up, being 8% slower. Against last generation's RTX 2080 Ti, the performance uplift is 53%.

With those performance numbers, RTX 3080 Ti is the perfect choice for 4K gaming at 60 FPS and above. It's probably the only resolution you should consider for this beast because even at 1440p, some titles were CPU limited—for 1080p, it's definitely overkill. On the other hand, if you have a strong CPU and a 1440p high-refresh-rate monitor, the 3080 Ti could be an option. The added performance of the RTX 3080 Ti will also give you more headroom in case future game titles significantly increase their hardware requirements, which seems unlikely considering new consoles are out and their hardware specifications will define what's possible for the next few years.

There's no big surprises with raytracing performance; the RTX 3080 Ti is basically 10% faster than the RTX 3080 and nearly as fast as the RTX 3090. The underlying reason is that there has been no change in the GPU chip or GPU architecture. Still, compared to AMD Radeon RDNA 2, NVIDIA's raytracing performance is better. The new game consoles use AMD graphics tech, though, so we'll see how much of that can be helped with optimization, or simply choosing less demanding RT implementations. For example, Resident Evil Village has support for raytracing, but uses only very limited RT effects, which cushions the performance penalty incurred by Radeon cards. I'm sure we'll learn more about it in the coming months if this trend persists, or whether the only option for serious raytracing will continue to be NVIDIA GeForce.

We've seen EVGA's FTW3 Ultra cooler before in various reviews. It's an excellent design that not only looks great, but also has plenty of cooling power. During full load, we measured temperatures of 79°C, and memory reached 86°C. These temperatures only match the NVIDIA Founders Edition and are slightly higher than other custom designs tested today. The underlying reason is that EVGA's card emits much more heat than the other because the company bumped up the voltage quite a bit. Increasing the voltage yields higher frequency headroom, which no doubt can be interesting for some overclockers, but also costs efficiency and has the cooler work harder. Noise levels are similar to the Founders Edition; the cooler simply has to handle the heat somehow. While other vendors chose to use their dual BIOS feature to include a "quiet" BIOS, EVGA is including an "OC" BIOS. This BIOS turns off idle fan stop and raises the fan speed even higher while keeping the same clock frequencies and power limit. I'm not sure if this approach is as useful, but EVGA clearly has their card target the enthusiast overclocking audience. With Ampere, NVIDIA introduced idle fan stop on their Founders Edition, which makes fan stop a mandatory capability for custom designs, too. Without the "OC" BIOS enabled, the EVGA RTX 3080 Ti will turn off its fans completely in idle, during desktop work, internet browsing, and light gaming, which makes for the perfect noise-free experience.

A unique feature on EVGA graphics cards is the iCX sensors, which are nine additional thermal probes located at strategically important spots on the PCB: GPU, memory, and 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 has increased their card's power limit to 400 W, which is the highest setting seen today; ASUS and MSI use 400 W, too. When it comes to the manual adjustment power limit, EVGA is also in first place with up to 450 W, same as the ASUS STRIX LC. What I do wonder is why not give us more? The card has three 8-pins, so it should be able to pull up to 525 W in theory. Overclocking potential was good, too, just a tiny bit behind the MSI and ASUS.

NVIDIA has announced a $1200 price point for RTX 3080 Ti, which matches the RTX 2080 Ti MSRP. In reality, I doubt we'll see cards retail for anything close to that. To put things into perspective, the RTX 3090 goes for $2900 right now, RTX 3080 for $1500, RX 6800 XT for $1700, and RX 6900 XT for $2100. NVIDIA confirmed to us that the RTX 3080 Ti comes with the LHR (low-hash-rate) mining performance limiter, which hopefully won't be circumvented this time so that at least gamers can get those cards. For pricing, it won't make much of a difference, though. General market demand is simply too high and supply too low. I talked to various board partners and none of them were enthusiastic about supply levels, most predicting that "everything will sell out instantly" and some mentioning that "we have more coming next week/in the coming weeks."

EVGA has given us a price point of $1400, which is a $200 increase over the NVIDIA baseline. Just like the FE price, this price won't hold for long. I suspect we'll be seeing $2000 for the "base" RTX 3080 Ti cards very soon. Some price increase for the EVGA FTW3 Ultra is justified, no doubt. You're getting a large factory OC, much better cooler, dual BIOS, etc. I still feel like I wouldn't spend more than $100 extra for these features, which is why I'm estimating $2100 as the realistic market price. You really have to look at current pricing, though. If you can find the RTX 3080 Ti at similar price levels as the RX 6900 XT, definitely go for the 3080 Ti. It has higher overall performance and better RT performance, albeit with higher power draw. The RTX 3080 could be an interesting option if the price gap is bigger than the 10% performance gap between the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3080. Last but not least, possibly the strongest competition for GeForce and for the PC gaming market overall comes from game consoles, which can be found for well under $1000 and will play all the new games, too; maybe with slightly worse graphics, but the money saved can buy you a 4K TV and a lot of games.